Give councils power to level up and improve local public services, thinktank urges

Consistent and long-term funding is crucial for improving long-term public service provision, and the Government should introduce new civil service training to teach the form and function of local government to tackle Whitehall’s lack of understanding of local Government, Localis has said.

Writing in a report published on Wednesday (5 July), the independent think tank argued that England's councils will need to innovate and collaborate if they are to address the capacity gap that threatens their ability to fulfil the Government's dozen levelling-up missions.

The report, which centred around the findings of seven round tables held with senior council directors across England, noted that the Levelling Up White Paper and its subsequent legislative offspring have "monopolised" most of local Government's attention in 2022.

It added: "National political uncertainty and a stubbornly ongoing cost-of-living crisis have set the agenda for the duration of the current political and parliamentary cycle.

"In 2023, this has left our place-leaders with the unenviable task of maintaining social cohesion and ensuring economic stability at the local level during a time of national and international socio-economic turmoil."

The report went on to give an overview of the key challenges in neighbourhood service delivery and then listed the following key principles needed for a modern public service integration agenda:

• Reliable, consistent and long-term funding.
• A holistic understanding of public services and their interconnected nature.
• Trust between levels and tiers of Government.
• Deep internal insight into and understanding of performance data, shared across boundaries and between tiers.
• External audit that is based on outcomes, not outputs, considering the totality of local circumstances
• An integrated, systems-based approach to provision which focuses on upstream prevention and user outcomes.
• Partnership frameworks based on long-term strategic goals which maximise local value.

To bring local public service delivery closer into line with the key principles it laid out, Localis recommended that councils have revenue support for their neighbourhood service provision combined with money currently allocated through capital pots into a single placemaking budget.

On this point, it said: "Although funding has lifted in recent years, additional revenue support for local government in delivering neighbourhood services is required to uplift capacity, after a decade of an increasing consolidation of council resources solely into the provision of social care."

It called for funding for levelling up to be included in the placemaking budget instead of through capital competitions, which the report stated "are widely agreed to be inefficient and ineffective".

The report also recommended that devolution deals should include provisions to fund both the delivery of neighbourhood services and the capacity of councils to strategically coordinate provision across service lines to prioritise upstream prevention.

In addition, it recommended that the intended role and purpose of the Office for Local Government (Oflog) should be clarified and broadened from a reductive focus on data.

"Central government must clearly articulate the goals of performance audit, particularly when policy goals such as value for money, delivering public value, or boosting economic development appear to be in conflict", the report noted.

"The purpose and goals of OFLOG should be clarified and designed to prevent an oversimplification of local governance, ensuring that its role aligns with the broader of objectives of public service delivery and the levelling up missions."

Finally, it recommended that civil service training for policy professionals should include a core element focusing on the form and function of local government.

This recommendation came in light of a "widely shared sentiment" that staff in central government departments do not fully understand the structure or the extent of local government functions, nor the capacity councils have to exercise these functions, the report said.

It added: "This situation is exacerbated by the plethora of departmental initiatives with a local delivery element, which can and often do overlap with and contradict each other."

Commenting on the findings, Localis' chief executive, Jonathan Werran, said: "In Levelling Up, the clear linkage between performing the basics of neighbourhood services brilliantly, and creating the conditions for strong communities from which to build the foundation of a strong local economy and a prosperous and unified nation has been a helpful flarepath."

He noted that Localis "heard an open and palpable desire" from place leaders to continue to innovate to deliver responsive neighbourhood services.

"Allied to this is the pursuit of excellence in local Government's more adroit use of data analysis and its longstanding mature approach to partnership working across the private and voluntary sectors – as well as leveraging the early benefits of the Integrated Care Systems for population health.

"If public service reform is best served through place-based approaches, an effective neighbourhood public service integration platform offers the promise of more gain for less pain."

Adam Carey