Rather than moan about the Budget, local government should welcome the opportunity it offers. Local authorities should tell the government they can cut better than Whitehall departments and quangos. They should make the case for decentralising spending and taxing to elected local authorities. It would fit in with the coalition’s localism agenda.
Local authorities know local conditions better than can remote central departments. They know better where cuts can be made because of their detailed local knowledge. They can better involve the public, community groups and voluntary bodies in deciding where cuts should be made, and how to mitigate their damaging effects.
The Local Government Association on behalf of councils should offer to take over from Whitehall departments responsibility to deliver the cuts. It should champion the Total Place approach and place-based budgeting, which will empower elected local authorities to play the lead role in bringing together the totality of public expenditure in their localities.
Here is the chance for local government to ally itself with the Treasury in bringing under control the Whitehall spending departments and their silo empires of powers and budgets. The common cause is the wise use of resources.
The LGA should help its friends in Whitehall, like the Department for Communities and Local Government under Eric Pickles and Bob Neill, to promote the cause of localism against the centralisers in the spending departments.
For Total Place to be a success local political leaders have to take the lead locally. This is also true at the national level, where political leaders like the chancellor, the chief secretary to the Treasury and the prime minister have to be won over to seeing local authorities as the means to deliver the cuts based on the Total Place approach.
Local authorities and their representative bodies should direct their attention to winning support for local government from the prime minister and the Treasury. They are needed to sustain the DCLG against the big spending centralisers at Work & Pensions, Education, Health, the Home Office and Transport.
Stop moaning and start campaigning.
George Jones is emeritus professor of government at the London School of Economics
