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The ensuring council:
An alternative vision for the future of
local government
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The ensuring council:
An alternative vision for the future of local
government
The Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE) is a not-for-profit
local government body working with over 300 councils throughout the UK
promoting excellence in public services. APSE is the foremost specialist in
local authority frontline service providers in areas such as waste and refuse
collection, parks and environmental services, leisure, school meals, cleaning,
housing and building maintenance.
GB 11409
GB 11132
GB 14074
Local Government Research Unit (LGRU)
The Local Governance Research Unit, based at Leicester Business School (De
Montfort University), is an internationally recognised centre of excellence
for theoretically informed, robust and rigorous policy relevant research
into British and comparative local governance. Its recent work focuses on
community cohesion and local citizenship, neighbourhood governance, local
democracy and local politics. The Unit is committed to providing a strong and
vibrant link between academic research and the needs of the research user. It
undertakes research for a wide variety of bodies.
The Unit has strong research links with other leading universities in the UK
and across Europe and the USA.
The research was undertaken as part of the Knowledge Transfer Partnership
(KTP) between APSE and De Montfort University.
With thanks to the authors and research team, Mark Bramah, APSE,
Dr Catherine Durose, De Montfort University, Dr Steven Griggs, De Montfort
University and Adele Reynolds, APSE / De Montfort University.
Published by APSE
May 2012
ISBN: 978-1-907388-13-2
2
Contents
Foreward
5
1. Executive summary
7
2. Reimagining local authorities: mapping the terrain
9
3. Reading a Q Methodology study
13
4. Research findings: interpreting the data
15
5. Conclusions
23
Appendix 1: Q Methodology
28
Appendix 2: statement ranks for each viewpoint
30
3
The future of local government:
APSE’s approach
As local authorities strive to address the impacts on their communities of the economic downturn and
reductions in public spending, a debate is taking place about alternative visions of the future shape of
local government itself.
APSE’s model of the ‘Ensuring Council’ endorses the role of local authorities as stewards of local
wellbeing, recognises the strategic advantages of a strong core of in-house services delivered in
collaboration rather in competition with alternative providers and grounding local decisions in politics
and the values of social justice.
This research study tested support for these principles among elected members and officers across
local government. It found marked opposition to the model of the ‘Enabling Council.’ In contrast, local
officers and councillors demonstrated broad support for the vision of the ‘Ensuring Council’, with three
different viewpoints emerging as to how APSE might take its model forward.
Moving forward - three viewpoints on the Ensuring Council:
Public Stewards
Strongly support the maintenance of core in-house service provision, not only for its
strategic advantages over other forms of service delivery, but also as it ensures the
capacity of councils to advance the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of
local areas.
Local Brokers
Support in-house provision where it is the best option, whilst remaining sceptical
of the long-term capacity of the third sector to deliver public services and therefore
favouring a strong regulatory and interventionist role for local councils.
Public Valuers
Take the view that a mixed economy offers the best opportunity to deliver for the
local community Promote local authorities as community leaders and guarantors of
local democracy, placing importance on local community empowerment and the
maintenance of in-house provision within a more mixed economy.
4
Foreword
The current debate about the future of local government is taking place at a time when public
spending cuts threaten to undermine both the capacity of councils to respond to a challenging
economic climate; and the legitimacy of local authorities to both represent and respond to the diverse
needs of our communities. It is this crisis of ‘capacity’ and ‘legitimacy’ which represents the greatest
challenge for those of us who passionately believe in local government. The Coalition Government’s
commitment to localism whilst indeed welcome lacks real substance when councils are grappling
with the consequences of fiscal austerity and for many the rhetoric of the ‘Big Society’ fails to fill the
void created.
However this plays out in the long-term, most councils are entering a period of uncertainty and rapid
transformation which means that the purpose and shape of local government is also changing. There
are those who argue that in the future local government will be unable to manage change effectively
unless it fulfils a purely ‘enabling’ or ‘commissioning’ role and ceases to be a service provider. But with
so many alternative visions of what the future holds for councils, the voices of the main players across
the sector – councillors, senior officers, service managers, staff and their trade unions – are often
ignored or not properly taken into account when the policy ‘wonks’ and PR strategists get to work on
defining what a council in the twenty first century should actually look like.
It was this lack of an evidence based approach and the dominance of a single narrative about the
future of local government, that led APSE and its academic partner, De Montfort University, through
its 2 year Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) on transformational change in local government, to
try and give some weight to the real voices of local government. The objective being to articulate the
hopes, fears, values and opinions of those whose daily job it is to make local government relevant to
the communities it serves.
When the balance of those views are taken into account we find that the majority of opinion within
local government does not share the zeal and enthusiasm of the ‘uber’ enablers or wishes to divest
itself of any capacity to intervene and to deliver for their communities. That is where the idea of the
‘Ensuring Council’ has its origins. Ensuring was a term used notably by Professor Anthony Giddens in
his book on the ‘Politics of Climate Change’ to contrast the role of the active ‘ensuring’ state with that
of the ‘enabling’ state. It is a term that carries greater resonance for those of us who work in and are
committed to local government, because it means that councils retain responsibility to act as local
leaders and place shapers, whereas ‘enabling’ is a term associated with handing over that responsibility
to others.
This report uses a research technique known as Q Methodology to drill down into the differing
viewpoints of key players across the local government sector. Our research starts to articulate an
alternative vision for the future of local government; one in which those charged with the responsibility
of delivering on behalf of their communities can have confidence in and trust. It is built on ideas of
democratic accountability, stewardship of place, a strong core of directly delivered services, promoting
public value, social justice, civic entrepreneurship and innovation, financial capacity and empowering
both local communities and the staff who serve them.
We want to see a positive vision for the future of local government which is shared by all those who
value its role in a modern and civilised democratic society. Our aim is to build a new consensus and
to challenge the old orthodoxy of ‘enabling’ which has run its course for thirty years and has failed to
offer a clear strategic vision for a modern local government fit for purpose in the twenty first Century.
Paul O’Brien
Chief Executive, APSE
5
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1. Executive summary
“The concept of the ensuring state:
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An ensuring state must recognise that changes in statehood actually imply changes in the modes, style
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Professor Gunnar Folke Schuppert Social Science Research Centre, Berlin Feb 2004
The starting point for APSE’s report on the ‘Ensuring Council’ was an understanding that the concept
of ‘enabling’ fails to provide a convincing narrative about the role of the state in modern society and,
in particular, the vital role played by local government in the social, economic and environmental
wellbeing of local communities. The language of ‘enabling’ leads ultimately to the conclusion that
there is only a minimal or residual role for local government, primarily a role which is founded in
procurement and contract management. APSE has consistently argued that there is no real future for
local government if it is stripped of capacity, knowledge, skills and the ability to intervene effectively
on behalf of local communities. To be effective local government has to be able to ‘do things’ through
a strong core of directly delivered services and get others to do things as well.
In an age of fiscal austerity and deep spending cuts, the future of local government has been
brought into a sharp focus with many commentators and organisations seeking to define what local
government will look like in the future. One of the problems with many of these approaches is that they
fail to connect with the experiences, opinions and instincts of those people who form the lifeblood of
local government – councillors, chief officers, service managers and staff – whose commitment and
dedication to delivering services that meet the needs of local communities gives real public value to
the role of local government. This research aims to correct this omission using their values and beliefs
to define and articulate a vision for the future of local government that could command widespread
support across the local government community.
This is in a sense an interim report. It is a piece of work in progress that aims to make a contribution
towards a wider debate that needs to take place across local government. It broadly falls into three
main sections:
The first section (re-imagining local authorities: mapping the terrain) reviews the current debate about
the future of local government identifying the limits of an ‘enabling’ approach which: firstly, relegates
the role of politics to the margins and expresses the views of citizens through a form of ‘market
democracy’ rather than ‘democratic politics’; secondly, equates ‘enabling’ with outsourcing, with all
of the consequent market instability that follows, rather than being mediated through democratic
choices and professional judgement; and thirdly, threatens to ‘hollow out’ the core capacities of local
government, placing too much faith in contracts as a means of regulating service providers. In contrast,
the report defines the principles underpinning an ‘Ensuring Council’ which are:
OStewardship: Ensuring the social, economic and environmental wellbeing of the local area. (This is
the core principle of the ‘Ensuring Council’.)
OCore capacity: Maintaining the strategic advantages of in-house services to meet local needs.
OCollaboration: Working with a range of service providers on a co-operative and collaborative basis
rather than through competition.
