Between Centre and Locality

The Politics of Public Policy

Stewart Ranson, George Jones, Kieron Walsh

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2022
• ISBN:
  9781000579970
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Public Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

First published in 1985, Between Centre and Locality provides the detailed accounts of the relations between central and local government in Britain since 1970s. The confrontation of centre and locality has been a constant theme of political debate and legislative action since Mrs Thatcher came to power. It discusses range of policy issues including education, the police, housing, race relations and finance. In addition, theoretical chapters are included which set the empirical studies in the broader context of theories of the State and of policy making. The chapters have each been written by an acknowledged authority on the particular subject and are based upon extensive research. The book will be of interest not only to academics in a number of fields but also to politicians, officers, and civil servants in central and local government.

PART ONE
Dilemmas of Central–Local Relations

DOI: 10.4324/9781003279402-2

1Dilemmas

DOI: 10.4324/9781003279402-3

John Stewart

THE DILEMMA OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

The relationship between local authorities and central government is the relationship between the only elected governing institutions in our society. Each is an elected body charged with government, and with the power and the duty to make choices in the exercise of government.

These choices centre not only on the administration of many functions, and involve not simply implementation, but the making of policy. Both local authorities and central government have to make multi-valued choices, weighing in the balance the relative importance not only of means to ends, but of the ends themselves.

Such choices are given to elected institutions in our society. Election conveys, or is felt to convey, the legitimate authority to exercise such governmental choices. The right to tax is conceded only to elected authorities: for local authorities the power is limited to the rates, while central government imposes a wider range of taxes.

Elections, both for central government and for local government, mean (more so in local government than heretofore) elections fought by political parties leading to party control over government.

There is a dilemma inherent in the existence of both local government and central government – each claiming the legitimacy that comes from election; each controlled by political parties, and in some authorities by different political parties; each with a legitimate right of choice and with no guarantee that the choices made at one level will be acceptable at the other; and each having the right to tax and with no certainty that policies of high or low taxation at one level will be paralleled at the other level.

The dilemma, then, is the dilemma of difference. The existence of both central and local government means that there is a potential for different views and different policy choices. The dilemma does not arise by accident, but from the very structuring of local government. Local authorities have been constituted to make a local choice as to the level and form of services they need or wish. They have been granted a tax as a means of making that choice, and they have been made accountable for that choice. Individual local authorities will differ from one another, and can and will differ from the views of central government.

This potential for local choice that has been given to the local authorities represents a belief in local government as opposed to local administration, and in local democracy as well as central democracy. It represents a diffusion of power, it can achieve a diversity of response and can lead to a responsiveness to local problems. Or so at least its advocates would argue.

The dilemma is accentuated by the creation of two political institutions, with shared areas of concern. For in many fields in which local government has the capacity for local choice central government has an organizational concern. Great departments of state have responsibilities for transport, education, housing, town and country planning, the fire service and social services. Yet for all these functions, many of the services are actually provided by local authorities. Difference and the possibility of conflict is structured into the relationship.

Local choice is not an unconstrained choice. Local authorities make choices within a statutory framework determined by Parliament largely on the initiative of central government. The pressures on Parliament mean that that framework is, however, not easily or rapidly changed, and while it remains, it is binding on central government as well as local government. The ability to legislate through Parliament is, moreover, the means by which central government lays down the conditions for local choice.

In theory, it would be possible for central government to resolve the dilemma by so limiting the conditions of local choice that no significant differences between central government and local authorities could arise. However, this ignores the reality that the dilemma must be regarded as a chosen dilemma. Such action would resolve the dilemma by eliminating significant local choice. Differences between central and local government arise from the exercise of local choice. They are not necessarily an indication of a set of relations that is problematic. The dilemma is inherent in the very nature of local government. By constituting political institutions capable of local choice, the dilemma of difference is also constituted. Eliminate difference in the fields in which both local government and central governments are concerned, and the basis of local choice in those fields is eliminated. Central government and local authorities are caught in the chosen dilemma of their relationship.

As we have seen, the dilemma is a chosen one in so far as central government has the power through Parliament to set the conditions of local choice. Those conditions are set both in the duties laid upon local authorities and in the direct controls and influences upon the decisions of local authorities which structure the relationship between central government and local authorities and can be described as the policy instruments of central–local relations.

Some of the policy instruments are direct controls. On some decisions local authorities have to seek direct ministerial approval, as in the case of closure of schools. On other decisions, for example, certain planning decisions, appeals may be made to the minister.

In some fields as discussed in Chapters 2, 8 and 9, central government has sought to structure the relationship through policy planning systems, requiring local authorities to submit plans or programmes to central government.

Over and above the direct controls there are a wide variety of policy instruments that are influences upon local authorities: they include circulars, government reports, a White Paper on Public Expenditure and ministerial speeches. Inspectors and advisers appointed by central government add to the pattern of influence on local authorities.

The main policy instruments have been created not by local authorities, but by central government through its constitutional resources. Thus in the field of local government finance central government has developed new controls and influences. The Local Government Planning and Land Act, 1980 replaced control by loan sanction of borrowing for capital expenditure by general controls over an authority’s capital expenditure, however financed. New instruments were also introduced in order to use grant as a means of increasing influence upon individual local authorities’ revenue expenditure. In the period since 1980, as described inChapter 4, the instruments have been structured and restructured.

Targets have been set not merely for the aggregate of local government expenditure, but for individual local authorities. If local authorities do not meet the targets, they are subject to penalties in the form of grant reduction. Whether or not local authorities meet those targets is a matter of local choice. The dilemma remains because local choice remains.

