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Andrew Collinge considers what strategy a future Conservative Government would take with councils. In what was billed as a major policy announcement last week, shadow chancellor, George Osborne, claimed that a Conservative Government would apply the radical thinking to public services which allowed it to grasp hold of the torch of rogressive politics. In education and healthcare, Mr Osborne said, the Conservatives would do things differently to get ‘more for less', even in an age of austerity. Money would go to the frontline, as bureaucracy was eroded. As the [late Labour minister] Tony Crosland proclaimed, during a previous economic crisis, ‘the party is over...' The context for the shadow chancellor's announcement could not be darker. Unemployment now nudges 2.5 million, and the green shoots of recovery are invisible to many. And, with the prospects of a barbecue summer fading fast, the Audit Commission has further dampened the spirits of those tasked with providing frontline services to communities. Its report, When it comes to the crunch, shows squeezed services already beginning to be overrun by the ‘second wave' of recession, with councils facing extra demand for benefits, welfare and debt counselling, alongside increased pressure on social care and mental health services. While it may be short on the kind of new thinking it calls for, the commission is absolutely right to highlight the emergence of this second wave, which includes a rise in domestic violence and substance abuse, and a third wave in which some areas do not recover as fast as their more affluent neighbours, a sobering thought, considering communities caught up in the recession of the early 1990s have, in some cases, still not managed to escape the spiral of decline. Against this backdrop, Mr Osborne acknowledged that straightforward operational efficiency savings were not enough to bridge the yawning chasm of the national budget deficit. Wholesale public sector reform was now needed. Referring to Tory local authorities, he noted the innovative action of councils to tackle the initial problems of the downturn. There is recognition in councils too that a radical approach is required. The Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) recently conducted a poll of local councillors which has shown that nine in 10 see innovation as essential in easing the pressure of recession on communities. The council which most pointed to for their innovative streak was Essex CC. Its joint venture with Santander to create a bank to offer loans to local businesses and a successful bid to rescue local post offices are the initiatives most likely to catch the attention of those taking part in the survey. This sits alongside many examples of council decisive action to combat the initial downturn, across the country. Take Newcastle Futures, for example, a company run with council backing, staffed largely by JobcentrePlus, and bringing under one roof partners in housing, the PCT and the third sector to tackle deep-seated worklessness in a way that remote national programmes simply cannot. But these are examples which have occurred in spite of Whitehall, not with it. The LGiU will continue to argue that, in order for councils to innovate to protect communities in these dark days, they must be given a free hand to act. While healthcare and education are likely to be winners in the pledge to ‘protect frontline services', there is a danger that local authorities could bear the brunt of a ‘more for less' agenda which is most effective in delivering political expediency, but leaves a husk of a system painfully short of capacity to deliver in the long term. As the LGiU poll shows, councils understand the need to innovate. The knowledge and preparedness already exists at a local level. What appears to be missing from the latest policy announcement is an acceptance that councils such as Essex do not need proscription from the centre. Conservative rhetoric on localism has, so far, been positive. At the LGA Conference in June, [Tory leader] David Cameron pledged more power to communities, albeit with no more cash. His next in command has been right to open up a new front on public service reform, and is correct to say that simple efficiency savings no longer suffice. Out in the country, there are already fundamental debates unfolding out of necessity about what individual councils should and should not do. We must take the shadow chancellor at his word, that looking to the forward-thinking among them will provide answers to a Conservative Government. Councils can and do innovate. But, in order for the Tories to truly adopt the mantle of the progressive party in British politics, Mr. Cameron should match the rhetoric with action, and provide local government with a constitutional grounding to end the ebb and flow of power and, hopefully, signal an end to risk-averse practice, something hindered by the recent Court of Appeal judgement on LAML. And so, back to the recession. The devolution of real responsibility which ends the culture of risk aversion and allows councils to do what the Audit Commission calls for is still absent. We talk about wrap-around services, joining up mental health provision, Jobcentre Plus, housing, welfare and substance abuse, to properly co-ordinate the response to the downturn, but we know that positive action of this kind is the exception not the rule. The act of a truly progressive party would be to allow local government to be imaginative in the way we know that it can be. Andrew Collinge is director of policy at the LGiU

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WHITEHALL

Imagination and innovation in an age of austerity

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