OPolitics: Grounding local decision making in political choices and preferences.
OSocial justice: Ensuring that the values of local government are founded on equality, solidarity and
meeting collective community needs.
The second section of the report (Reading a Q Methodology study) outlines the innovative Q
Methodology utilised as part of the research. The Q Methodology study, which asks participants
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to rank a set of statements, was specifically designed to draw out the viewpoints of a range of key
influencers and actors from across the world of local government. Participants were drawn from both
APSE’s own membership as well as the wider local government community.
The third section of the report (Research Findings: Interpreting the Data) analyses the main findings
of the Q Methodology study and sets out these findings as three distinct sets of viewpoints on the
future of local government. These different viewpoints are identified as:
Public stewards – They are people who believe that it does matter who delivers local
public services taking the view that in-house services offer the best opportunity to
control costs and deliver value for money. They have a strong commitment to the
strategic advantages that in-house provision can provide over alternative forms of
service delivery and they believe that local authorities need core capacity in order to
help shape social, economic and environmental wellbeing of their local areas.
Local brokers – They do not stand in opposition to public stewards as they endorse
the strategic value of in-house services where this is as good as if not better than
alternative modes of service delivery. However, local brokers are more open to different
modes of service delivery where this can add real value and they demonstrate a clear
focus on value for money and efficiency. This group of people expressed a strong
degree of scepticism about the capacity of voluntary organisations and community
groups to deliver public services in the long term and favoured a strong regulatory
and interventionist role for the local authority.
Public valuers – The third cluster of defined viewpoints was much more focussed on
the role of the local authority a community leader and democratic guarantor. They
were concerned with the importance of empowering local communities in order to
achieve socially just outcomes for all citizens. They supported a more mixed economy
of service provision including involving the voluntary and community sector, but also
believed in the benefits of in-house provision.
The broad conclusions of the study revealed grassroots support for the principles of the ‘Ensuring
Council’ which stands in marked contrast to the prevailing orthodoxy of ‘enabling’ and strategic
commissioning which is promoted in some quarters as the future of local government. There was a
wide spectrum of opinion from those who fiercely opposed outsourcing and wanted a strong role
for direct employment and in-house services, to those who believed that local government should
embrace a range of different delivery modes including in-house provision. None shared a view of
the future of local government without any capacity to deliver and reduced purely pulling the few
strategic levers at its disposal – steering a boat without any oars!
The language of ‘enabling’ does not offer a convincing narrative to those charged with the responsibility
of delivering the vision for the future of local government. Whatever the differences of standpoint set
out in this report and encapsulated in the three roles of ‘public stewards’, ‘local brokers’ and ‘public
valuers’, they all shared a standpoint that was closer to ‘ensuring’ than ‘enabling’.
The orthodoxy of ‘enabling’ only carries weight with those who have an ideological preference for the
role of markets in local government and public services and those who unquestioningly follow in its
wake. The concept of ‘ensuring’ captures more of the colour and vitality of those who are committed
to a positive and inclusive future for local government. Time to break out the oars, so that those who
are steering the boat can get to where they want to go.
8
2. Re-imagining local authorities:
mapping the terrain
Reductions in public spending have triggered yet another round of inquiries and self-examinations
into the future role of local government. New visions and institutional designs for local authorities
currently abound. In recent months, elected members and officers have witnessed the launch of the
‘Co-ordinating Council’, the ‘Catalyst Council’, the ‘Co-operative Council’, the ‘Commissioning Council’,
as well as the ‘Future Council’, the ‘easyCouncil’ and the ‘Entrepreneurial Council’. Indeed, there is little
doubt that across the world of local government, elected members and local officers have become
gripped by the promise of transformation. As a recent study of local authority chief executives
concluded, ‘what seems to be clear in all minds is the need for decisive and bold action.’1
However, within this maelstrom of competing institutional designs and policy priorities, what remains
less clear is how local authorities should move forward and how they might best navigate through
the challenges posed by processes of institutional redesign and transformation. Each vision sets out
new ways of working or organisational guidelines to meet the challenges of the current political and
economic context. They each offer local practitioners the promise of new ‘solutions’ and modes of
organising. They call for local authorities to adopt a more entrepreneurial and commercial ethos; they
stress the overarching responsibilities of local authorities to ‘join up’ disparate policy programmes; they
posit a renewed customer-focus, devolved engagement or co-production with local communities;
they advance the divestment of public services from local authorities to alternative providers; and they
invoke the residualisation of local authorities with citizens paying for local services above and beyond
locally agreed basic levels of provision. To coin a well-known phrase, with this array of apparently
distinct pathways on offer, it is indeed difficult at first glance to ‘see the wood for the trees’.
This report seeks to contribute to such ongoing debates over the future of local government. It is
motivated by two primary concerns with the framing of current policy debates. Firstly, it seeks to
go beyond the current orthodoxy of ‘enabling’. Closer inspection of many recent interventions into
national debates suggests that such visions for local government tend to offer little variation on a
common set of organising principles concerned with for example the redefinition of citizens as
customers, the acceptance of private business practices within local authorities and the marketisation
of public services. In fact, rather than offering a distinct set of choices for those local practitioners
setting policy and delivering public services, most future visions can be mapped onto what are
commonly understood as the defining characteristics of the ‘enabling’ authority.
Secondly, this report seeks to give local practitioners and local elected members a greater ‘voice’ in
current debates. Those charged with delivering the future of local government have been notable by
their absence from much of the debate over the construction of a new vision for the future of local
government. It is pertinent to question the extent to which different visions of local government have
the support of elected members and practitioners across local authorities. Indeed, elected members
and local officers are not mere ‘agents’ of national government initiatives, rather they translate
national policies at the local level.2 Such recognition of the centrality of local actors in local policy and
practice raises the question of the extent to which the ‘lived experience’ of local practitioners matches
or resonates with the competing visions articulated nationally.
In responding to these primary concerns, this research seeks to make an important and distinctive
contribution to the debate by exploring the future of local government through the values, preferences
and lived experiences of those charged with delivering it. In so doing, it begins to construct an
alternative understanding of the future local authority, that of the ‘Ensuring Council’. The ‘Ensuring
Council’, which stands in marked contrast to models of ‘enabling’, privileges an active strategic role
for local government in the stewardship of local social, economic and environmental wellbeing and
the commitment of councils to advance social justice and tackle issues that affect local communities
as a whole. As such, it recognises the importance of effective local democracy that enhances both
representative and participative forms of government. It acknowledges the strategic importance of
1 CIPFA Public Management and Policy Association (2011) Redefining local government, London: CIPFA, p.25.
2 Durose , C. (2011) ‘Revisiting Lipsky: Front-line Work in Local Governance’, Political Studies 59 (4): 978-995.
9
local government as a provider of public services and the comparative strategic advantages which
come from public employment, as well as the capacity of local authorities and its workforce to engage
in and support civic entrepreneurship. It thus calls for enhanced local financial capacity to redress the
imbalance in the financial relationship between central and local government.
Against this background, the rest of this introduction sets out the basic parameters of the ‘enabling’
authority. It briefly examines the main limitations or critiques of this dominant orthodoxy before
exploring an alternative way of conceptualising the future of the local authority, which, as suggested
above, is best characterised as the ‘Ensuring Council’. It is to such issues that the report now turns.
The defining characteristics of ‘Enabling’
The framing of the local authority as an ‘Enabling Authority’ gained momentum under Governments
of the 1980s and 1990s. At the time it was symbolised by the emergence of what became widely
known as the ‘Ridley Council’: an authority which met once a year to hand out contracts3. The principles
driving this change in the role of the local authority were the effectiveness of the purchaser-provider
split in service delivery and alleged efficiencies that would come from the increased role of the market
and competition in the delivery of public services. As Leach and Davies argued some fifteen years
ago, the ‘Enabling Authority’ redefines the primary purpose of any local council away from that of a
provider of services to that of a purchaser of services. The strategic function of an ‘Enabling Authority’
is to specify service requirements against local community needs, engaging with a market of external
providers to deliver local services.4
Moves to embed these principles continued under the Labour Governments of Blair and Brown,
although there were repeated attempts to redefine understandings of ‘enabling’ away from its
association with marketisation. In her study of the shifting conceptions of ‘enabling’ under New
Labour, Helen Sullivan thus draws out the attempts to rearticulate the practices of ‘enabling’ within the
discourse of community leadership and public value.5 In such moves ‘enabling’ became an expression
of local community will and place shaping, with the ‘Enabling Authority’ acting as a network manager
or co-ordinator, which looked to facilitate political debate over achieving service outcomes across
networks of public, private, community and voluntary organisations.
