How have financial pressures facing local government shifted in recent years? How are councils responding to unprecedented fiscal pressures? New research collaboration between New Local & International Public Policy Observatory at UCL will be exploring these questions and making practical and policy recommendations. We’ll announce full details of the project shortly and how #localgov colleagues can get involved, but early findings from our recent scoping workshop are sobering. - Big structural pressures like ageing and wealth inequality have been compounded by the pandemic and cost of living crisis: councils are dealing with the consequences of this. There has been a sustained rise in demand for adult social care (working age adults are fastest rising cohort), children’s social care, SEN and homelessness. - The connection between how local government is funded and what it needs to deliver has been lost. This is the context of a few councils “going bust” and some others approaching the brink of doing so. - Layered onto this public sector funding failure, councils must deal with the consequences of an array of broken private markets – for social care placements, temporary accommodation and children’s homes. Providers are increasingly dominated by actors and people in it for profit, with weak regulation to curtail this. - The Government’s reliance on short term measures like mass capitalisations does not give confidence that the seriousness of the situation is understood at Whitehall. In terms of how this is affecting councils, some reflections: - The ongoing cost of living crisis is weakening the ability to do prevention in previous ways, such is the continuing flow of people needing support. Focused preventative work with one group might stop them tipping into acute need, but they will be fast replaced by a new cohort. - Increasingly, there is no such thing as a separate preventative service anymore: all universal services need to have a strong aspect of prevention. It is essential to do as much as possible for someone in the first contact they have with the council, to maximise that connection. - Staff are exhausted. Levels of optimism and resilience within the workforce are weakened by years of making decisions under austerity, then the pandemic response, which immediately transitioned into the cost-of-living crisis response and hasn’t let up. There are broadly two choices facing the sector: continue on trajectory of cutting back, becoming smaller and doing less, OR identify a new operating model that takes a whole system approach locally, hardwires prevention and shifts towards long term sustainability. Of course, we at New Local choose the second option and our research will explore what that direction looks like. How do these early reflections chime with the experience of other local government colleagues? We are keen to hear your experiences and insights – please get in touch if you’d like to participate in the research.
John Mortimer
7mo
I have considerable evidence base learning, including data of various aspects that might be helpful.
Matthew Buckham
7mo
Liz Cowie
7mo
Jessica Studdert great reflections and an important conversation.
Steve Whitbread
7mo
Generally (although certainly not universally) the informed stewardship of natural capital and consideration of nature-based solutions is something which local authorities haven't really taken on board (given competing demands on ever shrinking resources and lack of natural capital/ecosystem service consciousness amongst Chief Execs, Directors and local administrations. That doesn't seem to have changed to an appreciable degree despite declarations of nature/climate emergencies. It would be possible to bring forward a range of NatCap projects where ££ benefits would greatly exceed investment costs or to include a 'greening' precept in Council Tax reforms but where are the incentives to encourage thus or the sharing of information about nature positive approaches that pioneering LA's are pursuing. Where, all this time after Rio, are the Councils where a cross-cutting Natural Infrastructure Climate & Environment team reports direct to the CEO and guides whole authority improvement and advocacy?
Kate Hand
7mo
We're doing some work with University of Hertfordshire on the impact of financial pressures on net zero delivery - would be great to connect the two pieces up.
Chief Executive
7moLooks like a timely study with exactly the right focus on hardwiring system based preventative models of public service delivery. I look forward to seeing how it develops.