State of the Locals 2025

• The public recognises the significant role that local government plays in everyday life, with the quality of public services directly attributed to the actions of councils and councillors.
  • However, knowledge of how local government works is limited, and a majority lack trust in councils to act in the best interests of the people they represent.
  • Nevertheless, local government is typically more trusted than central government – though this varies by age, gender and region.
• The views of local residents and elected representatives are seen as most important for local policy decisions, and there is a strong appetite for greater public involvement in these decisions.
  • However, most respondents believe that it does not matter who makes these decisions, or where they are made, so long as they are the ‘right’ decisions.
• Knowledge of devolution is low with no real public consensus that local government reorganisation will lead to better outcomes.
  • A greater proportion of respondents support two-tier local government than support the unitary authority model of service delivery.
  • Opposition to local elections being postponed in cases of reorganisation is limited to 3 in 10.
• Directly elected Mayors are seen as more a good thing than a bad thing – the more knowledgeable people are the more positive they are about Mayors.
  • The perceived benefits of Mayors include a regional voice in Westminster, greater accountability, community cohesion, increasing interest in local government among residents, and improved services and decision-making.
  • Labour voters are more complimentary about Mayors, while older cohorts are most likely to oppose their existence.

Concurring with last year’s polling, the public continues to recognise the role of local authorities in impacting people’s lives. This recognition puts local councils above national government, businesses, the media, and the Civil Service in terms of their capacity to affect (a) people’s everyday lives and (b) the quality of life in local areas.

However, awareness of the precise role of local government officials is low, with levels of understanding of the work and decisions taken by councils and councillors being below that of Westminster MPs. At both levels of governance, the majority of respondents indicated that they had limited knowledge of the activity of elected representatives. Compared to 2024, the proportion of respondents indicating awareness at the local level has slightly increased, while awareness at the national level remains unchanged. There is nonetheless a clear absence of understanding of the function of both local and national democracy in England.

When asked in general terms about the activity of different tiers of government – including outside of their local areas – the majority of respondents do not trust local councils or councillors to act in the best interests of the people that they represent. However, the same is true for all tiers of government, and it is worth noting that local councils receive higher levels of trust than the UK government, Westminster MPs, and metro-mayors.

In terms of the extent to which respondents trust the different actors operating in their local areas to act in the best interests of local people, councils and councillors continue to receive higher levels of trust than central government, the Civil Service and national media, while local community groups, businesses and the police observe the highest levels of public trust. Last year’s polling found declining public trust in all the organisations we asked about across both the national and local levels. This year, we do not find such a reduction in trust, yet there is no indication of a recovery of trust levels to that which we observed in our 2023 poll, or prior. This is indicative of what may transpire to be a ‘new normal’ in terms of distrust towards local and national institutions, which will undoubtedly persist in the absence of effective action to ameliorate this discontent.

Across different subsections of the national population, women, older cohorts and non-graduates tend to exhibit lower levels of trust in councils. Similarly, London residents exhibit higher levels of trust in councils than those living in other regions. Trust – and by extension, distrust – in local government, is thus a phenomenon that varies both geographically and demographically in England. Any efforts to build greater public trust must therefore be sensitive to these differences.

As LGIU research has highlighted over a number of years, the dual pressures of cuts to local budgets and surging demand for state assistance have threatened local authorities’ abilities to provide high-quality frontline services.

It is therefore of great significance that this polling finds that 43% of survey respondents believe that the quality of locally provided services has worsened in the past five years. This result is highly related to the age of respondents, with increased age associated with the perception of worsened services. However, compared to last year, the proportion of respondents identifying worsened services is lower across all age groups, with a larger proportion now identifying the quality of services as staying the same over the past five years. Equally, among those aged 18-34, the proportion perceiving an increased quality of services has grown since last year, yet across all age groups this is only 13% of respondents.

Of the respondents who said that services have improved in the past five years, this improvement is attributed to a range of actors. Notably, the actions of local service providers – who operate externally from the local authority – and local community groups receive the most credit for this perceived improvement, though councils and councillors are not far behind. MPs, local media and the UK government receive the least credit.

Of the respondents who said that services have worsened in the past five years, this change in service quality is attributed largely to the UK government and the local council, while local community groups are seen as least responsible. Therefore, the blame for this perceived decline in service quality is shared across national and local levels of governance.

By separating out responses this way, this polling illustrates how local authorities can receive both credit and blame for changes in service quality – though this responsibility is also divided among several other major actors. Another striking result here is how local community groups receive credit for improvements in service quality but minimal blame for perceived worsening of service quality. This echoes the earlier observation that community organisations received the highest levels of public trust – they are seen to work towards, and achieve, the best results for local people.

This polling paints a complex picture.

The public recognises the significant role that local government plays in everyday life, with the quality of public services directly attributed to the actions of councils and councillors.

But we also see that overall, people are worried about a decline in local services, that they don’t understand how decisions are made, and that they don’t trust the people making them.

That’s not to say they don’t care; people want, above all, for the “right” decisions to be made, but they’re not neutral about who makes them. People overwhelmingly believe that local people should be involved in decisions about their areas, and a majority want to understand more about how decisions are made.

Councils are not exempt from a widespread collapse in trust in political institutions, but, crucially, they do receive higher trust ratings than central government.

This means that if we are to rebuild trust in our politics, then local government offers us the best platform from which to do so.

But we need to do this in a way that responds to people’s current lack of understanding and to their desire to know more about and be more engaged with decision-making. That, as we have consistently argued at LGIU, means that we need to enhance representational democracy with a relational model of governance that centers trust and collaboration with communities.

This is the context within which the government is launching the most significant restructuring of local government for half a century.

Ministers will be pleased to see in this polling high levels of enthusiasm for elected mayors and very limited opposition to postponing local elections in 2025. They will be less happy to see that only three in ten people are aware of their flagship devolution policy and that there are high levels of affection for the two-tier system they seek to abolish.

The next two years will be critical. Given the low levels of understanding both of existing governance arrangements and of proposed changes, there’s a real risk that devolution and reorganisation processes carried out at pace and without sufficient public engagement will exacerbate the current crisis in trust.

But there’s also an opportunity here: engaging communities in the creation of new structures and ensuring that those new strategic authorities and unitaries function in ways that effectively include local people could help us to rebuild the trust in political institutions we are currently lacking.

Perhaps the real insight from this polling is that, as ever, how you manage the process of change is as important as the outcome itself.

When announcing local government reforms, Angela Rayner, the Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, stated that they must revolve around a “genuine relationship of equals … with clear outcomes local people will see and feel.” This report demonstrates that people do indeed want that sort of relationship. The challenge now is to make it real.