Democratic mandate is key to councils standing test of time

My first head teacher did not like having to follow local authority rules on the appointment of new teachers, and told me so repeatedly as I was being driven to the Council House in Birmingham for a “formal” interview with an inspector, having already been interviewed at school. The voluntary sector has tended to see local authorities as bureaucratic penny-pinchers. And central government has seen them as profligate and inefficient users of public money, not well attuned to meeting the wishes of ministers. I exaggerate, but there is more than a grain of truth in these caricatures.

In the face of all this, local authorities have continued with their core functions through good times and bad, evolving to meet new challenges and respond to changing pressures. The underlying reason why local authorities have survived is simple – there is no other agency capable of acting on behalf of local people and communities, with democratic and moral legitimacy, and local knowledge. Whether or not you agree with this analysis, the fact is that local authorities have survived, often against widespread criticism, and there are no signs that the government is planning to do anything other than continue with the somewhat uneasy relationship that has pertained for many years.

Even the wholesale shift to academies has not driven local authorities to reduce their involvement in education, somewhat to the surprise of some observers in the academies movement. Local authorities retain duties for all pupils, wherever educated, on school admissions and exclusions, on special educational needs and on school planning. At the statutory heart, they retain their duties under Sections 13 and 13A of the Education Act 1996 to promote high standards across their area, and they are inspected on this by Ofsted under the local authority school improvement framework. Those local authorities that, from 2010, dramatically reduced their work on education under the influence of Govian rhetoric have had to rethink.

Two examples will illustrate the reality in education. First, when there is a problem with education in an area – for example, an academy being burnt down during the summer holidays or wholesale problems with governance – the local authority is always the first port of call for the government because there is no one else. Second, and more current, the Department for Education announced at the end of July that councils are to be scored on the proportion of young people who are “earning or learning”. The Apprenticeships, Skills, Children and Learning Bill and Act, which brought in compulsory participation up to the age of 18, depends on the continued involvement of local authorities.

At the same time, however, their levers for action have been weakened in principle, with so-called institutional autonomy, and in practice, with budgets that have been slashed along with their careers services.

In other parts of children’s services, the story is no different. Councils have seen budgets for youth work cut dramatically, while the voluntary and community sector is being given grants to do some of the same work more cheaply – or, to be more accurate, to do less work more cheaply.

Local authorities are, of course, bureaucratic, as is central government. Bureaucracy is necessary and need not be an evil, necessary or otherwise. You cannot properly manage large amounts of public money without rules, regulations, checks and balances. Sometimes the rules are frustrating and annoying, but there have been relatively few occasions when local authorities have been seen to act unlawfully, to behave as bad employers or to be subject to significant fraud. There are examples of malpractice, but they are relatively few. Sometimes, it is true, local authorities err in the direction of being too risk-averse, but most of them balance innovation and risk effectively.

It is with no great sense of surprise that we have seen a major government-funded charity fall over during the past few weeks – and there are probably others to come. The problems with Kids Company seem to have been over-rapid expansion and an endemic lack of financial reserves, compounded by poor governance, management and regulation. So to whom did the government turn when the doors closed? Local authorities and other charities, of course.

John Freeman CBE is a former director of children’s services and is now a freelance consultant   

Read his blog at cypnow.co.uk/freemansthinking