GRAHAM ATKINS DATA BLACK HOLE
GOVERNMENT NEEDS TO FILL DATA GAPS IN LOCAL SERVICE PERFORMANCE
The 2010s were a decade of change in English local government. Seven years of spending cuts followed by three years of limited growth left total local authority spending in the 2019/20 financial year 16% lower than in 2009/10. Meanwhile, rising demand for social care squeezed out spending on neighbourhood services – those services most citizens use and notice such as libraries, parks, children’s centres, bin collections and road maintenance. Councils’ spending was almost evenly split between social care and neighbourhood services in 2009/10; by 2019/20 almost three quarters went on social care.
Our new IfG report analyses how this played out differently across England – and how it affected services. It finds that, surprisingly, the most grant-dependent and deprived areas such as Birmingham, Lambeth and Salford received the biggest cuts because the coalition and subsequent Conservative governments reduced grants in a way that did not fully account for how much different local authorities relied on them in 2010. In contrast, the least grant-dependent and least deprived areas such as Rutland, South Gloucestershire and Wokingham may have faced bigger increases in demand for social care – and certainly increased spending on adult social care more than most authorities.
Another result of this approach to budget cuts was that the local authorities that cut spending on neighbourhood services the most – either because they had large grant cuts, big increases in demand for social care, or both – were somewhat randomly distributed. Councils facing the largest cuts and care pressures included a mix of urban and rural areas such as Bexley, Cornwall and Liverpool.
Even taking rising demand for social care into account, the most deprived areas were more likely to cut spending on neighbourhood services more deeply – because of the depth of the grant cuts in the most deprived areas. In some cases, this resulted in bigger declines in performance in the most deprived areas. A third of England’s libraries closed between 2009/10 and 2019/20, with more closures in the most deprived areas; miles covered by bus routes fell 14% during the same period, again with deprived areas feeling the effects most. In other cases, it did not. The overall percentage of roads in need of maintenance did not get worse between 2009/10 and 2019/20, and 37 local authorities saw an improvement in road quality during the decade.
Poor data collection hinders government’s understanding of local needs
While the quality and accessibility of neighbourhood services that we can measure have mostly declined, there is still much the government doesn’t know. There are only publicly available performance indicators for around a third of neighbourhood services spending, meaning the government does not have a good picture of what is happening in the other two thirds – which accounted for £10bn of local authority spending in 2019/20.
In all the services we analysed, changes in spending did not determine changes in performance. This suggests there could be scope for greater efficiency and for local authorities to learn from each other. However, they will not be able to do so unless the government collects useful, comparable local authority data on the quality and accessibility of services.
The Johnson government’s stated ambition in its Levelling Up the United Kingdom white paper, published in February, to make more subnational data available is laudable
– but if the current government wants to understand how local authority performance varies, and why, it will have to decide which areas of spending it thinks are most important and bring together, or possibly collect new, comparable local data on the quality and accessibility of services.
“There are only publicly available performance indicators for around a third of neighbourhood services spending, meaning the government does not have a good picture of what is happening in the other two thirds”
Graham Atkins, outgoing Institute for Government associate director