A weaker local government means a weaker Britain

This article first appeared in the LGC briefing.

The suffocation of local government leaves Britain profoundly weaker just as the world becomes more hostile, says Adam Lent.

It’s only taken them 14 years but the mainstream media has finally decided that the financial assault on councils is big news. The travails of Birmingham and other councils implementing vast cuts now regularly feature on BBC and ITV news programmes and the stark findings of the LGIU’s recent annual survey received blanket coverage across print and broadcast media.

The angle is usually a human one: the disabled child denied adequate care, the homeless person left on the streets. This is understandable, the crisis needs to be relatable. But it overlooks an equally malign but less tangible outcome: the weakening of Britain when the need for resilience is pressing.

It would be easy to descend into a gloomy stupor. But the more meaningful response is to be honest about the challenges we face and take the necessary action to respond.

Since the pandemic, threats have only seemed to mount up: growing military tensions exploding into outright war in Eastern Europe and the Middle East; unending economic volatility leaving central bank responses ineffective; increasing political polarisation and extremism shaking once stable democracies. And all underpinned by an environmental crisis that continues to shock even pessimistic scientists with the speed and severity of its impact. It was with good reason that Collins Dictionary declared “permacrisis” the word of the year in 2022.

It would be easy to descend into a gloomy stupor. But the more meaningful response is to be honest about the challenges we face and take the necessary action to respond. In this sense, the pandemic did us a favour: it taught us that all crisis response is local.

Highly localised and spontaneous community action is key to crisis response.

As the covid inquiry has revealed, the efforts of Whitehall to run the pandemic response themselves while excluding local authorities was disastrous. The inevitable lack of detailed knowledge about the specifics of Britain’s many diverse places led to very poor decisions that were wasteful, ineffective and often counter-productive. Indeed, it was only when central government relaxed its grip in early 2021 that we suddenly saw what a truly effective and efficient response could look like in the form of the vaccination roll-out.

We also learned that highly localised and spontaneous community action is key to crisis response: an insight increasingly endorsed by academic analysis. For example, a 2023 study from the University of Central Lancashire found that “communities with social capital have been amongst the most organised in providing formal mutual aid” during the pandemic. This, of course, stands to reason. Those areas with high levels of social connection and civic mindedness will inevitably be in a better position to respond to a crisis than fragmented and apathetic communities.

The truth is that weaker local government means a weaker Britain.

But councils with massively reduced workforces struggling to impose the umpteenth round of cuts in a desperate effort to stave off the section 114 notice are self-evidently not being resourced or empowered to be on the frontline against the next crisis. Nor is the degradation of the very places where social capital is built – libraries, community centres and youth clubs – any way to build resilience.

The truth is that weaker local government means a weaker Britain just when it needs to be at its strongest and most resilient.

The next government will need to urgently reverse this profound weakening of the country. That means going well beyond merely offering greater financial stability and piecemeal devolution. Instead, a fundamental reset of the relationship between centre and local is required: one which resources and empowers councils to rebuild both their workforces and the social capital of their areas with the ongoing support and trust, rather than hostility, of Westminster. The permacrisis demands nothing less.

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