Nonetheless, as Sullivan points out, it is difficult to escape the broad conclusion that Ridley’s conception
of ‘enabling’ has come to dominate the current public policy context. The principles of choice and
competition enshrined within the 2011 Localism Act6 and Open Public Services White Paper7 offer
much support for such conclusions. Indeed, the current Coalition Government has successfully linked
the principles of ‘enabling’ with moves towards the Big Society, thus rearticulating ‘enabling’ once again
as a form of market democracy, in which the ‘Enabling Authority’, citizen involvement and divestment
of public services are chained together under the banner of the ‘new localism’. Put differently, the
role of local authorities as a ‘strategic commissioner’ or ‘enabler’ is currently represented as a form of
local democracy, citizen engagement and community empowerment, with all of these laudable policy
objectives ultimately resting however upon market involvement in public services.
The limits of ‘Enabling’
Whilst the rhetoric of ‘enabling’ might be the new ‘common sense’, as an organising paradigm for local
councils it has attracted a range of criticisms. Three primary concerns are commonly voiced:
Firstly, ‘enabling’ stands accused of propagating forms of managerialism and market democracy,
which relegate politics to the margins. Transforming politicians into service managers and citizens
into consumers who express their democratic rights in the market place for local services.
Secondly,‘enabling’has become closely associated with outsourcing, devaluing the strategic advantages
3 Ridley, N. (1988) The local right: enabling not providing, London: Centre for Policy Studies
4 Leach, S. and Davies, H. (1996) ‘Introduction’ in S. Leach, H. Davies and Associates Enabling or Disabling Local Government, Buckingham: Open University
Press, p. 3.
5 Sullivan, H. (2011) ‘Governing the Mix: How Local Government Still Matters’ in J. Richardson (Ed.) From Recession to Renewal. The Impact of the Financial
$SJTJTPO1VCMJD4FSWJDFTBOE-PDBM(PWFSONFOU, Bristol: Policy Press, p.178-198.
6 HM Government (2011) Localism Act, London: TSO
7 HM Government (2011) Open Public Services White Paper, London: TSO
10
of public employment. It draws over generalised dichotomies between the unresponsiveness and
inefficiency of public sector monopolies and the flexible consumer focused benefits of the private and
voluntary sector. At the same time, the ‘enabling orthodoxy’ fails to recognise that private providers
can indeed fail with significant implications for the sustainability of service delivery. Driving such
claims is the fundamental belief that it is the outcome that matters and therefore it does not matter
who delivers local services.
Finally, ‘enabling’ effectively leads to the ‘hollowing out’ of local government, placing too much faith
in the effectiveness of contracts as a means of regulating service providers and exercising governance.
It actually removes from local government many of the instruments and policy resources that allow
it to act as a local steward of place. These ‘tools’ are derived from local authorities retaining the core
capacity to deliver services and intervene directly in the well being of local communities.
Towards an ‘Ensuring Council’
Anthony Giddens argues that governments have to move beyond ‘soft’ versions of ‘enabling’ towards
that of an ‘ensuring government’ which maintains the capacity to ‘ensure’ political, economic and social
policy objectives.8 Similar concerns are expressed by Helen Sullivan who sets out the importance of
a ‘logic of care’ in the structuring of relations in the public sector. Such a ‘logic of care’ starts from the
assumption that individuals are nearly always situated in communities or networks, which demand
collaborative, interdependent relationships between public authorities and local communities.9
Building upon these initial criticisms and proposals for change, an alternative vision for the future of
local authorities begins to emerge; one which stands in stark contrast to the current dominant frame
of ‘enabling’. Borrowing from the language of Giddens, the vision of an ‘Ensuring Council’ builds upon
the responsibility of local authorities as stewards of their local communities (operationalising in part
Sullivan’s logic of care), whilst bringing to the fore its leading role in local representative democracy
over that of market democracy. As suggested above, this vision for local authorities brings to the fore
the responsibilities of local government for advancing social justice through its strategic mobilisation
of public employment and civic entrepreneurship, while benefitting from increased financial capacities
as part of a renewed contract between central and local government.
Table 2.1: Comparison of ‘Ensuring Council’ and ‘Enabling Council’
‘Ensuring Council’
‘Enabling Council’
Core organising principle
Stewardship of Place
Strategic Commissioning
Operating principles
In-house provision of core services and
public employment
Expresses an explicit preference for the
private and voluntary sectors as service
providers
Maintenance of core capacity within the
public sector
Divestment to alternative service providers
Collaborative relationships
Contractual relationships
Local representative and participative
democracy
Market democracy and individual choice
Collective community outcomes
Individual user outcomes
Joined up services meeting the needs of
local communities and delivering wider
strategic objectives
Fragmented services that lack the overall
strategic co-ordination to deliver on wider
policy objectives
‘
8 Giddens, A. (2009) The Politics of Climate Change, Cambridge: Polity Press
9 Sullivan (2011) Governing the Mix, p.191-192.
11
The structure of the report
The remainder of this report seeks to capture the preferences and understandings of elected members
and local officers in relation to different futures for local government. At the heart of its analysis sit the
findings of an innovative Q Methodology study of local councillors and practitioners. Q Methodology
studies are specifically designed to capture participant’s viewpoints on particular problems or issues
- what is commonly referred to as people’s ‘subjectivity’. Through the deployment of this innovative
methodology, this report examines the different perspectives and beliefs of local practitioners towards
‘enabling’ models, while assessing the potential support for, and ways of operationalising, the core
principles of the ‘Ensuring Council’.
The next section outlines the methodology used in this study and the underlying assumptions of
Q methodology. The report then turns to the analysis of the findings of the study. It firstly sets out
the significant points of consensus among participants on the future of local government. Here it
identifies the broad support for the role of local stewardship, the grounding of services in political
rather than market or technical service efficiency decisions, matched by the rejection of the role of
strategic commissioning and the outsourcing of local services. Importantly, it goes on to surface three
different interpretations of the ‘Ensuring Council’: public stewards, local brokers and public valuers.
While these different interpretations share certain core values, they each bring different strategic and
operational considerations to the understanding of ensuring. The report then concludes with the
implications of these findings for current debates over the future of local government and for the
Coalition Government’s localism agenda.
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3. Reading a Q Methodology study
10
What is a Q Methodology study?
This study deploys Q Methodology which is a research methodology used to study people’s
attitudes, or how groups of people think about a particular topic. In other words, it is a means of
identifying different viewpoints on a given topic, be it understandings of austerity or the range of
thinking on how to address climate change. Such viewpoints are captured by asking participants
to rank-order a set of statements on the issue under investigation. Individual rankings are then
clustered together through a factor analysis which draws out the similarities and differences
between how participants have ranked the different statements, surfacing the shared
viewpoints or common patterns of responses across different groups of individuals. Interviews
are then undertaken to explore in greater detail why selected participants positioned particular
statements as they did. It thus offers an important tool for examining points of agreement or
disagreement and where and how new policy settlements might emerge between different
groups of stakeholders.11
Central to the validity of a Q Methodology study is the selection of the statements which
participants are asked to rank. Selected statements must reflect the broad range of views and
positions that are being voiced in the public debate on the particular issue under investigation.
The strength of the research findings thus rest primarily on the representativeness of the selected
statements rather than the number of participants or their broad social and political characteristics.
Indeed, Q Methodology studies typically engage around forty to sixty participants.12
Further details on how this study used Q methodology are to be found in the appendices to this
report. This section goes on to set out how participants completed this particular Q Methodology
study, in preparation for examining how the data generated by the study can be ‘read’.
How do respondents take part in a Q Methodology
study?
Filling in a Q Method study is a relatively straightforward process but it does pose its own
particular challenges. Participants are asked to place statements on a grid in the shape of an
upturned pyramid (see Figure 3.1). The design of this grid forces participants to rank statements
and compare their level of agreement or disagreement with one statement against another. In
this particular study, for example, the grid used gave participants two slots within which to place
statements with which they strongly agreed, while offering six slots within which to place more
‘neutral’ statements. Levels of agreement or disagreement were indicated through a scale of ‘plus
four’ through to ‘minus four.’
Participants were presented with thirty four statements reflecting the breadth of the current
public debate on the future of local government. First, they were asked to carefully read this
set of statements, before being sorting them into three piles: those they agreed with, those
they disagreed with, and those towards which they were fairly neutral. Next, they were asked
to position the statements on the grid, placing two statements in the slots allocated for those
statements they most agreed with (+4), two statements in the slots for those they most disagreed
with (-4), and so on. Finally, participants were presented with the statements with which they
most strongly agreed or disagreed and asked to comment on why they ranked those statements
as they did.
