Local Government can’t be business as usual

After a long period in the dark local government is coming out of the shadows.

Recent announcements by both Ed Milliband and Jon Cruddas have indicated that the forthcoming policy review will see a much greater role for local government. So as Labour Councillors gather for their Local Government Conference at the Excel Centre this weekend we have some grounds for quiet confidence.

But let’s be clear it can’t be business as usual. As a councillor in Oldham since 2003 I know that the public are cynical about politics and feel disconnected with public services – which is crazy given how much most people rely on public services – but they just don’t make the connection.

In 2008 my council was dogged by political instability after a number of changes of political control, short term decision making and a lack of long term direction for the town. Don’t just take my word for it – public satisfaction rating was just 22% and the Audit Commission reflected on the councils problems in its inspection findings.

When I became leader of the Labour Group that year I recognised that to improve the town all the political leaders had to work together. This is an approach I have maintained since I became Leader of the Council in 2011 and offered a hearing to anyone who wanted to help the town and its residents. It pays dividends: a recent residents’ survey showed a satisfaction rating of over 66% – the highest level of improvement ever recorded by Ipsos-Mori.

At a time of savage expenditure cuts maintaining such consensus across the town isn’t easy but the truth is that for most of English local government we have to create our own solutions. Even when they had money, Whitehall Departments were too interested in their own targets without regard to their relevance to individual areas and regions. Any future solution has to look at how local politicians can tap into the energy and ideas of its local residents and businesses. Some of this is just cutting through the jungle of red tape and bureaucracy that we have created across the public sector. When I became leader, a leading local company had spent months trying to find a new site for expansion and was getting nowhere. Within months we had helped identify a suitable site in the borough and kept a significant manufacturing company in the UK.

So if there is to be a future for local government we have to become advocates for the place as much as the council. To do that we have to be willing to look at new ideas and solutions and not rely on what has always happened. As councillors and councils we cannot defend the indefensible in public service or even the average.

That doesn’t mean we naively believe we can be all things to all people. Often taking the long term economic view and bringing forward employment or housing sites can be met with objection. Going ahead doesn’t mean you dismiss the views of local people, it’s simply that the wider responsibility about economic and social wellbeing has to come above individual interest.

But knowing that and having the confidence and vision about what a place ‘can be’ once it realises its full potential has the ability to gather wider support and create a leadership team beyond the Civic Centre. The culture and ambition being created in my town is about the place not internal council bureaucracy or self interest.

That’s why Oldham is one of the founder members of the Co-operative Council and Innovations Network – a group of councils right across the UK who are willing to share ideas and innovate. We recognise that in future we will have to work with a range of partners and work in different ways. Here in Greater Manchester our population chose to live their lives in ways that increasingly bear little relevance to the boundaries of the existing ten boroughs and other public sector organisations.

We have had a few famous politicians over the years in Oldham – including William Cobbett and Winston Churchill. However the one that inspires me is JR Clynes – a mill worker who overcome poverty and discrimination to become one of the first Labour MPs in 1906 and ultimately the Deputy Leader of the Party. Politics should be about ordinary people achieving extra-ordinary things for themselves and their communities. We have to rebuild that ladder of opportunity and progress.

University is great and I wish I’d had the chance to go myself, but you can’t teach that drive and determination to fight for better. We haven’t done enough as a country to end predetermination. The future for everyone should be that we offer the opportunities for everyone to define for themselves where they want to go in life, not be held back by where they came from.

Jim McMahon is Leader of Oldham and Chair of the Co-operative Councils Innovation Network and the LGIU 2014 Leader of the Year. He writes in a personal capacity.