Time to put an end to these councils of despair

Local government will not work until it is stripped of the services the private sector can provide

As we drive along miles of pot-holed roads this weekend, the boots of our cars crammed with fetid rubbish, engaging in that now traditional leisure activity of visiting the municipal dump, we might be forgiven for wondering what the point of local government is these days. For years, the only benefit many of us felt we obtained from our councils was having our bins emptied and, perhaps, driving from A to B without wrecking a tyre or breaking an axle. As such things appear mainly to belong to the past, what are we paying for?

Councils that promised weekly rubbish collections suddenly, without warning or consultation, and often just after re-election, moved to fortnightly ones. Fines are then introduced for failing to adhere to exacting instructions. Stoke-on-Trent city council recently warned residents that they faced a possible £2,500 fine under anti-social behaviour laws, never intended for such a purpose, for leaving their bin on the road at a time when it was not being collected, or for overfilling it. (A business guilty of these heinous offences could be fined £20,000.) Local authorities claim they are keen to recycle, but don’t collect the material, despite the fact that for many people a trip to the dump

– sorry, recycling centre – is difficult, as they are closed in the evenings, and by the weekend the bin is overflowing. Elderly people who don’t drive or can’t drive have a serious problem.

Of course it is a caricature to say that local councils are just about bins and potholes. Notably, they also provide social care, the growing problem of which central government has failed to take proper cognisance of ever since David Cameron idiotically ignored the Dilnot report on how to fund it in 2011: one of the most shamefully negligent acts by an administration that pullulated with them. The cost of social care has increased by 8.6 per cent in the past year, because of the growing numbers of elderly, and we have seen nothing yet.

And, while councils used to do useful things – not just filling in holes or emptying bins (which now appears to be an imposition upon a local authority rather than a service it provides) – but also providing a visible police force, trying to prevent abuse of children or maintaining public libraries, these also appear to be evaporating. This is thanks to the cuts necessary to repair the damage caused by the last Labour government’s spending binge a decade ago, when the public sector was used as a job creation scheme as Gordon Brown strove to massage the unemployment figures.

But it’s not just our council tax that we shell out for the unemptied bins and unfilled potholes. That sum raises just 29 per cent of total revenue expenditure by local government, which for the current year is estimated to be £94.5billion in England alone. Retained business rates account for another 15.5 per cent, but central grants – taxpayers, in other words – cover the remaining 53 per cent. With the exception of certain “pilot authorities” (mostly in metropolitan districts) where everything spent locally is allegedly raised locally, the 2017-18 Local Government Plan says that 50 per cent of what is spent comes from local funding, and 50 per cent from central. The reality is that complicated formulae reflecting an absurd level of bureaucracy are used to decide who gets what.

The Government uses Brexit as an excuse to focus on nothing else; but there is no excuse for not addressing the problems in local government, because their impact is as widespread as that of leaving the EU. It requires some imagination (which is in short supply on the Tory benches) and facing down a Labour Party for whom the public sector exists not to deliver essential services but to provide employment opportunities for its voters. There is too much local government. Pointy-headed theorists have banged on about localism, but all that is missing is evidence that “local” people are either motivated or capable enough to deliver “local” services. The best way to deliver “localism” is to take councils out of the equation altogether, as has been done in many cases by removing schools from their control. There may well be other services that can be supplied with direct accountability to Whitehall: but those that cannot need to be provided by a rationalised form of local government.

If services are to be provided efficiently there needs to be strategic planning, so unitary authorities seem to make sense. For example: district councils handle planning issues that then require county councils to build roads or provide other services for inhabitants of new developments. It would be better if one council did everything. Abolishing district councils and transferring their responsibilities to counties would save money on payroll, allow economies of scale, and simplify the relationship with Whitehall. Many district councils routinely pay their chief executives more than the £150,000 a year the prime minister earns, which is ludicrous given their comparative responsibilities.

But local government will not work well until it is stripped of duties that individuals or the private sector can provide for themselves: which brings us back to social care. With a view to the near future – to avoiding the chaos that will come in 2039, when one in 12 Britons will be over 80, and many of them will require full-time care – the government must revisit Dilnot and develop an insurance scheme that will encourage private providers to take over what threatens to become a crippling state responsibility.

We quite rightly rage about our wheelie bins now, but they will soon be the least of our problems.

‘The impact on Britain of the problems in local government is as widespread as that of leaving the EU’