Participants took on average forty eight minutes to complete the study.
10 We would like to thank Stephen Jeffares for his value support and advice in undertaking this study. As usual, all interpretations and misinterpretations are those of the authors.
11 See Dasgupta, P. (2005) ‘“Q Methodology” for Mapping Stakeholders Perceptions in Participatory Forest Management’, Incorporating Stakeholder
Perceptions in Participatory Forest Management, DFID Natural Resources Systems Programme, Project No. R8280, March, available at www.geog.cam.
ac.uk/research/projects/harda/reports/B3-QReport.pdf accessed 22 April 2012.
12 See Jeffares, S. and Skelcher, C. (2011) ‘Democratic Subjectivities in Network Governance: A Q Methodology study of English and Dutch Public
Managers’, Public Administration 89:4, pp. 1253-1273.
13
Figure 3.1: Online distribution grid
Making sense of the returns
The analysis resulting from a Q Methodology study seeks to identify sets of viewpoints on a particular
given topic. Part of the task of interpreting the significance of the returns is to move from the
specific analysis of how individuals ranked each statement to the identification of commonalities
and differences. In other words, it is a question of analysing how individuals begin to cluster around
different collective viewpoints on the future of local government.
In making such judgements, it is possible to aggregate individual returns according to different
configurations, running the data through different numbers of viewpoints. One important consideration
is the extent to which participants identify with particular factors or viewpoints. In this particular
study, having reflected upon the legitimacy of two, three, four and five viewpoints, it was apparent
that the organisation of the returns into two different viewpoints blurred significant differences across
our research findings, while any more than three viewpoints began to over-accentuate insignificant
or minor differences.
In analysing particular viewpoints, it is important to identify the consensus statements which different
participants have placed in similar positions on the grid. Such statements reveal points of potential
agreement between different viewpoints, whether it is opposition to the beliefs and ideas expressed in
a particular statement or common support or indeed ambivalence towards another set of statements.
Equally, consideration should be given to those statements which reveal points of difference between
participants; statements which for example one group of participants tend to rank negatively and
another endorses positively. One final consideration is to examine carefully the distinguishing
statements of each viewpoint - those beliefs or values that make it stand out from the others.
14
4. Research findings: interpreting the data
This section sets out the findings of the Q Methodology study. It maps three distinct sets of viewpoints
on the future of local government. These different viewpoints are identified as:
O Public stewards
OLocal brokers
OPublic valuers.
Each displays distinct preferences and policy positions, notably towards in-house services and mixed
forms of provision, as well as the extent of community engagement in decision-making processes. This
said, the boundaries between public stewards, local brokers and public valuers are permeable, with
individuals identifying more or less strongly with each viewpoint and certain participants straddling
more than one viewpoint. Indeed, the viewpoints display significant points of consensus. This section
thus begins by examining these common viewpoints which it argues demonstrate support across
local government for the fundamental principles of the ‘Ensuring Council’. It then goes on to analyse
how the three viewpoints, public stewards, local brokers and public valuers, opt for different policy
and organisational commitments or alternative ways of delivering in practice upon the principles of
the ‘Ensuring Council’.
Support for the ‘Ensuring Council’
Whether public stewards, local brokers or public valuers, participants demonstrated support for the core
principles of the ‘Ensuring Council’. They broadly endorsed the stewardship role of local government
and the value of public employment; stood in opposition to the role of strategic commissioning and
the divestment of local public services; and voiced demands for a fair financial settlement between
central and local government.
Firstly, when asked to explain their opposition to strategic commissioning, participants argued that
it was motivated by the increasing conflation of commissioning with outsourcing and its potential to
‘hollow out’ the core capacities of local authorities. One elected member commented that strategic
commissioning was “in many cases [...] a cover for outsourcing,” adding that “commissioning in itself
isn’t a bad thing, it is how it is used and how it is distorted that makes it a bad thing because then it is just
a subterfuge for outsourcing.” Such opposition to the divestment of local services cannot be divorced
from support for the stewardship role of local authorities (see Table 4.1). Indeed, the divestment of
local services was interpreted by participants as reducing the capacities of local authorities to exercise
its very responsibilities of stewardship. Explaining the interweaving of such statements in favour of
stewardship and against outsourcing, one service manager insisted on the need to maintain core
capacity to ensure stewardship, arguing that “if local government is going to make a difference to
the lives of the people who live in the locality, it has to be able to influence their ability to function
economically, the way that communities interact and the extent to which communities see a future
for themselves.”
Table 4.1: Support for stewardship and concerns over strategic commissioning
Ranking
Statement
number
Consensus statements
Stewards
Brokers
Public
valuers
29
Local councils should be strategic commissioners of
services facilitated through but not provided by local
government.
-4
-3
-3
30
Local government has a responsibility for stewardship
of place ensuring economic, social and environmental
wellbeing and sustainability
+3
+4
+2
Secondly, all viewpoints defended public employment and the value of in-house public provision of
local services (see Table 4.2). One participant explained the strategic advantages of public employment
15
arguing that “the public sector acts as a standard bearer for employment standards” and “local authority
workers spend a large proportion of their income within the local authority boundaries.”
Participants also displayed strong opposition to claims that public sector monopolies protect vested
interests. One service manager argued that in-house provision has faced “difficult decisions taken on
a commercial basis that would have matched private sector companies,” drawing attention to local
processes of accountability and the “high level scrutiny [which] does not allow for protection in the
political world in which we [local authorities] operate.” Participants offered significant support for the
efficiency of in-house services, particularly when judged against private providers and voluntary and
community groups. Again, such commitments cannot be divorced from opposition to the divestment
of public services. Across the different viewpoints, there was a commitment towards collaboration
with alternative providers rather than the divesting of services to such providers. One service director
thus explained that “it is not an issue of ceding control but working with stakeholders.”
Table 4.2: Support for in-house services
Ranking
Statement
number
Consensus statements
Stewards
Brokers
Public
valuers
14
Greater involvement of the third and voluntary sector
in public service provision will be best achieved by
collaboration not divestment
+1
+2
+3
17
Public sector monopolies protect the vested interests of
public sector workers and should be challenged
-3
-3
-2
31
In house services can be equally as dynamic and efficient
as their private sector counterparts
+4
+4
+2
Thirdly, participants expressed a broad disagreement with the belief that decisions over service
delivery should be set apart from politics (see Table 4.3). Local decisions over service delivery were
not considered to be solely technical decisions, but were perceived to be local political decisions that
should be led by local elected members. One elected member put it this way: “Local government
service provision should be based on the democratic decisions of elected members whose values
and policies have been voted for by most citizens.” However, there was support across different
viewpoints for an open dialogue or engagement with communities in local decision-making, with
public stewards, local brokers and public valuers demonstrating different interpretations of how this
might be achieved.
Table 4.3: Support for local politics
Ranking
Statement
number
22
Consensus statements
Stewards
Brokers
Public
valuers
Local politics should be kept at bay from service decisions
in order to promote their efficient delivery
-2
-2
-3
Finally, there was only mild support for increased powers to raise taxation locally and to charge
for services. However, participants did endorse demands for central government to ensure a ‘fair
financial settlement’ (see Table 4.4). This demand attributed central government with its own
national stewardship responsibilities, articulating concerns amongst participants over the potential
for growing inequalities between local authorities if financial controls on authorities were to be
further loosened. When questioned, research participants commonly understood a ‘fair financial
settlement’ to mean one that is “based on the needs of communities rather than purely on a basic cut
of population.” One elected member reflected such concerns, stating that: “If you are making decisions
that disproportionately disadvantage those that are in need whilst letting those that are not in so
much need have more then that can’t be right.” Another elected member was keen to point out that
“fairness should be central” to any system of government funding and that “deprivation should be a
key factor in determining the allocation of resources.”
16
Table 4.4: Support for a ‘fair’ financial settlement
Ranking
Statement
number
Consensus statements
Stewards
Brokers
Public
valuers
24
Central government should ensure a fair financial
settlement across local authorities
+3
+3
+3
25
Local authorities should be able to raise local taxation and
charge for services as they see fit.
