The Guardian view on local councils: they must meet the needs of communities, not just Whitehall

Council House in Birmingham, one of eight councils that have declared themselves insolvent. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian

The phrase “all politics is local” is most often associated with Tip O’Neill, former speaker of the US House of Representatives. But such sentiments come to die in England, where decision-making is concentrated in Whitehall ministries. With English council and mayoral elections in May, local government is increasingly that in name alone. Westminster’s creeping preference for single-tier authorities and austerity has seen bigger councils and smaller budgets. Crucially, local government is losing its link to places that matter to local people. Fifty years ago, a more grassroots approach meant people would know their councillor. Now most voters couldn’t name them.

With budgets set by central government, local authorities are being drained of resources to safeguard and improve their area’s social, economic and environmental wellbeing. Years of shrinking finances have closed care homes, creches, youth clubs and libraries. Bin collections, bus routes and school crossing patrols have gone too. Councils are viewed in Whitehall as local service delivery agencies and expected to clean up any mess made in SW1.

In England, devolution and economic development are bound together, as if the former was necessarily conducive to the latter. Metro-mayoralties – the big devolution policy since 2010 – were conceived as ways of “agglomerating” workers around a big city. This model is a democratic improvement on the single tier of local government favoured for decades. The mayor handles strategic conurbation-wide issues and district councils deal with more local issues. But rural counties lacking an economic focus cannot adopt this template. Growth, rather than giving expression to a political community, drives mayoral devolution. By contrast, with London’s assembly and Scottish and Welsh parliaments devolution empowered distinctive political identities.

A looming financial crisis in England presents an opportunity for change. Since 2018, eight councils have declared themselves insolvent. None had done so in the preceding 18 years. Four in 10 authorities are at risk of financial failure over the next five years. Sir Keir Starmer has said devolution would be a major priority for a Labour government, the odds of which are shortening. He should use this moment to rethink local government.

A new report for Compass and Unlock Democracy, entitled Power to the People?, offers creative fixes for Sir Keir to reimagine local democracy. It proposes an English subsidiarity bill to provide a framework for councils’ power, responsibilities and funding to protect against institutional churn; a “fair funding bill” to “address the austerity-driven collapse” in frontline services; and for councils to get a statutory voice within Whitehall. These are big changes, but local government is in big trouble.

Without much evidence, Whitehall has believed that larger councils are more efficient. The average size of English local authorities is now 10 times that found in comparable western European countries. The US state of Wyoming has more than 170 units of local government to serve 580,000 people. The more populous North Yorkshire region, stretching 110 miles from Whitby to Skipton, is represented by one unitary council. The last royal commission to consider the future of local government reported in 1969. In their book The Strange Demise of the Local in Local Government, the academics Steve Leach and Colin Copus say it “struggled to balance its desire to recommend larger units of local government with its recognition that such units would have a damaging effect on voter engagement”. This remains a central question of governance. Democracy in England suffers without an adequate answer.