Decentralization and creation of joint authorities between mayors should be carried out before local government reorganization, writes District Councils Network chief executive

Since I have worked in local government, as a sector we have been looking to reset our relationship with central government. Despite some progress in terms of decentralization in recent years, the parent-child relationship still largely persists today. This does a disservice to our communities by stopping us from shaping services to meet the needs of our regions and it holds back places that want to grow.

Trevor Holden, Chief Executive, Broadland DC and South Norfolk Council

The upcoming English White Paper on devolution could bring changes aimed at revitalizing areas that were not previously at the front of the devolution queue. Communities everywhere are seeking local empowerment and decentralization should be universal. However, the success of the radical change we seek is far from guaranteed and the government’s true intentions are not yet entirely clear.

We know that the government is also seeking to reset the relationship between central and local level. Its Council of Leaders provides local leaders with a channel into the heart of central government. And we know he wants to establish combined municipal authorities across England, representing them on the national stage through the Council of Nations and Regions. So far, so good.

We all owe it to our residents and businesses to be ready for change

However, the budget raises the question of the reorganization of local authorities. The aim is to move to simpler structures and achieve efficiency gains. Much discussion subsequently took place over whether this meant the end of counties or districts, and whether some existing unitary councils were too small. The job of the white paper should be to spark a wide-ranging debate about what this entails and encourage us all to be bold in resetting the central/local relationship.

We need a debate involving all partners, offering different perspectives. We all owe it to our residents and businesses to be prepared to change ourselves, ensuring that local authorities and the rest of the local public sector are equipped to deal with future challenges. Thoughtful, co-designed public sector reform, carried out with our residents and the economy at its center, must be a shared and exciting enterprise worth pursuing.

It’s easy to see how we could embark on an introspective battle for survival, rather than focusing on what matters to our residents: providing housing, moving to prevention, boosting our economy, and ironing out the siled nature of the system. current one that causes so much frustration. One of the questions we need to ask ourselves is: how can we prevent the ever-increasing demand for social services from draining other local public services? How can we transform public services in the AI ​​era? And how can the entire public sector assume local democratic responsibility?

This co-design is clearly not the business of local authorities alone. The Government, the NHS, the police, the fire service and the Environment Agency and countless others should also be involved. And – most importantly – residents and local businesses should be an integral part of the debate.

This is an opportunity to integrate localism into all public services.

Rushing headlong into a local government reorganization program without this thorough debate would be inadequate to the scale of the challenge. Simply changing council boundaries would be a distraction from service delivery without delivering the ultimate prize of cohesive leadership at the local level. And simply merging councils into larger authorities risks taking local decision-making further away from local people and businesses, making it less responsive to local needs.

Broader public sector reform could be the ultimate goal, but this is obviously complex and takes time. To mitigate potential disruption, I have a proposal: This should be a two-step process. First, we issue combined municipal authorities in areas that do not yet have them. Second, we use them as forums to co-design local public service reform in each area. The deployment of combined municipal authorities should be a precursor to broader public sector reform, for the benefit of the residents we serve. Too many local services are remote and unaccountable. This is an opportunity to integrate localism into all public services.

Structures have continually changed since the inception of local government, but retaining and strengthening “local” is essential if we are to have the impact we seek and remain focused and relevant to the residents we serve.

Let’s focus on building a new system that builds what matters most: new housing; a shift from treatment of disease to prevention and economic growth. Let’s be ambitious for our places. We should not simply seek to redefine the relationship between central and local government, but also to redefine the relationship between the citizen and the local state.

Trevor Holden, is Chief Executive of the District Council Network and Chief Executive of Broadland and South Norfolk DCs.