-1
0
+1
Overall, therefore, the findings of the study and, in particular, the consensus statements across
participants clearly resonate with the principles of the ‘Ensuring Council’. Broad support for the role of
local stewardship, the grounding of services in politics rather than markets, matched by the rejection
of strategic commissioning as a procurement tool rather than an improvement tool and outsourcing
of local services, all fit broadly within the frame of an ‘Ensuring Council’. They suggest marked
opposition to the appeals of ‘enabling’ which have come increasingly to privilege the commissioning
role of local authorities, the role of the market and the divestment of public services. One chief officer
aptly summarised opposition to this residual vision of the ‘enabling’ local authority by explaining that
“how services are delivered is equally as important as the commissioning of services because it is
actually through the delivery arrangements that fundamental differences to people’s lives can be
made”. “Reducing its role to enabling,” it was suggested, “diminishes the capacity of local government
to flexibly respond to the needs of its customers.”
Against this background, the analysis now turns to examine the different operational interpretations
and priorities attributed by participants to how the ‘Ensuring Council’ should and indeed does operate
in practice. The next section thus discusses in greater detail the operational differences between
public stewards, local brokers and public valuers. It is important however to note that such distinctions
between these viewpoints are informed by a strong consensus over the core role and responsibilities
of local authorities; in other words, they do not represent deep-seated cleavages within the world of
local government.
Viewpoint One: Public Stewards
Public stewards are best characterised by their support for in-house public service delivery and their
recognition of its strategic advantages over alternative forms of service delivery (see Table 4.5). They
demonstrate opposition to claims that public sector monopolies protect vested interests, while
recognising the dynamism and efficiency of in-house services. They believe that it does matter who
delivers local services. Indeed, public stewards prioritise the maintenance of in-house core capacities
within local authorities, acknowledging how such core capacities facilitate the shaping by local
authorities of local social, economic and environmental wellbeing.
Table 4.5: Public stewards and support for in-house core capacity
Statement
number
Defining statements
Stewards’
ranking
17
Public sector monopolies protect the vested interests of public sector workers and
should be challenged
-3
27
Local government’s role is as an enabler for the delivery of services
-4
31
In house services can be equally as dynamic and efficient as their private sector
counterparts
+4
33
Core capacity to deliver services should be retained within the public sector
+4
Public stewards, define themselves in marked opposition to ‘enabling’, condemning what they
see as its hostility towards the delivery of public services by local authorities. Typically, one public
steward, an elected member, defined the ‘Enabling Council’ as one which “works with partners to
achieve outcomes rather than directly involving itself in the provision of those outcomes.” Another
respondent pointed out the detrimental long-term consequences of outsourcing the delivery of
17
services, outlining a scenario in which “local authorities will quickly lose capacity and capability to
manage the contractors they employ,” only for those contractors “to then increase cost and reduce
levels of provision to drive shareholder value or profit,” leaving the public to “ultimately pay more
for less.” In short, public stewards tended to call for an ‘active state’ which as one steward declared
“interacts with citizens and provides them with the services they need, not one which distances itself
from any responsibility for delivery.”
Public stewards also grounded local decisions over the nature of service delivery in the realm of
politics, as political rather than technical decisions. Maintaining or restoring the link between politics
and the way that services are provided was seen by stewards as being central to the future of local
government. Direct service provision, it was suggested, enhanced the capacity of local councillors to
act as representatives of local communities, with one respondent arguing that it “is important that
services are in touch with the needs of users and therefore elected representatives should be able to
intervene on the public’s behalf and not be told there’s a contract in place.”
Equally, public stewards stand in opposition to the current orthodoxy that a diversity of service
provision automatically increases innovation. Public stewards tend to disagree with such claims, as one
service manager put it: “there should not be an assumption that diversity of provision automatically
leads to better services. Public sector provision properly directed and led and involving the ideas of
its workforce and other stakeholders can be just as innovative and outcome focused as the private or
third sectors.” Indeed, it follows that public stewards, whilst not opposing the delivery of services by
community or voluntary sector groups, do express doubts over the capacity of community groups
to deliver ongoing and sustainable improvements to the delivery of public services. As one elected
member reflected: “The assumption that community groups can provide better quality services
cheaper is often wrong. Sometimes community groups can do this; but often it just means worse pay
and conditions.”
Table 4.6: Public stewards; politics and voluntary and community groups
Statement
number
Defining statements
Stewards’
ranking
3
Local government will need to enthusiastically cede control to others including local
communities
-2
5
There is an increasing need to question the assumption that local democracy and
direct service provision are inseparable
-3
12
Community groups can achieve radically improved public service outcomes at much
lower cost
-2
22
Local politics should be kept at bay from service decisions in order to promote their
efficient delivery
-2
34
There has to be a recognition that businesses, charities, social enterprises or a
combination of providers can innovate and deliver better outcomes at a lower cost
-3
Finally, and exemplifying their commitments to public stewardship, public stewards demonstrate
strong support for understanding the impact of public services according to their overarching collective
benefits for local communities rather than their impact on individual service users. At the same time,
they are particularly supportive of the green agenda and the role of local authorities in advancing
sustainable policy initiatives. One elected member spoke of the importance of engaging with this
green agenda for its collective benefits in delivering social and economic wellbeing: “It is one of the
few areas of opportunity that local government actually has to demonstrate how activity within the
community cannot just benefit the community socially; but also economically and environmentally.
It isn’t just about putting solar panels on people’s roofs, it’s about all those other things, the skills
agenda, training and fighting fuel poverty.”
18
Viewpoint Two: Local Brokers
Local brokers should not be understood as standing in stark opposition to public stewards (see Table
4.7). They also endorse the strategic value of in-house services typically explaining that “if service
managers are given the right environment to operate in then there is no reason why they can’t be
as good if not better than private sector partners.” When questioned, local brokers thus expressed
support for a core of directly provided services as a means of promoting efficiency. In the words of one
local broker, a service director, in-house core capacity was “often of benefit in extracting the best price
from outside the authority.” In addition, local brokers did not view third sector provision as a substitute
for local government (see Table 4.7), expressing similar doubts to public stewards as to the capacity of
the voluntary sector and community groups to deliver public services over time. Indeed, local brokers
displayed in many ways more heightened concerns over the capacity of voluntary organisations or
community groups to deliver public services. In explaining such concerns, one project director at a
local authority thus reflected that: “there is a level of robust analysis and critique of local government
that gets lost when services are transferred out. Local community groups tend to be loose in their
accountability.”
Table 4.7 – Local brokers; in-house service provision and involvement of the voluntary and
community sector in public service delivery
Statement
number
Defining statements
Brokers’
ranking
12
Community groups can achieve radically improved public service outcomes at much
lower cost
-4
13
The third sector is not a substitute for often complex core public service provision
+3
27
Local government’s role is as an enabler for the delivery of services
+2
31
In house services can be equally as dynamic and efficient as their private sector
counterparts
+4
33
Core capacity to deliver services should be retained within the public sector
+1
Upon closer observation, however, local brokers are distinguished from public stewards by their
comparative openness to different modes of service provision. Their commitment to in-house services
tends to rest on a case-by-case evaluation of the efficiency of in-house services. As one chief officer
explained: “If an authority can evidence strong and VFM direct service delivery arrangements the mixed
economy should be built around these directly provided services. Outsourcing should be limited as an
alternative option to areas of weakness where there is no defined capacity for improvements.” Such
an appeal to efficiency was endorsed by another local broker, a director of an arm’s length body, who
declared that ‘services should be delivered by whoever can do the best job at the best value. Nobody
has the sole right for their delivery’. This belief was restated by another local broker who argued that
‘services should be provided by whoever is best placed to provide a quality service and an effective
price’. One interpretation of such arguments is that while the support of public stewards for public
services rest on more embedded beliefs in the value of in-house provision, that of local brokers arises
from their belief in the efficiency of such arrangements.
In fact, local brokers arguably display less support than stewards for the maintenance of in-house
core capacity, while demonstrating more openness to charging for services (see Table 4.8). They offer
a qualified endorsement of the ‘enabling’ role of local authorities, although their support for public
services and opposition to strategic commissioning stands in opposition to dominant understandings
of ‘enabling’ in national policy debates. One local broker interpreted commissioning as a technical
exercise of identifying the needs of a local area and then “making a decision about what services need
to be commissioned and how best to deliver those services.”
Support for charging was understood as an alternative to local authorities ceasing to provide the
service and/or generate income for the local authority. Brokers also displayed opposition to the
statement that the local state is best placed to ensure equal access to services. Such commitment
potentially reflects again support among local brokers for more diversity of service provision. Indeed,
local brokers stood out from other participants by their endorsement of the efficiency savings to be
19
gleaned from local authorities combining services. Such developments were interpreted by many
local brokers as support for shared services, with the director of one arm’s length body supporting
the financial savings of such initiatives as “there is often duplication of management, accommodation,
fleet, plants and equipment.”
