The state as we’ve known it since the second world war has delivered some remarkable achievements. We are, as a society, healthier, wealthier, and better educated than ever before. But there have been unintended consequences too that are not so positive. For too many of the most excluded and the poorest in our society, the state is an external force that does things to them whether they want it or not. It tells them where they will live, how their children will grow up, and what support they get when they grow old. For too many people the state takes control away from them over large parts of their own lives and, in doing that, locks them into a debilitating cycle of dependency. It’s the top-down model of public services we need to change if we want to end the dependency culture that saps self-reliance and caps the aspirations of too many.
To make change happen we must take power away from the people who provide public services so we can share it more equally with the people who use them. This requires a major change in how our public services are designed and run. Making services directly accountable to the people who use them is the key to making this shift.
Although this is not a cuts-led agenda, it will deliver better value for money because the closer involvement of users means public services will do more of what people want because it works, and less of what they don’t want because it doesn’t. That’s a real efficiency gain.
Let’s take three different services to illustrate how the power-shift can happen. For many people living in council housing, the quality of housing management is inadequate, leading to dissatisfaction with basic services like repairs, re-letting empty homes, or dealing with anti-social neighbours. The people who run these services tend not to live on estates like the ones they are managing. They don’t live with these service failures like the residents they are working for. The way to change this is to put the tenants in control.
Tenant-managed estates involve residents electing a representative board that appoints an estate manager who oversees the other staff who run the various housing services. The manager and the staff are directly accountable to residents through the board. On estates like Blenheim Gardens in Brixton this approach has transformed their estate by creating more effective and responsive management and happier tenants. It also delivers better value for money than many traditionally-run estates.
Targeted youth services are intended to offer support to young people who are drifting into a life of crime, aiming to steer their lives back on track before they damage their own futures and the community they are part of. These services do not work well enough because, on many of our inner-city estates, violent youth crime continues to rise and violent gangs predominate. Yet there are examples of communities coming together to make change for themselves, running activities like football leagues, setting up informal mentoring programmes, supervising spaces where young people can socialise safely. Communities like the Myatts Field Estate in Brixton end up doing these things because the services provided by the state are not effective enough.
So, in Lambeth, we are setting up a youth services trust. Any member of the community can join the trust, and they will elect a representative board to oversee the management of youth services by professionals. Using a model of community engagement that involves training residents from affected neighbourhoods to engage with the wider community, we will gain an understanding of local needs and then help the community to procure the services that will meet those needs. It will create services tailored to the needs of individual estates, and will harness the insights and capacity of the community itself instead of side-lining them. Instead of fighting the system in a futile attempt to make it listen, residents can now use their energies to fight the problem because the resources they need will be at their disposal.
Home care services are frequently in the news because of the scandalously low quality of services being delivered to vulnerable older and disabled people in their homes. In part, this stems from the appalling conditions that care workers are forced to operate under. Pay is at rock bottom, care workers may not be paid for time travelling between one client and the next, and they are under pressure to get in and out of each home as fast as possible. This leaves no time for the normal human interactions that are so important to isolated people, it piles stress on the worker and it can lead to substandard or even dangerous levels of care.
Sunderland Care Home Associates have found a better way. They have set up a mutual co-owned by everyone that works for the organisation. Profits are shared. Terms and conditions are better. Both staff and their clients are happier, evidenced by the fact that staff turnover and levels of sick leave are far lower, and customer satisfaction is higher.
The real impact of this empowerment agenda is when it’s applied across a wide range of public services. By doing that we can change people’s experience of the state from something that is done to them to something that is done with them. By giving people back control we free them from dependency, unlock self-reliance and uncap aspiration. The impact is greatest for the poorest communities that are reliant on more public services. The point is not to roll back the state but to change the role of the state so it’s firmly under the control of the people who rely on it.
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Steve Reed is leader of Lambeth council
As I said to Steve on Saturday at @PAC12 localists are curiously shy about money. Lambeth has a lot of poor residents, some of whom need considerable support. Who pays? In a fair world the residents of well-heeled Kensington and Wandsworth would make a contribution. But the leader of Wandsworth says, I’m a localist and I believe in the devolution of fiscal power: in other words, no redistribution of the proceeds of taxation.
At this point in the argument localists tend to say, ah, but I didn’t mean devolution of taxation. But if not, Steve’s talk about devolving power sounds as if it’s missing something.
The danger in localism is precisely this: you help undermine the capacity of the entity that history has shown to be an effective gatherer and distributor of public money, the central state.
ho
And as all the other panellists said you, David, no one is arguing for services to be funded only by money raised locally. That would obviously be insane: it would mean poorer areas with higher needs getting less money than wealthier areas with lower levels of need. But, as I said, no one I’m aware of in the Labour Party is actually advocating this. What you’re missing is that regardless of the level of funding available (and of course it needs to be adequate to meet needs) the services it funds will perform better if they are directly accountable to the people who use them rather than to the middle-class professionals who run them. I’ve seen enough of middle class people telling poorer people what’s best for them. It’s patronising and it doesn’t work. It would be better if you addressed the point we’re making rather than one we’re not!
Whilst I agree that we need to refresh our thinking about the relationship between the citizen and the state, I think that the argument should be more nuanced that Steve suggests. Two reasons: one practical and the other one of both principle and tactics for the Labour Party.
(1) Whilst tenants’ active involvement and taking charge of, say, an estate may improve its running, this is not always the case. I know directly of cases e.g. where TMOs (Tenant Management Organisations) have been commandeered by a bullying resident and of whom, other residents were frightened. Repairs and maintenance deteriorated markedly. So, I’m all in favour of more active and direct participation, but let’s take off the rose tinted spectacles. There is an important role in such instances of a local authority being able to intervene, with delicacy, sensitivity but firmness when necessary.
(2) We have to be able describe convincingly a benevolent role of the state, and one that is different from 1906, 1945 or 1997 and Steve’s article is unbalanced, too readily painting a picture of a monolithic, heavy handed, and lumbering state from which power must be taken. Surely the model to go for is one of a partnership (hackneyed word, I know) between the local state, community groups and individuals with the local state, democratically accountable with councillors well embedded within their communities, acting with a fleetness of foot in different ways as appropriate but holding a loose ring around the “place”. This should involve actively facilitating participation at a range of different levels including devolution of powers but also at times having to challenge and intervene; at times, acting as a catalyst, but then knowing when to bow out. And there are some issues when only something like a local authority can effectively bring different players together in order to find a solution.
We too readily cede ground to the Tories if we are not able to articulate a more balanced view of what the state can do, including at a local level, in the 21st century.
Jane Roberts
The problem with localism is always two fold – firstly, the money in the poorest areas isn’t there and as you narrow the debate geographically you can’t get others to contribute (as David Walker says above) and secondly what happens when locals either can’t agree what they want or just say NO.
However, that’s not a point to give up on engaging those who care most and are impacted most – that’s the point ot listen more carefully and moderate, develop and change your initial thinking.
Localism isn’t authomatically a virtur in itself or even a principle. But it is critical for society and the future of stable government that all parts of scoiety feel that government, local and national, are relevant to them; reflect their concerns and priorities; and listens to them. To feel society has an interest in people (and hence they should respect society, pay tax,etc) people need to see that politicians (at all levels) listen to them and respect them.
That’s the real value of the kind of engagement Steve Reed is talking about. The process is as important as the outcome (as long as there is an outcome) and this is also the merit behind wider government actions to promote social engagement being promoted elsewhere – for example my idea posted on progress a couple of weeks back about VAT breaks for professional sports clubs who involve club members in key decisions and wider social benefit in the community.