This isn't devolution it's asset stripping district councils to fund social care

What we’ll have is a different, less accessible, geography for bankrupt councils and a system where local government acts primarily as an agent of national government

My grandfather (with grandma in the hat) from the days when local councils were local, responsive, flexible, accountable and accessible. Tjose days are long gone

“The Government wants to see all of England benefit from devolution. By completing the map, the Government will oversee the rebalancing of power from central government so that local leaders can take back control and increase prosperity for local people. It is the government’s strong preference that in filling the map, places do so with a Mayor over a strategic geography.”

The surprising thing about the new White Paper on devolution is that it talks a great deal about powers, responsibilities, funding and the scale at which local councils are viable but has almost nothing at all to say about the functions on which local councils spend most of their money. There’s talk of economic development, inclusive growth, sustainability and standards but the central cancer that is eating English local government hardly merits a mention.

“The stimulus is, of course, the acute financial crisis that all authorities delivering social care services are facing as the costs of provision continue to increase well beyond the rate of inflation… and certainly beyond the rate of Council Tax rises. As a rough guide, most top tier councils – whether unitary or county council – are now spending c.70-80% of their net revenue budget on social care.”

You probably think all your local council does is empty the bins, run a few parks and libraries, and fail to fix potholes. And it is true that these services, and a myriad others, are provided by local councils. But the bitter truth is that the lion’s share of local government spending in England goes on providing care and support to less than 5% of the population (in Bradford we estimated a few years ago that nearly all social care and support funding goes to around 14,000 out of a population around 500,000).

The real reason for all this restructuring of local councils into bigger authorities (the White Paper recommends 1.5m as the right population and requires nothing smaller than 500,000) is to try and avoid having to make a decision about social care funding and provision. The word devolution is waved at council leaders (who are the only people who matter here) to tempt them into agreeing the sort of egregious reorganisation we’ve seen in North Yorkshire in return for seats on boards and some central government grant money. And because the proposed restructure does not either fix local councils’ cost base or allow them to raise their own finance, calling it devolution is simply a fraud. A fraud gleefully endorsed by leaders and chief executives keen to brag about ‘bringing investment’ or ‘driving regeneration’.

The strategy here is for county councils and district councils to merge (as everyone claps at getting rid of a ‘layer of government’) so those county councils, which are all bankrupt, can asset strip the reserves and services of districts. This means national government buys itself a couple more years before it has to bite the bullet and do something about social care for the elderly, providing for the adult disabled, looking after kids in care, funding special education needs support, home to school transport and homelessness. These are bread and butter services that won’t feature very much in leaflets come local election time.

The problem for councils is that the rate at which demand for care increases is not met by their capacity to service that demand. Council’s are constrained by their inability to raise funds, increase charges and manage demand. This unstable financial situation is not a recent situation (although the post-Covid inflation has made matters worse), councils were warning about problems with funding for care two decades ago. The IFS describes the situation for adult social care:

“Demand for care services among working-age adults is growing quickly: the number of new requests for support from individuals aged 18–64 grew by 18% between 2014–15 and 2022–23 (more than three times faster than population growth for that age group), alongside sharp increases in disability benefit claims. These trends signal growing pressure on social care services for younger adults, in addition to the more commonly discussed pressures from an ageing population.”

Tightened eligibility has brought some degree of control in care provision for the elderly but there’s another huge time bomb coming along. The number of children with an EHCP (Education, Health & Care Plan) increased by 71% between 2018 and 2024 - many of these young people will, at some point, add to the demand for adult care services. This rapid increase is almost entirely driven by support for what is now called ‘neurodiversity’, primarily autism and ADHD.

As I wrote 18 months ago when labour first started talking about their plans for local councils and devolution:

“Everybody knows this fact. Every time councils go to see ministers they tell them they can’t afford to fund social care provision and will be forced into further cuts to non-statutory services by the need to sustain the barest minimum statutory provision in social care. The Health Foundation estimates that councils will need up to £14 billion more to maintain current provision by 2030. This represents a 50% increase in spending over current levels and reflects the current estimate of a £7 billion gap between the amount available to local councils and the amount needed. No devolution scheme aimed at economic development can function if local government services are broken by the growing demand for their social care services.”

Since then nothing has been done to try and resolve that funding gap, indeed the likely pressures have got worse. All the latest White Paper does is move the deck chairs around on the sinking ship of local government. And the new system with fewer, larger chairs means that, inevitably, local councils stop being local (there’s lots of talk about scale, regional and strategic in the White Paper). The likely result of these changes will be more distance between the decision-maker and the local resident accompanied by a gradual erosion of services as money is stripped from them to fund the demands of care. Refuse collections move from weekly to fortnightly to every three weeks. Road gullies are emptied three times in two years rather than twice a year. Cheaper, less lasting materials are used to fill potholes and street resurfacing is stretched further into the life of the road. Colourful annual planting in parks and town centres is abandoned in favour of drab low-maintenance shrubs. And where once you had a daily sweep of the high street, it now happens twice-a-week.

With distant mayors more interested in soundbites and trips to London than the silted up duck pond in Little Puddlebury what remains of local pride shrivels to nothing. Fewer people vote in local elections because nothing changes. And older councillors retire to be replaced with party hacks more interested in stunts and protests than getting decent visible services in the communities they represent. With the abolition of district councils all this gets worse because we forget why we have local councils:

“Local government is not about managing local economies, it probably shouldn’t be about spatial or town planning, but rather about a set of well-defined and understood services delivered to local people. At the heart of this is, what we used to call in local government management speak, visible services. Things like emptying the bins, sweeping the streets, fixing potholes, planting the flowerbeds round the war memorial, and looking after the children’s playground. I know this all sounds really dull to grand folk in fine London offices, but such services are the basis of good local government everywhere. And delivering them doesn’t require an elected mayor or a huge authority covering a million or more people.”

At the end of this process of devolution and reorganisation we won't have more independent local councils, we won’t have better services, we won’t have greater accountability and we won’t have improved decision-making. What we’ll have is a different, less accessible, geography for bankrupt councils and a system where local government acts primarily as an agent of national government - devolution they’ll call it but the reality is that these powers are simply powers to administer national government grants according to rules set down by national government. All overseen by preening politicians who call themselves mayors but, in truth, have almost no real power.

If you want to reform local government then you need to start by asking what that local government is for. And to recognise that our current system, where social and children’s care takes up most of the budget, bears almost zero relationship to what the public believe to be the functions of their local council. And, by reorganising into huge new unitary councils, the government is telling us that being local, flexible, responsive and accountable (plus self-funded) is an idea of local government wholly lost in remembering a time before Whitehall began the dismantling of independent local government in Britain.