Table 4.8 – Local brokers; generating efficiencies and charging for services
Statement
number
Defining statements
Brokers’
ranking
9
Rather than local authorities simply ceasing to provide specific services, citizens
should be given the option to pay for that service if they want to use it, in a fair way
+2
11
By combining a range of services local authorities will be able to drive down costs
and produce efficiencies
+3
16
There are certainly activities that could be provided on a charged for basis to ensure
their survival and generate surpluses to invest in others
+2
In summary, many of the distinguishing viewpoints of local brokers lie not in their strong opposition
or support for specific measures, but in their relative neutrality or openness to different modes of
service provision alongside core in-house services. Much of this openness in comparison for example
to public stewards emerges from their prioritisation of efficiency as a key criteria of decision-making.
Local brokers demonstrate less attachment to the restoration of the direct link between decisions over
service delivery and politics. They are also more open to flexible modes of service delivery, whatever
the clear and evidenced advantages of the public sector, rejecting notions that one size fits all.
Viewpoint Three: Public Valuers
Public valuers, like brokers and stewards before them, demonstrate support for in-house delivery of
public services and local stewardship of place. They strongly disagree with claims that public sector
monopolies support vested interests, while objecting to claims that politics should be kept at bay
from making decisions about service delivery options. In support of the stewardship responsibilities of
local authorities, public valuers perceive the role of local government as going beyond the provision
of equal access to that of redistributing wealth and tackling inequalities. They thus judge the impact
of services in terms of collective rather than individual benefits.
Nonetheless, public valuers are distinguished from other local practitioners and officials by their more
positive attitudes towards the engagement of the voluntary and community sector in the delivery of
public services (see Table 4.9). They are far less opposed to a greater involvement of the third sector
and voluntary groups in the delivery of services than both public stewards and local brokers. For
example, they disagree with the assertion that only the local state can ensure access to services by
disadvantaged groups. In contrast, stewards are relatively ambivalent about this statement, while
brokers oppose it, but not to the same degree as public valuers. In addition, public valuers question
the need to maintain core capacities within the public sector, unlike local brokers who are relatively
ambivalent about this statement and public stewards who position it as a defining characteristic of
their approach to service delivery. Typically, public valuers shed doubt on the value of protecting core
capacities. Indeed one elected member reflected that: “it is the outcome that matters not who delivers
the service.”
20
Table 4.9: Public valuers, democratic engagement and third sector provision
Statement
number
Defining statements
Valuers’
ranking
7
Only the local state can ensure that the poor can enjoy equal access to the same
services as the rich
-4
10
It does matter who delivers local services and so decisions about this need to be
made within a framework of values generated and endorsed by local citizens
+3
13
The third sector is not a substitute for often complex core public service provision
-2
14
Greater involvement of the third and voluntary sector in public service provision will
be best achieved by collaboration not divestment
+3
19
To improve public services there must be democracy, the users and the workforce
must have a voice and people must be accountable
+4
33
Core capacity to deliver services should be retained within the public sector
-2
In addition, public valuers privilege a more direct engagement with public sector workers, community
groups and citizens in the processes of decision-making and the running of public services (see
Table 4.9). Unlike both stewards and brokers, they strongly support the claim that improvement in
service delivery derives in part from the renewed accountability and engagement of the ‘voice’ of the
workforce and users. Engaging with local communities is thus important to public valuers who tend
to value an open dialogue with the public. Indeed, public valuers strongly agreed that decisions over
service delivery should be undertaken within “a framework of values generated and endorsed by local
citizens.”
Their support for directly provided services is thus more qualified than that of public stewards or local
brokers. Public valuers did not significantly value the benefits of direct service provision for enhancing
the practices of local democracy and responsive government. In fact, they did not question the
implication of labelling local authorities as ‘enablers’ and they gave qualified support to the assumption
that restricting the diversity of provision hampers innovation. This said, despite their relatively open
views on the involvement of the voluntary sector in public services, public valuers did not promote
contractual relations with alternative providers. Rather, they tended to support collaboration with
local communities and voluntary organisations.
Summary: different modes of ‘ensuring’: public stewards,
local brokers and public valuers
This analysis has identified support across the world of local government for the principles of the
‘Ensuring Council’. Broad commitments to the role of local stewardship, the grounding of services in
political rather than market decisions, the rejection of strategic commissioning and the outsourcing
of local services, all fit within the frame of an ‘Ensuring Council’. They suggest marked opposition to
the appeals of ‘enabling’ which privileges the commissioning role of local authorities, the role of the
market and the divestment of public services.
Three different viewpoints emerged as to how support for the ‘Ensuring Council’ might be put into
practice. Public stewards articulate a vision of the future of the ‘Ensuring Council’ which recognises the
value of public service delivery and the protection of core in-house services as a means of delivering
on its responsibilities for local stewardship which clearly grounds decision-making over services
in the political domain. Local brokers exhibit stronger preferences for an ‘Ensuring Council’ which
actively mediates competing local demands while coordinating local service providers to enhance
service efficiencies. In other words, they support the delivery of local outcomes through core in-house
services, but only where they can demonstrate efficiency. Public valuers place a higher emphasis on
the engagement of the ‘Ensuring Council’ with community groups and the third sector to deliver
public services and advance democratic decision-making. They seek to open up a more effective
dialogue with local communities and local public sector workers. However, such differences should
not be overplayed, as they are best understood as variations within the framework of the ‘Ensuring
Council’. It is to the implications of such findings for policy and practice that the report now turns.
21
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6. Conclusions
Local voices, those of elected members and officers, have been noticeably absent from the recent round
of visions and plans for the future of local government. This report has sought to address imbalance in
current debates. It has strived to capture the understandings, beliefs and values of councillors, senior
officers and service managers and how they are ‘making sense’ of the current moves towards localism
put forward by an array of think tanks, lobbies and indeed government departments.
In its Open Public Services White paper published in July 2011, the Government characterised the role
of the state and local authorities as purely ‘enablers’:
A*OUIFTFSWJDFTBNFOBCMFUPDPNNJTTJPOJOHUIFQSJODJQMFTPGPQFOQVCMJDTFSWJDFTXJMMTXJUDIUIFEFGBVMU
from one where the state provides the service itself to one where the state commissions the service from
BSBOHFPGEJWFSTFQSPWJEFST13
However, this study has found that across local government this view is not broadly shared. Whilst
there are nuances in the way people view the roles and responsibilities of local government, where
‘strategic commissioning’ is seen merely as an extension of ‘procurement’ or ‘contract management’
then it is a future perspective which does not resonate with the majority of opinion in the local
government sector.
Significantly for current debates, this study has revealed grassroots support for the fundamental
principles of an alternative model, that of the ‘Ensuring Council’. In marked contrast to the prevailing
orthodoxy, local practitioners and elected members demonstrate core support for the development
of an ‘Ensuring Council’ in which the ethos of stewardship and the value of public employment are
central to the role of local government while grounding local decisions in the political accountability
of directly-elected local political representatives. This vision for local authorities brings to the fore the
responsibilities of local government for advancing social justice through its strategic mobilisation of
public employment and civic entrepreneurship, while benefitting from increased financial capacities
as part of a renewed contract between central and local government.
Against this background, this concluding section examines the lessons for local policy and practice.
It first analyses the implications of support for the core principles of the ‘Ensuring Council’ before
considering the next steps for the ‘Ensuring Council’ and how it might offer an alternative to the
prevailing logic of ‘enabling’. Finally, the study concludes by setting out the challenges of the ‘Ensuring
Council’ for the current policy agenda of the Coalition Government.
Support for the principles of an ‘Ensuring Council’
The lessons of this study lie in the framing of current debates over the future organisation of local
authorities and the demands for new localism. Specifically, through its analysis of the beliefs and
values of councillors, senior officers and service managers, this report suggests that ongoing debates
need to address the concerns of those working to implement policy change with local communities
and manage the impacts of the recent round of spending cuts in the field of local government. More
specifically, three key messages would benefit from further attention within current debates: the
strategic advantages of public employment; the value of local political accountability; and the support
for collaboration rather than divestment.
The demand to reconnect stewardship with the strategic advantages of direct
public employment
There is a high level of support among local councillors and officers for local stewardship of place.
