New thinking needed for the workforce realities of the future
Originally published in the Local Government Chronicle [11/12/24]
Well so much for that was the year that was. In a year of major domestic news and local government sector developments running as rapidly and crazily at times as a Latin American telenovela, 2024 is finally running out of weeks. But not before the epic season’s plot twists on housing, devolution and finance come to the boil in time for the Christmas special.
There’s a lot of talk and mixed hope and fear about devolution and reorganisation in the shires and the devo deserts. In the weekend TV political show rounds, deputy prime minister Angela Rayner bangs on, as she must, about planning committee reforms and milestone housing targets as her Ministry outlines plans to push strategic planning upwards to combined authority level taking more of the local out of purported democracy to the chagrin in The Guardian Sir Simon Jenkins. Meanwhile in The Times, the paper he used to edit, Matthew Parris starts week in comment pondering – for the people who actually run the country (in Yes Minister fashion) – on the chimera of English regionalism that abstracts the English nation in the melting pot of UK federalism.
And these are all very exciting things to be jumping up and down on the living room sofa for. This all sets things up quite nicely for the eventual publication of the English Devolution White Paper (inevitably timed for your office Christmas lunch) and what this may well spell out for government intentions on transferring power and restoring financial governance guardrails. And all ahead of the all important 2025 Comprehensive Spending Review as the cliffhanger for the first half of the new year.
Before we get immersed in the excitement and drama, we must mind the reality gap of how place-based policy is to be grounded in the reality of available human, physical and financial resources.
Unlike the rest of the public sector, most notably the civil service, the local government workforce has never recovered from the loss of a third of its headcount in the headwinds of the 2010 austerity winds. Indeed, not only is the depletion in its staff ranks putting pressure on capacity to meet ruthlessly increasing demands in all the obvious service areas, but this is also happening against the steady drumbeat departure of experience and skilled workers at the top strategic level of local government.
In our recent report for South East Councils and South East Employers, Localis argues that restoration for the sake of long-term resilience can be addressed in a whole host of imaginative ways. These could take the shape of collaborative strategies from pooled joint training programmes, shared frameworks for recruiting temporary staff (modelled on WMTemps, joint procurement for training or specialist local authority outplacement services to retain local talent.
We could go on about strategic and integrated workforce planning, better succession plan and workforce analysis, workforce flexibility and lowing South Cambridgeshire’s brave lead in giving staff the offer of a four-day week – mainly used for care duties.
Again, issues of workforce capacity and capability are, like contract management or procurement as we’ve mentioned before, issues so mundane below the salt, so below the paygrade of our panjandrums wanting to create their new regional Jerusalem.
Aside from the mythical 300 new planners who, one presumes, are going to spring forth fully armed and trained like a Spartan army sprung from dragon’s teeth sown into the earth of the UCL Bartlett School Garden, when does anyone talk about staffing and resourcing in the new devolutionary age?
There will be many new financial guardrails and novelties to be ironed out. Weeks after the National Audit Office has had to disclaim the Whole of Government Accounts owing to the boulevard of broken and unfinished council audits, new issues arise. Namely, how are we going to resource combined authorities to more than cope with the ironclad corporate governance the centre will demand for single settlements which repurpose and find new channels for what were multiple funding streams for the big five central government departments?
As we noted in our recent report with Grant Thornton ‘Present Tense – renewing and reforming local government finance’ , the catastrophe of audit backlog points to a dearth of financial and commercial capacity within councils and calls for concerted cross-sectoral efforts to attract and retain experienced officers. Or just risk more of the abysmal same.
And beyond all this, are we missing something. In the irresistible rise of combined authorities as all purpose place-making local state leviathans, setting strategic planning for housing supply in our localities, increasingly getting involved in the commissioning (see the Department for Work and Pensions’ decentralised ‘Connect to Work programme as the shape of things to come) and delivery of local services, it won’t be enough that they are currently seen as the gleaming clean engines of local renewal.
Creating new vehicles from the white paper or transferring previous local responsibilities into pan-regional set ups will require answers to the same old but inevitable issues of capacity, capability and resources.
The new vehicles won’t look so clean and shiny once tarnished and abraded by the impact of overwhelming demand for people and place services. After a few years of stress and strain and likely unpopularity, which localised blame attracts in our system, it will take more than turtle wax to polish them back to looking good as new.
Ultimately, whatever future structures deliver for place, the foundation on which the twin pillars of devolution and public service reform will still rest on will be those of the broad shoulders of a capable and dynamic local government workforce.
The MHCLG Workforce Development Group and the sector must get a start on new thinking to prepare for the working and workforce realities of an emerging local and regional future.
Jonathan Werran is chief executive, Localis