Last week I wrote about the future of localism for the left, in anticipation of yesterday’s decentralisation and localism bill, which was supposed to herald a new renaissance for local communities.
But the bill was overshadowed yesterday as the local government grant was finally revealed and the true picture of this government’s localist vision came to light. The settlement was unprecedented in the scale of its reductions and the challenge it poses to the quality of local government in this country. The suggestion by government ministers on the media that multimillion pound black holes could be filled by councils sharing chief executives or stripping out a bit more back office bureaucracy is rather hollow when two-thirds of local authority budgets are spent on social care for the most vulnerable in our community.
But the most revealing indication of this government’s abdication of the progressive mantle is the hugely disproportionate impact of the cuts on poorer areas. These are the areas most likely to have more people in poverty, who are therefore more dependent on council services, and areas where councils themselves are more likely to be dependent on central government grant as they have fewer other sources of income than wealthier areas.
Labour authorities in deprived areas like Hackney, Rochdale, Knowsley, Liverpool and South Tyneside all take the maximum hit of 8.9 per cent while Conservative areas such as Windsor and Maidenhead, Buckinghamshire and Richmond-upon-Thames get less than one per cent.
The graphs below shows the percentage reduction in grant and the local authority ranking on the indices of multiple deprivation. This government must be aware of this very basic disparity. What’s more, the new definition of ‘spending power’ obscures the deeper impact of the cuts by including income such as council tax. The gradient you will see is even sharper for London.
That ‘fairness’ was one of the central three tenets of the comprehensive spending review now seems more like wishful thinking than reality.
Moreover, the timing of yesterday’s settlement to coincide with the launch of the Localism Bill was no accident. The government hoped to counteract the grim news of the cuts with promises of more freedoms and powers to local government to enable them to respond more innovatively. Yet it is unlikely, as I predicted last week, that any of the new powers devolved to local authorities will give them the tools they need to respond adequately.
That’s not to say there is nothing of interest in the bill. The mayoral model could reinvigorate local democracy and provide strong leadership. The general power of competence is an important symbolic gesture, which abolishes the concept of ultra vires for local councils, as long as it doesn’t get bogged down with limitations in secondary legislation. The ‘right to bid’ to run local services could stimulate real civic engagement, as long as councils maintain key roles as arbiters and ensure equity of access for all the community. Indeed – why couldn’t this right apply more widely to some central government services too?
But as I said last week, this legislation will feel like a grim joke to many. The localism bill is not the thing that will define local communities for this new era. It will be the cuts that will define what services local authorities continue to provide. It will be the cuts that will decide the quality and how they are delivered. It will be the cuts that will force people onto the streets as they did in Lewisham, and it will be the cuts that forge a new generation of local, politically engaged people seeking a means through which to defend and reshape their local communities.