Such support is not new.14 The Lyons Inquiry endorsed such a place-shaping role for local government,
establishing its ‘convening role’ through which local councils ATIPVMECFSFDPHOJTFEBTUIFCPEZJOUIF
MPDBMJUZXJUIUIFSFTQPOTJCJMJUZPGCSJOHJOHUPHFUIFSUIFFõPSUTPGUIFQVCMJDTFDUPSBOEBMTPPGSFMFWBOUQBSUT
PGUIFQSJWBUFBOEWPMVOUBSZTFDUPSTUPTFDVSFMPDBMXFMMCFJOH Yet, Lyons equally endorsed ‘enabling’
arguments that suggest that it does not matter who delivers public services. Stewardship, he
13 HM Government (2011) Open Public Services White Paper, p.29.
14 Sharpe, L.J. (1970) ‘Theories and Values of Local Government’ Political Studies 18 (2): p.153-174.
23
suggested, was to be exercised in part through market shaping, with the policy focus on ABQQSPQSJBUF
SFHVMBUJPOBOEFõFDUJWFDPNNJTTJPOJOH 15
The findings of this report, or rather the views of local councillors and officers, contradict such
assumptions and question moves to further ‘hollow out’ the capacities of local councils. Participants
suggest that the effective stewardship of local communities rests on the retaining of core capacity
and the valuing of local public employment. There is opposition to strategic commissioning where
it is seen to be in direct contradiction with the effective stewardship of place. The direct delivery of
public services is attributed significant advantages, with participants keen to emphasise that if local
authorities are to meaningfully fulfill their role as ‘stewards of place’ then they must retain the capacity
to intervene effectively in local communities. As one research participant argues: “if local government
is going to have a role in ensuring outcomes and shaping local communities, then there is a real need to
EFMJWFSTPNFTFSWJDFTEJSFDUMZBOESFUBJODBQBDJUZUPBEESFTTNBSLFUGBJMVSFw As a consequence, there was
significant support for collaboration with, rather than divestment of services to, voluntary organisations
and the third sector. In short, there is a demand to bring back in to existing policy debates the direct
provision of public services by local councils which offers important strategic advantages for the
exercise of stewardship.
Grounding local decisions in the political accountability of elected local
representatives
Decisions over service delivery, this report suggests, are best seen by local practitioners as primarily
political rather than technical decisions. Such decisions impact upon the patterns of social inclusion
and well-being across local communities. They should thus be grounded, it is argued, in local
representative accountability. Locally elected members, accountable through the ballot box, are the
only legitimate actor to arbitrate between competing demands across local communities and for
which, Lyons admits, there might be ‘no “right” administrative answer’16; and for which the aggregation
of individual decisions of ‘customers’ in the marketplace may produce negative collective outcomes.
One chief officer put it this way: A4UFXBSETIJQPGBMPDBMJUZJTCFTUQMBDFEXJUIMPDBMMZFMFDUFESFQSFTFOUBUJWFT
BTUIFEFDJTJPONBLFSTXJUIBEJSFDUMJOFPGBDDPVOUBCJMJUZUPMPDBMQFPQMF In summary, current debates
should be once again rebalanced in the interests of local democracy and the role of local authorities
in determining outcomes in the wider interests of localities and communities.
The Next Steps: taking the ‘Ensuring Council’ forward
It is tempting to seek to draw up a set of prescriptive policy measures which best characterise the
‘Ensuring Council’ and which local authorities should adopt. One of the lessons of this report is that
the defining principles of the ‘Ensuring Council’ can be operationalised in different ways and means
according to specific local contexts and the values and beliefs of local players. It is not a question of
imposing upon local decision-makers the constraints of a ‘one size fits all’ approach to the future of
local government. On the contrary, this study sets out three particular interpretations of the ‘Ensuring
Council’, which all articulate the core principles set out here, but with a different emphasis on the
relative importance of different factors. ‘Public stewards’ notably support the continued delivery of
core in-house services. ‘Local brokers’ are more open to different options of service delivery and the
efficiencies to be gained from the effective combination of services, in particular through shared
services. ‘Public valuers’ put a higher emphasis on the capacity of community groups and third sector
to deliver public services and the democratic engagement of communities in the decision-making
process. However, whilst there is a difference of emphasis, all three viewpoints embrace core principles
of an approach in which local capacity is important and local authorities are not purely enablers and
contract managers.
However, two immediate concerns of the ‘Ensuring Council’ pose particular challenges within the
current local and national policy context, namely the balance to be struck between competing
modes of local democracy, and the rethinking of the financial settlement between central and local
government.
15 Lyons, M. (2007) Lyons Inquiry into Local Government, London: The Stationery Office, p.62.
16 Lyons (2006) Lyons Inquiry, p.59.
24
Local democracy and the role of councillors
Firstly, recent reforms to local governance have layered new forms of democratic engagement upon
established practices of representative democracy, generating complex and often competing modes
of democratic accountability and legitimacy. Representative democracy now sits alongside ‘network
democracy’ typified by collaborative decision-making, ‘market democracy’ associated with individual
decisions of consumers within markets, and ‘participative democracy’, those forums which engage
citizens more broadly in collective decision-making.17 While Sweeting and Copus argue that over half
of councillors express low levels of support for market models of democracy18, one challenge facing
the ‘Ensuring Council’, and all models of local government for that matter, is how to design an effective
interface between representative and participative democracy while seeking to anchor forms of
network democracy in representative democracy.19 What was clearly articulated by public stewards,
local brokers and public valuers, albeit it to different degrees, was that there is a balance to be struck
between representative democracy and more participative forms of democracy. However, this raises
the question of how this balance is to be best understood and given effect.
A fair financial settlement for local government
Secondly, there was support for a ‘fair financial settlement’. This demand was a core component of
the consensus statements shared by our participants. Importantly, it was not expressed through any
noteworthy support for local powers to raise significant new resources through taxation or engage
in risk based trading activities, although there was support for increasing the capacity of local
authorities to generate additional revenue through innovation and civic entrepreneurship (such
as identifying new opportunities through local renewable energy schemes to supplement existing
resources). However, this commitment towards a ‘fair financial settlement’ did stand in opposition to
the current Government’s localism agenda. At the heart of the Government’s localism agenda is an
explicit rejection of pursuing equality of outcomes reflected in the removal of ‘ring fenced’ funding
targeted at areas of relative deprivation. There is a simmering resentment expressed by councillors and
officers reflected in this study about the ‘unfairness’ of this approach and the withdrawal of resources
from the areas of greatest need. There are significant concerns over the continued responsibility of
Whitehall to address inequalities between and across local authorities. This posited a role for central
government to exercise its own stewardship of place in its negotiation of financial settlements, and
the generation of policy programmes, to address the different financial capacities of local councils
across the country. The determination of the principles of such a ‘fair financial settlement’ and indeed
the mechanisms for its delivery within the framework of an ‘Ensuring Council’ would thus benefit from
further consideration as part of a broader contribution to an ongoing national debate over the future
of centre-local relations.
Lessons for government
The most important lesson of this report is in many ways reserved for government, more specifically
the current localism agenda of the Coalition Government. This study suggests that its move towards
the divestment of local public services, as well as its conception of local councils as strategic
commissioners, fails to address the current concerns of grassroots practitioners and elected members.
Rather, it risks, in the view of our participants, hampering the capacity of local government to
deliver effective local outcomes. Its adherence to the principles of ‘enabling’ ignore commitments to
the strategic value of directly delivered services and the maintenance of the core capacity of local
authorities, adding to the difficulties of grounding local decisions in the accountability of directly
elected political representatives. Such commitments, this study suggests, pose a number of challenges
to the effectiveness of local authorities as local stewards.
Such claims are too easily dismissed as the rhetoric of ‘vested interests’ resistant to change and ‘out of
step’ with the current direction of policy change and local democracy. Recent local changes towards
innovative forms of service delivery or spaces of participative democracy have been negotiated and
renegotiated in recent years by the very same local officers and local elected members that have
17 Sweeting, D. and Copus, C. (2012) ‘Whatever happened to local democracy?’, Policy and Politics, 40 (1): 21-38.
18 Sweeting and Copus, Whatever happened to local democracy?, p. 30.
19 See Sørensen, E. and Torfing, T. (2005) ‘The Democratic Anchorage of Governance Networks’, Scandinavian Political Studies 28(3): 195-218.
25
allegedly become resistant to transformation. It might just be that the practical experience of these
local professionals offers an alternative understanding of what works at a local level and the conception
of the ‘Ensuring Council’ offers a more appropriate way of articulating the future of local authorities
and their capacity to address the complex ‘wicked issues’ of economic, social and environmental wellbeing.
