Follow the Money: Why Localism Won’t Happen

Who’s responsible for cuts to council services? Central government or local government? The latter may find their budgets squeezed but it’s still their decision to close libraries or swimming pools. Nowhere is is mandated that they react to a tight spending settlement by doing so. They are responsible for choices made in response to circumstances for which they are not primarily responsible. Nevertheless, David is quite right to bemoan:

[…] Local government conniving to avoid responsibility for spending contractions. With adroit calculation, councils bastardise vital services to inconvenience those they represent. Local bus routes are a necessity, particularly for pensioners, school children and those who live in rural areas. Rising fuel costs are exerting yet more pressure on strained public transport networks. Retrenchment will therefore hamper economic recovery; inequality and poverty deepen in consequence, or so the argument goes.

And, all the while, councils blame tight-fisted central government.

True. It might also be said – again – however that the government has walked into this trap. How could it be otherwise when local government receives 85% of its funding from central government? Equally, how much use is a “localism agenda” that does nothing to address this? Certainly there’s every chance that councils will make bad decisions if required to raise a much greater proportion of their funds themselves. But, philosophically at least, this government is notionally supposed to be comfortable with that.

Notionally, of course, because practically there is the problem of letting go and risking a deterioration in services and so on. However if you believe, as the government professes to, in the little platoons then it’s all very well and good setting schools and doctors “free” but you also need to shift the balance of power and responsibility from central government to local councils. That means fixing the money.

That’s such a startling – and brave – concept, however, that it won’t happen. Which in turn means that the government’s enthusiasm for localism most probably won’t produce the results that, in theory at least, it could. The theory works; the practice is rather different.