LGIU Consultation Response: Outcomes framework

Summary

In early July, the UK government opened a public consultation on a proposed Local Government Outcomes Framework for councils in England. The framework aims to ensure that local authorities are on track to meet national priorities in relation to housebuilding, public health, and a host of other policy areas. While the intention of improving citizens’ lives and ensuring quality in public services is commendable, any attempt to direct local government should be made with local government, owing to their equal democratic mandate. Our recommendation is that this Framework should be developed in an open forum that would allow for accountability to run in both directions.

Introduction

For many years, successive Westminster governments have grappled with the same question: how can the centre ensure that local authorities are meeting expectations? Soon after taking office in 2024, the current Labour government abolished the Office for Local Government (Oflog) and closed its local authority data explorer, resulting in the loss of the most recent attempt at a central repository of local data. The Local Government Outcomes Framework is the latest response to this challenge, seeking to identify areas of slower progress by collating existing metrics on national government priorities.

However, as we highlight in our consultation response, local governments are not like other public services. They hold their own independent, democratic mandate, alongside statutory duties and a complex regulatory framework. Councils are already subject to numerous forms of accountability, and any new framework must explain both how it will support councils facing difficulties and what additional value it will bring to existing structures, if any.

In our view, the Local Government Outcomes Framework could serve as a valuable early warning system for identifying councils that are struggling to deliver on their priorities. To be effective, it would require:

• National priorities to be defined through an open forum between central and local government.
• Clear delineation of metrics that local governments can and cannot reasonably control, with input from other relevant stakeholders when interpreting outcomes (for example, the NHS in relation to public health).
• A structured framework setting out how these metrics will be used to support councils in achieving their priorities.

1) How would you like to see the framework used as a tool to support local authorities and local partners to deliver against key national outcomes? For example, undertaking quiet conversations with councils based on outcome trajectory, convening departments to coordinate support where there are concerns across multiple outcomes.

Local governments should be given discretion over how they approach national priorities. After all, they have their own democratic mandate for delivering at a local level.

Councils already exist within complex regulatory and accountability frameworks. Councils must meet their statutory obligations and the desires of their residents – an increasingly complex task due to insufficient funding and surging citizen demand. There are many different mechanisms in place to ensure that these national priorities are taken into account, including the soon-to-be-reformed local audit process, internal scrutiny arrangements, peer review, reviews by regulators, best value monitoring, and, most importantly, local elections. Until recently, local governments were also monitored by the Office for Local Government, which collected and published various metrics.

The question then is: what problem does the Local Government Outcomes Framework seek to solve? The Framework defines national priority outcomes and their measurements, but according to the policy document, intends to give local authorities greater autonomy over how they achieve them.

“This [framework] aims to give local authorities greater autonomy over how they choose to achieve outcomes and reduce the centrally-imposed reporting burden, but retain a focus on the overall results achieved for local citizens.” (Local Government Outcomes Framework feedback document, p.6)

An “early warning system” for determining when, and why, a local government is unable to achieve its objectives is a fundamentally useful idea, and employed in many countries around the world. However, this becomes more difficult when the objectives of local government are wholly defined by central government. Every stage of this project should be a collaborative process, from the definition of national priorities, to the course of action when councils are unable to meet these objectives. Otherwise, there is a serious risk that local government autonomy could be undermined rather than strengthened – directly contradicting the outlined aims of the Framework.

In our view, the starting point for this process should be an open national forum with local government, to ensure that accountability can work in both directions. Where systemic failures are highlighted, it should be possible for local government to explain where they need support from central government, just as central government should be able to monitor progress on its missions.

The best way that the framework could be used is as an early warning system. If outcomes (defined and agreed between national and local governments in a central forum) are being missed in a single authority, that should be dealt with through engagement with the relevant department. If many authorities are missing the same target for the same reason, this could be addressed in a central forum, where local and central government could approach how to deal with this issue together.

The consultation proposes that these metrics, nearly all of which already exist and contain information well-known to councils, will be collected together and published in a single place by MHCLG. However, there is no clear rationale for how this publication will be used to help councils, rather than acting as another, potentially damaging, platform for criticising individual council performance without sufficient context.

In a funding environment where councils frequently say they will be unable to meet their statutory obligations (in our 2025 survey, 35% of councils said they were at risk of issuing a section 114 notice over the next five years), it is not clear how useful tracking non-statutory outcomes will be, given that councils do not have the resources to prioritise them.

3) Do you have views on how the Framework can best support local innovation, partnership working and long-term planning?

The framework, given that it is centrally defined and based on the current government’s priorities, is likely to change when there is a change of central government. This means that there will always be difficulties with long-term planning around national priorities. These issues are especially acute where resources are scarce and unpredictable and where statutory duties can change without significant consultation or notice. Short-termism in both funding allocations and policy direction has resulted in a counterproductive policy churn across many parliaments, which ought to be addressed.

An approach that has worked in other jurisdictions to improve partnership working and long-term planning is the statutory definition of forums for central-local engagement. This allows for two-way accountability and discussion of difficult issues.

Equally, guarantees on local funding, such as flexibilities on revenue raising and spending, and a review of the statutory duties placed on local authorities – with a standardised process for amending statutory duties – would support local governments’ long-term planning.

Is there anything else you would like to feedback in relation to the Local Government Outcomes Framework?

LGIU welcomes an approach that focuses on socio-economic outcomes and the wellbeing of residents. However, a very high-level framework is unlikely to aid understanding of the complex social drivers and wider determinants of community health and wellbeing outside of local authority control.

There is a risk with the selected measures that differences across metrics will be used as a proxy for the relative performance of councils. This would be misguided for three reasons:

• Historic decisions: There are measures that current councils have no meaningful way to influence. Several of these have not been defined as contextual metrics, even though they have been shaped primarily by historic decisions rather than by contemporary councils (healthy life expectancy, for example). These metrics capture the impact of policies over a long time, and should not be used to understand existing council performance.
• Overlapping public services: Different public services with overlapping geographical boundaries will influence outcomes across these metrics. Local NHS trusts, for example, will have an impact on health metrics that will be captured in these metrics but not explained within the framework.
• Uncontrollable factors: Similarly, local contextual factors such as housing markets, demographic change, or local business growth, all of which can change rapidly in ways that councils cannot wholly control or may not have the powers to respond to, will also be captured in these metrics. In a few cases, this has been recognised, but often the knock-on effects have not. For example, a council with rapidly increasing house prices may see homelessness rise for reasons beyond its control.

Overall, this is potentially a useful series of metrics for understanding the state of play in priority outcomes across geographical areas and their change over time, but there are too many metrics that are primarily or significantly influenced by factors outside of a council’s immediate control for this framework to operate as a meaningful measure of council performance.

Rather than aiming to assess council performance, this framework would better serve as an intelligence gathering too. Aimed at capturing metrics relevant to bodies including NHS trusts and local police services, these data identify areas where councils and other public bodies can have an impact, and grant a potential route for central government to engage them to understand why they are experiencing difficulties. A more holistic place-based approach would recognise the inevitable impact of extrinsic factors on public services while equally allowing for the collection of data on council-specific issues. This intelligence-gathering mission should be undertaken with councils, as part of the collaborative approach outlined in our answer to Question 1.

National priorities should be defined with councils, measured with regard to council capacity and responsibilities, and used to support councils to meet their statutory duties, shared goals and democratic mandates.

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