Revisiting municipalisation

Imagine this… From CE to management team Daynesford Unitary Council

Redoing the strategic vision 2021- 2031

You will have now read the paper from the leader regarding the rationale for updating the council’s strategic and recovery plan. Before our meeting I wanted to focus on the key issues raised by that paper and by our discussions over the last month with the executive.

Rationale

The pandemic graphically illustrated major challenges we face as a council such as economic, health and social inequalities, and in many cases the pandemic exacerbated them. It also shone a light on our services – inhouse, privatised and mixed provision – what worked well, not so well, where did we lack capacity?

The context is grim – the continuing impact of Covid on the local economy, individuals and communities; the council’s worsening financial situation, and the effect of leaving the EU (where we are still not sure about the medium term implications of the deal).

However, the political leadership is determined that this is precisely the time to be putting forward the ‘reset’ that was talked about globally and locally during the worst of the pandemic. Is this viable? What should be the priorities for change?

At the core of the leader’s vision is the new municipalism. This has many facets:

• insourcing
• growth that works for our people – renewal and resilience
• Daynesford a unique place
• a democratically transformed city
• vision and new ventures, ideas, innovation, leadership

Of course, this isn’t all new thinking. It builds on the work of the last two years – especially the inclusive growth agenda, and the taking back in house of refuse and cleaning services, but it is a step change.

It is underpinned by what the leader says has to be a reinvigorated local social contract – with enhanced democratic and community participation and also the development of a renewed ‘local state’ involving all its partners and communities in progressing municipal entrepreneurship.

The overarching vision

A city which harnesses its assets to respond to inequalities and social injustice. Where it is entrepreneurial and fleet footed but its entrepreneurship is founded on the energy and involvement of its citizens and not on privatisation and unfettered growth and deregulation. A city which uses its purchasing and commissioning powers to promote equity and social justice.

A city where local people are involved with the design, management and delivery of services.

A city which delivers critical services through a mix of inhouse services and partnerships with key local actors, the third sector and its residents. Where ownership matters, but which will explore new and different models of ownership.

A city which has ambition – not just repairing council housing but providing a service for the private sector, not just advising residents about energy schemes but generating energy, not just strengthening our inhouse legal and estate services but offering a cost effective service to our residents and local businesses.

The leader wants to explore new and exciting ideas for ‘municipal entrepreneurship’.

Remunicipalisation

This is at the core of the strategic recovery plan. Thirty years ago the council delivered the majority of its main services inhouse – including council house repairs, maintenance of parks, highways, some local transport provision, such as buses, and waste and environmental services. All our professional services were delivered directly. We built new council housing and did much of the modernisation of estates through direct labour. We owned and managed care homes and our staff provided domiciliary care and meals on wheels (in partnership with charities). We managed schools. We provided community and leisure centres.

The administration is not wanting to go back thirty years, but they want to see privatised services returned to direct control where it makes clear sense. This will take time – some services will be able to be municipalised quite quickly and others will take far longer. Some will mean a completely different concept for the service.

First steps

Insourcing

Officers will be expected to provide a feasibility study for each service the council believes could be brought inhouse.

This would consider what kind of provision would work (eg direct labour, arms length but council owned, partnership, coop, wholly owned trading company), the reasons for insourcing, an analysis of how the existing service worked during the pandemic, the ‘costs’ of bringing a service in house, the social and possible financial benefits, the state of the market, the feasibility re status of current contracts, timing etc. The capacity of the council as a whole needs to be measured – have we the people and skills to manage this change in service delivery and to ensure continued effectiveness? And how bringing a service in house would fit with the council’s wider objectives and strategic vision.

The terms and conditions of the workforce are critical aspects of insourcing – what are the implications for different contracts and what are the best ways to proceed. We will be continuing with the meetings with trade unions but with a wider range involved.

Municipalising the local economy

We need to revisit the work done pre-Covid on community wealth building – is it still relevant now and if so, how can it be updated to reflect the Covid and ‘post-Covid’ context? We had begun to explore with key institutions what we meant by community wealth building and whether they shared the principles behind it. We need to pick up those contacts again and to develop the research into what is coming in centrally to the local economy and what is being spent from different institutions and how.

But the administration wants to go further. The leader mentioned alternative local currencies, municipal banks, smarter procurement. As well as the more traditional support for co-ops and community land trusts. He is especially interested in municipalising pension funds – can we do a note of the legal and regulatory framework for him asap.

Underpinning all this is considering how we can measure social value – developing our own model and/or building on others.

The work on bringing services inhouse is, of course, integral to this wider context – retaining community assets, rebuilding skills and capacity, exploring new kinds of partnerships, and using procurement to deliver value to the city and to communities rather than going for the lowest price.

Housing

The council has built a small number of council houses over the last two years. There was always the ambition to increase the number and this is now a priority. This will mean:

• urgent identification of land
• developing inhouse skills and capacity

The leader talked about ‘building better’ – design quality, sustainability and environmental impact are as important as numbers.

We used to employ architects, including landscape architects. Our DLO built some of our housing stock. Our small direct labour organisation has retained certain skills but they are not ready for building new homes. How are we going to deal with skill shortages? We need to link these challenges to the new local economy agenda – discussing them urgently with the city college. Can we increase our apprenticeship programme substantially? How can we work with local businesses to improve skills and capacity generally in the city? And how does new council housing fit in terms of modelling for social, environmental and economic outcomes?

Funding? We need to revisit the financial modelling on borrowing from the HRA. Where are we on RTB receipts and receipts from other sales?

Conclusions

This is an ambitious project – especially now as we start to recover from the pandemic. Not everything will be feasible but the principles behind it are. Some of what the administration wants to see in place over the next period clearly depends to some extent on central government action – a major house building programme of the sort envisaged may require us being able to use 100 per cent of capital receipts for example, but much of what is proposed is in our own hands.