At a recent roundtable the point was made that the coalition’s programme of local government reform would not be achieved if the current “aggressive posturing” of ministers continued. The person in question argued that if such a situation were allowed to continue, then the fractured working relationship that exists currently would rapidly deteriorate, likely leaving citizens enquiring as to why taxes were higher but service quality less so.

To judge by the coverage, it appears that the coalition seems content to make local government the bad guy - the tactic being to play into existing prejudices of negative feeling towards local government. By painting a big target on the Town Hall they’ve provided cover for the political machine at the heart of Whitehall. However, strategically the government is making an error. 

Whilst citizens are often happy to buy into accusatory ministerial rhetoric on council salaries, foreign junkets and ‘Whitehall credit cards’, they also expect government to act on the alleged excesses in equal measure. Therefore it doesn’t take a leap into the unknown to imagine that in four years’ time, if ministers carry on down this path, the same citizens will be asking why the government hasn’t done anything about it. Whilst outrage tends to burn bright but fade quickly, disappointment often creeps slowly but lingers longer. I know which one I would consider more damaging for a government that is still just under four years out from a general election.

Therefore it seems logical to assume that the government is going to have to sue for peace and do so in the short-to-medium term. The questions on my mind are, when and how? Instinctively it appeared that the local elections provided a natural watershed for central/local relations and would provide political cover for a re-set. The problem is that the Conservatives outperformed even their own expectations. It would have been easy for government to argue for a more pragmatic relationship in light of huge Labour wins but with a strong Conservative performance the need to present any ‘reconciliation’ in the right light gains enhanced prescience.

Because the government has moved so forcefully against councils in the last year it can only really try to present the reconciliation as an outright victory for itself over the so-called ‘town hall bureaucrats’. If it doesn’t, then politically it could be inferred that the government has lost and is back-tracking on another key area of its agenda. (U-turns being de rigueur for the coalition at present, one can only assume they wish this to be a passing fad and not a defining fashion.) I can’t imagine local government seeing this as a particularly appealing set of terms on which to agree an armistice, so therefore what does constitute an acceptable peace for councils?

This week’s CLG Select Committee ‘Report into Localism’ has served to further highlight the government’s difficulty in bridging the divide with local government. By highlighting the disjointed nature of Whitehall, the report has exposed a lack of coherence in the Coalition’s interpretation of localism.  Contrary to criticisms from some quarters, this lack of central definition is no bad thing and offers an opportunity for local government to assert itself and define localism on its own terms.  Anticipating this vacuum, NLGN this week launched its Commission on Next Localism to ensure that it is local government that shapes the principles of next localism.  To do this, NLGN has long recommended that local authorities be given the right to bid to run central services.  Endorsed by the Select Committee report, sympathy for this idea seems to be rather low within Government at present.

Delivering on decentralisation and public service reform will require all facets of the state’s delivery chain, from secretary of state to social worker, to be signed up to the programme, with councils as the primary driver of this.   The existing stand-off between central and local can’t continue.  My thinking, as with all stand offs, is that those who blink first have most to lose. Local government should be ready to demand the right to bid when central government decides it wants to play nice.

Liam Scott-Smith, Government Relations Manager, New Local Government Network (NLGN)