At present the government is proposing new policy instruments which will resolve the dilemma over local government expenditure by direct control over the rates. The dilemma will be resolved, but only at the expense of local choice because the dilemma is local choice.

MODELLING THE CENTRAL–LOCAL RELATIONSHIP

The set of policy instruments specify the rules of the game within which the relationship between central government and local authorities is developed. Within the rules of the game both central government and local authorities have resources they can deploy.

It may be thought that as political institutions they will deploy those resources to the limit of their capacity. Yet as we have seen, the chosen dilemma of central–local relations is a choice by central government to limit its constitutional resources. Equally local authorities have rarely used to the full the resources that are available to them.

In much of the discussion of central–local relations it is implicitly assumed that purposive, homogeneous organizations face one another each with policy instruments clearly geared to their own purposes, and with the resources to sustain those purposes. It could be argued that such assumptions underlie the debate about whether local authorities are agents or partners of central government,¹ and also certain resource dependency models.² If central government and local authorities were such organizations, restraint would be inexplicable. The reality is very different. Central government both wants local choice and seeks to limit it. Local authorities may at times seek central direction and resist it at other times.

Multiple and conflicting aims can be contained within the same organization. A political institution may seek to avoid responsibility as much as to claim it; ambiguities in the relationship can serve the purpose of both central government and local authorities. The dilemma has been maintained both as the positive of local choice and the negative of the denial of responsibility.

To understand the relationship a model can be developed that assumes

• (1) central government is not a homogeneous decision-maker, but is composed of different interests and is subject to a wide variety of pressures;
• (2) central government cannot be regarded as having a clear and consistent set of policy aims;
• (3) the departments of central government can equally not be regarded as having clear and consistent aims for a large range of their activities, but are content to deal with issues ‘on their merits’, balancing interests and the extent of pressures at the time;
• (4) at different times the balance of power and influence of the varying interests between and within departments of central government may and in fact does vary;
• (5) the policy instruments available to central government for influencing or controlling local authorities have often not been designed for the purposes for which they are used;
• (6) the information available to guide central government in the use of the policy instruments is imperfect and fragmented.

Similar assumption can be made about local authorities. These models can be elaborated in the experience of central–local relations.

A Divide in Understanding

The worlds of local and central government are separate each with its own patterns of understanding. The processes of central–local relations link these two worlds but do not necessarily bridge the gap in understanding.

It is often argued that within organizations it is difficult for those at the centre to communicate with or learn from those at the periphery, separated as they are by many levels in the hierarchies. Where the divides are not merely levels in an administrative hierarchy but rather divides between organizations, the gap in understanding is likely to be even greater. Each organization has its own culture and its own set of perceptions which cannot easily be grasped by another organization.

The organizational world of central government is very different from that of local government. It is formed by different forces and structured on different principles:

• (1) The concern of a local authority is local. It focuses on a local area and is subject to immediate pressures from the locality. Central government has a national focus and is subject to wider, and indeed at times international, pressures.
• (2) Local authorities and central government have a different scale of operation. One department of central government can employ more staff than most local authorities.

These differences are obvious, but perhaps more important are the differences in the organizing principles both of the political and of the administrative structures:

• (1) The structure of the civil service depends upon the administrator, not the professional. The structure of the local government service is based on the professional, not the administrator. In central government the most senior positions are held by generalist administrators. The chief officer in local government is likely to have moved from authority to authority, working in the same department and reinforcing his professionalism. The senior civil servant will have moved within and between departments reinforcing his administrative perspective.
• (2) Central government is based on the ministerial principle, with a minister personally in charge of a department and answerable to Parliament. In local government the chairman of a committee may aspire to a ministerial role but his formal position derives from being chairman of the committee which is important in the working of the local authority, bringing councillors of all parties much closer to the working of the administrative machine than ever an MP can be, unless he is also a minister.
• (3) The local authority takes action to deliver services and to provide functions directly to the public. It is structured to the requirements of that action. It operates directly through its own staff upon its environment. There is an immediacy in the decisions of the local authority, which sharply distinguishes them from those departments of central government concerned with local authorities – the very departments with which local authorities deal. For those departments are not structured for direct action; they do not act directly on the environment. They act through local authorities.

These forces and principles of organization create different worlds each with their own pressures and their own climate. Unless the gap of understanding can be bridged, the attempts by central government departments to influence local authorities are likely to fail.

If central government seeks, for example, to influence the budgetary process of local authorities, it should understand the nature of that process – both its timing and its internal pressures.³ If central government seeks to influence the decisions of education committees, it should understand the working of education committees and the balance of influences and pressures upon them. The gap in understanding has to be bridged if there is to be effective influence on action.

Understanding can best be built on shared experience. It can be achieved by the movement of staff from local government to central government or vice versa, so that normal career patterns cover both central government and local government. It can be achieved by secondment of staff for limited periods. It can be achieved by a development of joint training. Yet the personnel policies of central government and of local government are grounded in separation. Except in a few limited professional fields, career movement is rare. There is no pattern of shared experience to bridge the divide in understanding.⁴

A Lack of Learning

Across a divide of understanding learning is not easily achieved,...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Original Title
• Original Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Introduction: Understanding the Crisis
• PART ONE: DILEMMAS OF CENTRAL-LOCAL RELATIONS
• PART TWO: CONTROLLING RESOURCES
• PART THREE: RESTRUCTURING POLICY SECTORS
• Index