A new consensus
The concept of an ‘Ensuring Council’ represents an opportunity to define a future for local government
which combines the best traditions of our municipal past with the tools required to meet the
considerable challenges facing localities, not least as a result of fiscal austerity and the economic
crisis. If anything this report has shown that the primary concerns of councillors and officers across
local government is not retrenchment in the face of financial cuts, which denudes the role of local
government, but is rather about finding the means to ensure that local authorities can act to support
local communities and economies and have the capacity and wherewithal to intervene effectively as
local stewards.
The language of ‘enabling’ in this context reduces the role of local government to that of a passive
bystander without the means or the critical mass to play a meaningful role as a steward of place. It
becomes effectively little more than a market manager. ‘Ensuring’ on the other hand resonates more
closely with the deeply held views of councillors and officers about the proper role of local government
in defining a positive future for our localities.
APSE offer this approach as a contribution to the debate about the future role of local government
and as effective alternative to a suffocating orthodoxy which fails to reflect the viewpoints of those
best placed to set out a vision of an effective and meaningful local government fit for the twenty first
century.
26
Appendices
27
Appendix 1: Q Methodology
Drawing on the approach set out by Stephen Jeffares, we followed four commonly recognised steps
in conducting our Q methodology study: mapping the debate; selecting the participants; collecting
the data; and analysing and interpreting the data.20 A full discussion of these stages is outlined below.
Stage 1: Mapping the debate
The first stage of the study involved researching the full spectrum of debate around the future of
local government. There are different ways of delineating the ‘concourse’ or the field of arguments
and debates articulated on a specific issue.21 This study used the methodology of a comprehensive
literature review, surveying relevant academic journals, government policy documents, think tanks
reports and discussion papers, professional publications and newspapers. We also undertook reviews
of organisational webpages and new media sources such as Twitter and policy and professional blogs.
To ensure that the search was undertaken systematically, a list of sources and key search terms were
defined.
This literature review identified an initial sample of one hundred and eighty five short statements.
These statements collectively represented a cross-section of the different streams and boundaries of
the current policy debate on the future of local government. The statements were then systematically
sorted into a 3x6 grid. Along one dimension of the grid, statements were sorted into those that
represented the ‘Ensuring Council’, those that represented the ‘Enabling’ Council and those that were a
hybrid of the two. Along the other dimension, statements were sorted in terms of the principles being
described: that is, whether they referred to an ethos of stewardship, local financial capacity, public
value, civic entrepreneurialism and innovation, local democracy, engagement and participation
or social justice. Once these one hundred and eighty five statements had been mapped onto the
grid, there was a further round of selecting statements in order to generate a reasonable number
of statements within each section representing the full diversity of opinion on the future of local
government. This process generated a final set of thirty four statements.
Stage 2: Selecting the participants
In stage two, the research team strategically selected a sample of one hundred participants made
up of key elected members and officers across the United Kingdom as well as other key stakeholders
from across the sector. Participants were identified through the professional networks of APSE in order
to ensure access and ease of contact. Responses were received from forty participants.22 It is worth
noting that the representativeness of the Q Methodology study is derived from the representativeness
of the statements, which draw upon the full spectrum of debate that exists on the future of local
government. Q-methodology studies normally engage somewhere between 40 to 60 respondents
(see Section 4).
Stage 3: Collecting the data
In stage three, participants sorted the statements into a distribution grid online using flash q software.23
An online method was thought to be the most efficient way of carrying out the study as it allowed
participants to complete the q-sort or ranking of statements in their own time.
20 For an analysis of these stages, see Jeffares and Skelcher, Democratic Subjectivities in Network Governance: A Q Methodology study of English and
Dutch Public Managers’, pp. 1253-1273.
21 See Jeffares and Skelcher, Democratic Subjectivities in Network Governance: A Q Methodology study of English and Dutch Public Managers’, pp.
1253-1273.
22 One of the responses had to be discounted due to the study being completed incorrectly.
23 The q-sort was web enabled, utilising flash-q software, which is a flash application for performing q-sorts online. See here for more information, http://
www.hackert.biz/flashq/home
28
Stage 4: Analysing and interpreting the data
The research team analysed the responses to the survey using PQ method software24, which is
specifically designed to analyse statistically Q method data, through undertaking a factor analysis to
determine how groups of participants clustered around particular sets of statements or viewpoints.
Follow-up interviews with participants provided more lengthy contextual information about why
they held certain viewpoints. Participants for interviews were selected based on how they loaded on
particular viewpoints.
24 The Q Methodology study was analysed using PQ method software, which is a statistical program tailored to the requirements of q-methodology. See
here for more information, http://www.lrz.de/~schmolck/qmethod
29
Appendix 2: statement ranks for each
viewpoint
Viewpoints
Valuers
Brokers
Stewards
Statement
number
Defining statements
1
Local Government must develop a respect for people’s capacity to run their own lives
0
0
0
2
Public services shouldn’t just be open to scrutiny, but also subject to the individual and
collective choices of active citizens
-1
0
+1
3
Local Government will need to enthusiastically cede control to others including local
communities
-2
-4
0
4
It is vital to restore the connection between service provision and politics in local
government
-2
-1
0
5
There is an increasing need to question the assumption that local democracy and direct
service provision are inseparable
-3
-3
0
6
Driving change from the centre with target led reforms or imposing the market on a needs
led service will fail to reform or improve public services
0
1
-1
7
Only the local state can ensure that the poor can enjoy equal access to the same services as
the rich
0
-2
-4
8
It is the role of local government to provide equal access to services not to redistribute
wealth or tackle inequality
-2
-1
+4
9
Rather than local authorities simply ceasing to provide specific services, citizens should be
given the option to pay for that service if they want to use it, in a fair way
-1
-2
0
10
It does matter who delivers local services and so decisions about this need to be made within
a framework of values generated and endorsed by local citizens
+2
+1
+3
11
By combining a range of services local authorities will be able to drive down costs and
produce efficiencies
0
+3
-2
12
Community groups can achieve radically improved public service outcomes at much lower
cost
-2
-4
0
13
The third sector is not a substitute for often complex core public service provision
+2
+3
-2
14
Greater involvement of the third and voluntary sector in public service provision will be best
achieved by collaboration not divestment
+1
+2
+3
15
To innovate in public services there has to be a rediscovery of professionalism, listening to
public sector workers
+1
-2
-3
16
There are certainly activities that could be provided on a charged for basis to ensure their
survival and generate surpluses to invest in others
0
+2
+1
17
Public sector monopolies protect the vested interests of public sector workers and should be
challenged
-3
-3
+2
18
Innovating around the green agenda to create jobs and a better environment is central to the
future of local government
+2
-1
+1
19
To improve public services there must be democracy, the users and the workforce must have
a voice and people must be accountable
+1
-1
+4
20
One size fits all models of service provision do not meet the needs of citizens. Services should
be tailored and personalised to individual needs
-1
+1
-1
21
The impact of public services should be understood in terms of their collective benefit for
society as a whole, not simply in terms of their impact on individual service users
+3
-1
+4
22
Local politics should be kept at bay from service decisions in order to promote their efficient
delivery
-2
-2
-3
23
A renewed focus on a stronger democracy combined with a more open dialogue with the
public can restore faith in public services
+1
+1
+2
30
Viewpoints
Stewards
Brokers
Valuers
Central Government should ensure a fair financial settlement across local authorities
+3
+3
+3
25
Local authorities should be able to raise local taxation and charge for services as they see fit
-1
0
+1
26
Local Authorities need the financial levels to allow them to determine their own direction
+1
0
+2
27
Local Government’s role is as an enabler for the delivery of services
-4
+2
0
28
Restricting diversity of provision means there is less innovation and less improvement in
service delivery
-1
0
+1
29
Local Council’s should be strategic commissioners of services facilitated through but not
provided by local government
-4
-3
-3
30
Local Government has a responsibility for stewardship of place ensuring economic, social and
environmental wellbeing and sustainability
+3
+4
+2
31
In house services can be equally as dynamic and efficient as their private sector counterparts
+4
+4
+2
32
Organisations who deliver nothing, quickly erode their capacity to manage anything
0
0
-1
33
Core capacity to deliver services should be retained within the public sector
+4
+1
-2
34
There has to be a recognition that businesses, charities, social enterprises or a combination of
providers can innovate and deliver better outcomes at a lower cost
-3
-2
-1
Statement
number
24
Defining statements
31
32
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