I am a great advocate of local authorities being strategic, and being led by political and executive leaders with a clear vision. Leaders who know where they want the authority and the place it represents to go.
Strategies and plans that will enable them to get there, and which are understood by local citizens, local businesses, the local voluntary sector, staff and the authority’s partners.
The vision will have been developed through intensive dialogue and consultation with these key stakeholders. Strategic leadership is core to a successful council.
Sadly, however, and all too often, one comes across councils where there is no sense of purpose; no long-term vision – or, where there is one, it is not easily distilled, or is perhaps confused or even contradictory; few strategies and plans that are being pursued or achieved; and a fractured connection between the leadership and local citizens and staff.
In the current harsh environment of cuts, political challenge and growing public anxiety, such councils will always struggle to make a positive difference for their communities.
This is tragic for local government, which has so much to offer to communities.
One also meets local authority executive and political leaders who are so consumed by their passion for grand strategies and finding solutions to the big issues of the day that they have lost sight of the immediate challenges and opportunities.
Of course, they may have successfully delegated responsibilities for the immediate agenda to others, but by their distance from this agenda, they could be missing opportunities and failing to provide the support and guidance that their colleagues may require.
The successful leader will have a long-term vision and be strategically driven, but she or he will also be and want to be seen to be interested in the smaller, operational activities and challenges.
The country, and local government in particular, face some major challenges over the next decade. These include the consequences of demographic change, the immense financial and demand pressures on social care services, climate change, global economic re-profiling, and the immediacy of the austerity and recession – and the upcoming Spending Review heralding still further expenditure cuts.
These and many other challenges will require major strategic responses.
Some of these challenges are beyond the ability or legal competence of any single local authority to address. They require governmental and sometimes international governmental decision and action.
For example, the social care crisis requires the Government to make a decision on the financing of long-term care. This is not to argue that individual local authorities should not be considering their response and the actions that they will have to take. However, I do suggest that council political and executive leaders should be asking questions such as:
- do we understand the implications for us of the these challenges?
- what can we do now to try and ensure we are ready for any future policy or legislative or economic change?
- what can we do with our existing powers and resources to respond and plan for the future through our own actions, or by influencing or partnering others?
- what could and should we be doing now to save money, improve services and productivity, and position ourselves for the future?
- how do we listen to and involve our staff, our partners and the public in these decisions?
Local authorities had a very tough financial settlement in the last Spending Review, and the likelihood is that the next one, in 2013 – or whenever – will result in even tighter budgets and more cuts.
The Government’s reforms to business rates, council tax benefits and housing benefit will also place additional financial pressures on most authorities, as will demographic and other demand pressures.
Therefore, no local authority leader or chief executive can afford to ignore any opportunity to save money, provided that the impact of the savings is consistent with the council’s overarching strategic objectives.
While any suggestion that current and future budget cuts can be secured through efficiencies alone is nonsense, it would be imprudent to ignore any short-term efficiency, however small it might be.
Leaders have to encourage, cajole and empower – and possibly incentivise, although probably not on a personal level – managers and staff to find and secure sustainable efficiencies.
They should, of course, avoid ‘efficiencies’ which either lead to unintended increases in expenditure somewhere else in the authority or the wider public sector, or which undermine longer-term strategic goals.
For example, there is little or no benefit in the classic approach of cutting building maintenance only to lead to increased long-term capital requirement or higher building maintenance costs, or to freezing posts which are then filled by agency staff. Common sense has to prevail.
Dialogue with service-users, partners, and alternative service providers from the voluntary and community sector, as well as potentially, the business sector, may identify options for small and not-so-small but quickly-achievable savings and service improvements.
This agenda should, wherever possible, be about improvements in outcomes as well as savings. It will not avoid some tough decisions about exiting services but it could reduce the need for such Draconian action.
Across local authorities every week, some small innovation or new approach is identified which can improve outcomes or save money. Local authorities are often not good at fostering and promoting these within and across the originating authority, let alone with neighbours and others. I wonder what the cumulative benefit of such exchanging such ideas and initiatives could be?
Given the financial challenges which lie ahead, strategic local government leaders and chief executives should want to find out and discover how to make such exchange a natural, easy and default behaviour.
Those leaders who can demonstrate they have well managed and efficient authorities where the core services are delivered effectively will have the credibility with local people, staff and partners to play their role as strategic place shapers; and to adopt more radical long term change.
There is a real opportunity for strategic thinking to be applied to the immediate – while ensuring the long term, and this is what truly effective leaders are already doing!