Whitehall needs to better understand local areas
It’s all gone rather quiet on the Levelling Up front, at least since the shellacking the Conservative council base took in May’s local elections. So it's with interest that council chiefs and their attendants rocked up last week to Bournemouth on the south coast for the Local Government Association Conference 2023.
The question being asked on the south coast this week is has time and political tide finally ebbed on what had been the government’s flagship domestic policy? The aim of the Levelling Up White Paper was a noble one. To reduce the geographic economic inequality that has entrenched stubborn health and social unhappiness in all for corners of the land and seen woeful disparities in economic productivity outside London and the greater South East.
If the levelling up agenda is ‘bound in shallows and in miseries’, is there any chance of refloating this before the end of the current political cycle? Last week, Localis the think tank of place published Level Measures, a report which seeks to address levelling up through the lens of a modern agenda for public service integration and how we might continue to deliver highly valued local public services.
In the course of our research, which involved several regional roundtables with local authority chief executives and senior directors, we heard an open and palpable desire from our place leaders to continue to innovate to deliver responsive neighbourhood services as the foundation of prosperous places in all corners of the country.
In Level Measures, we have condensed what we heard and learned into seven principles for a modern public service integration agenda capable of delivering sustainable local public service reform:
• reliable, consistent and long-term funding for local government;
• 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 which 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 match the government’s ambition to level up every part of the country, we recommend that future 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.
The old adage is that you can’t manage what you can’t measure. As central government is keen to ensure that newly-established Whitehall quango the Office for Local Government (Oflog) should benchmark the quality of local services. Again, this is not an ignoble aim. Our report urges levelling up ministers to clarify the intended role and purpose of Oflog and broaden it from a reductive focus on data - 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.
Since we are already on the cusp of an AI revolution, it is time that local government sheds its reputation for being a Croesus of data wealth and riches and an Ebeneezer Scrooge in analyzing what it know of people and place. We recommend that subregional centres should be established for the collation and analysis of public service data, to be used as a shared resource for councils across a wider geographic area and spearhead improvement in local place-based services.
And Whitehall should get to know local areas and how they are run and governed on the ground. We recommend that civil service training for policy professionals should include a core element focusing on the form and function of local government.
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.
Previous prime ministers have famously complained about bearing the scars of public service reform on their backs. 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.
This might not have the glamour associated with big bang devolution deals, combined authorities and high-profile metro mayors. But in the short and long term, continuously improved local services will remain the rising tide to float the boat of ‘levelling up’ and what comes after.
The full report, Level Measures – a modern agenda for public service integration, can be found here.
Jonathan Werran is Chief Executive of the neo-localist think tank, Localis.
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