Can you see the change?

Back in August, I used this column to welcome the Rewiring the State Cabinet statement and to worry aloud that it did not say as much as it needed to about the role of local authorities.Since then, at the Local Government Information Unit, we have been trying to fill that gap. We have run workshops and round tables with more than 50 councils and strategic authorities and held conversations with leading academics, think-tanks and nearly every sector body. Last week we published the result: Rewiring the state: unlocking local government's role.At its core are six roles for councils in a rewired state: delivering the acute, demand-led services people rely on when they need the state most; running the everyday place-based services that are the real foundations of prevention; co-authoring growth with strategic authorities; providing the democratic link between the neighbourhood and the mayor; acting as a laboratory for innovation and strengthening the accountability of strategic authorities themselves.None of that will surprise perceptive readers of The MJ. But what I think matters more is the shape of the argument.We should also be honest about where we are starting from. Our polling with Ipsos shows that 51% of people do not trust their council to act in their best interests, and six in 10 know little or nothing about what councils do. Local authorities should be the democratic foundation of the state but that role is not as secure as it needs to be.There is a risk that making the case for local government reads like a list of demands. More money, more powers, fewer unfunded burdens. All true, and with 39% of councils telling us they expect to need exceptional financial support within five years, all urgent. But a list of needs is easy for government to read as special pleading. And easier still to set aside.So, we have been careful to frame this as an exchange, rather than a transfer. Powers and funding flow down. Knowledge, democratic consent and the outcomes that justify the exchange flow back up.That means councils have to offer something too. In a rewired state, councils must be ready to share data openly. They should be measured against a shared outcomes framework. They should scale or stop pilots on the basis of evidence rather than habit. And they should accept that some functions will move up a tier when the case is clear.That last one will not be universally popular. But, if subsidiarity is a principle rather than a slogan, it has to work in both directions. There is no hard line between strategic authorities and councils, they are all connected parts of the local state.We should also be honest about where we are starting from. Our polling with Ipsos shows that 51% of people do not trust their council to act in their best interests, and six in 10 know little or nothing about what councils do. Local authorities should be the democratic foundation of the state but that role is not as secure as it needs to be.One chief executive offered a test that has stayed with me: what visible change would you see within 15 minutes of leaving your front door? That is the real measure of rewiring. Not whether institutions have been rearranged, but whether normal people notice. If we do not pass that test, then all the rewiring will have been in vain.Which brings me back to the issue I raised in August: stickiness.We have had a lot of devolution White Papers. Governments of every stripe have talked a localist game. So, the recommendations we care most about are unglamorous ones. They are designed to make change hard to reverse: a standing commission of council leaders and mayors, with a duty on ministers to respond within fixed timelines; a right to propose, giving councils a formal route to put forward alternatives to national or regional approaches; a single document codifying the powers of each tier and a statutorily entrenched equalisation formula that guarantees a floor while local leaders set the ceiling.Regional development agencies were abolished almost overnight because too few people noticed or cared. Durable reform needs institutions that are hard to undo and, most of all, residents who would object if someone tried.Over the course of the autumn we will find out what the Government thinks councils are for. Of course that matters enormously, but perhaps what matters even more is whether in a rewired state, residents can answer that question for themselves.Jonathan Carr-West is chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit (LGiU)

Title

DEVOLUTION

Can you see the change?

By Jonathan Carr-West | 13 October 2026

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