Table Of ContentLocal
Government
in England
Centralisation,
Autonomy
and Control
c o l i n c o p u s
M a r k r o b e r t s
r a c h e l W a l l
Local Government in England
Colin Copus • Mark Roberts • Rachel Wall
Local Government in
England
Centralisation, Autonomy and Control
Colin Copus Mark Roberts
De Montfort University Leicester Business School
Leicester, United Kingdom De Montfort University
Leicester, United Kingdom
Rachel Wall
De Montfort University
Leicester, United Kingdom
ISBN 978-1-137-26417-6 ISBN 978-1-137-26418-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/978-1-137-26418-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017930264
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2017
The author(s) has/have asserted their right(s) to be identified as the author(s) of this work
in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of
translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval,
electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now
known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information
in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the pub-
lisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied, with respect to the
material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The
publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institu-
tional affiliations.
Cover illustration: © RonTech2000, Johanna Parkin / Getty Images
Printed on acid-free paper
This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by Springer Nature
The registered company is Macmillan Publishers Ltd.
The registered company address is: 236 The Campus, 4 Crinan Street, London, N1 9XW,
United Kingdom
P
reface
It is commonplace for academics from England attending conferences
with overseas colleagues to make strenuous claims that local government
in our country exists in the most centralised system and experiences the
greatest level of central control. We are used to winning these arguments
hands down. One of the authors, however, recently attended a conference
where colleagues from Portugal and Poland both developed a spirited—
but ultimately futile—case that it was local government in their respective
countries that experienced the greatest centralisation and central con-
trol. After a convincing England victory in that argument but leaving the
encounter muttering under the breath ‘how dare they’, the decision was
made to write this book.
The authors of this book are staunch defenders of the freedom of local
government, all three of us have worked in local government and two
of us have been councillors. Not only have we studied centralisation and
its consequences, we have worked on a day-to-day basis in local govern-
ment, politically and managerially, and have experienced the pernicious
effects of centralisation. As academics we have also been able to lord it
over our overseas colleagues at conferences by challenging anyone to a
centralisation dual, as the English contingent always wins this fight. So,
our Portuguese and Polish colleagues have thrown down a gauntlet we
could not but do anything other than pick up.
There is, of course, a very serious reason for writing this book. Local
government exists in an environment of constant pressure and control
from the centre, and while the intensity of that environment can, and
does, alter over time, it is never fundamentally challenged or changed.
v
vi PREFACE
As we wrote the book, we did so in the midst of yet another central
government- inspired devolution exercise, with devolution deals being
struck and undone as we continued to write. Through the process of put-
ting the book together, an intense debate was taking place between central
and local government and groups of councils as they negotiated com-
plex deals and sought to forge new entities known as combined authori-
ties. The debate also raged over whether or not the combined authorities
should be headed by a directly elected mayor—a usual sticking point for
councils in most of the negotiations.
What struck us throughout that debate was that the narrative used by
the centre (and by local government) continued to reflect what we as
academics detected as a centralist foundation and a desire to reshape and
reformulate local government for central purpose. It was for that reason
we decided to use the concept of policy narratives as a way of understand-
ing why it is that not only can the centre promise to decentralise while
simultaneously doing no such thing, but also how it can use devolution to
exert even greater control over local government. The term devolution is
a politically loaded one and may mean no more than the decentralisation
of functions, responsibilities and some budgets, rather than the handing
down of political and governing power and capacity. Understanding the
narrative becomes important to understanding exactly what is going on.
We also wrote the book to explore and understand why it is that local
government is so often complicit in its own demise, despite protesta-
tions to the contrary. In doing that, we decided to investigate how far the
absence of a powerful alternative localist narrative meant local government
was always particularly wrong footed when trying to articulate its position
to the centre. As a consequence, we determined to develop a narrative of
muscular localism that was not merely a response to centralist arguments
and therefore shaped by them, but a narrative which set out a fundamen-
tally different role for local government and a fundamentally different set
of relationships between local and central government. In the book, we
rest for the development of that narrative on our love of local government,
and our normative approach is therefore an unashamed one. Not only
have we sought to understand and articulate the pervasive and pernicious
strength of the centralist view about local government, we are intent on
providing local government with a method of reshaping the nature of the
debate.
Centralisers and localisers exist across the political spectrum, but they
vary in how far they would take their particular arguments, and of course,
PREFACE vii
they differ among themselves in the role they perceive that local govern-
ment should have in the overall governing system. In developing our argu-
ments and our vision of a muscular localism, we offer a localised state as
the foundation for a new way of articulating the role of local government.
We have no doubt that what we offer will frighten many, be unworkable
to most and be of little practical use to others, or so it may seem. In devel-
oping our narrative, however, we borrow from different local government
systems—most of what we argue exists somewhere to some degree: we
have merely packaged it together to provide local government with a mus-
cular localist narrative. In addition, we just enjoyed writing the stuff.
We are, however, in writing this book determined to provide local gov-
ernment and localists with something of value and use and something
which they can employ to shape their arguments and strengthen their
position. Our view is that there is a need for a radically new narrative
to reformulate the working of government and from which the debates
about the role of local government can take a different turn. We hope we
have provided that material and a rationale on which it can rest. If so, then
we would have provided some practical assistance to local government.
A few thanks to be made: first we would all like to thank Professor
Steve Leach, who set us on the road to writing the book and whose advice
and guidance throughout were invaluable to the project. Then from me,
thanks to my wife Julia and two daughters, Emma and Harriet, for their
support and also to my new grandson, Reggie, for not crying too much
during the finishing stages of the book. Next from Rachel who would like
to mention the unstinting support she has received from her father Garry
and from her closest friend Stefanie which she found invaluable during the
writing process. Mark wants to put on record his sincere thanks to his wife
Sylvia for her patience and support and his three granddaughters Yasmin,
Lucia and Riley, for being there.
Finally the three of us would like to say thank you to our colleagues,
Filipe Teles from Aveiro University Portugal and Pawel Swianiewicz from
Warsaw University Poland, for throwing down the challenge to see which
of us has the most centralised system and where local government suffers
the most. After reading this book, you will see that we win.
Colin Copus
Mark Roberts
Rachel Wall
Leicester, England
c
ontents
1 Centralisation: The Constant Struggle 1
2 Policy Narratives in Local and National Government 37
3 Fragmentation and Centralisation 57
4 Mergers and Acquisitions: Narratives, Rhetoric and
Reality of Double Centralisation Through Structural
Upheaval 85
5 Devolution Today: Revolution or Submission? 113
6 The Ties That Bind 139
7 C onclusion: Localism and Centralism—A Constant
Conflict or Time for Change? 165
Bibliography 185
Index 203
ix
L f
ist of igures
Fig. 1.1 Devolution and decentralisation 15
Fig. 4.1 New unitary councils 2009 100
Fig. 5.1 Key decentralisation policies since 1998 116
Fig. 5.2 Review of agreed devolution deals to date (15 May 2016) 125
Fig. 5.3 Devolved powers and functions of new combined authority
mayors 131
xi
L t
ist of abLes
Table 4.1 The legislative reductions of local government 89
Table 4.2 English council populations, by council type 90
xiii
