Councils in Crisis

We are currently undertaking a three-year project exploring and exposing the deepening crises in UK local government and instigating alternative narratives and potential interventions.

It consists of three interlinked parts: research that seeks to understand the democratic impacts of local government ‘bankruptcies’; work with citizen auditors and local journalists to support their scrutiny function; and legislative monitoring to advocate for government to prioritise audit reform legislation.

This is a crucial moment to focus on councils at risk of collapse. There has been a startling increase in councils declaring themselves at risk of bankruptcy (a ‘Section 114’ notice); rare before 2018, there have been many issued since then, with many more authorities warning they might do so. This means a reduction in spending for vital services and – in some cases – central government intervention. As well as the impact on residents, the implications of this deepening crisis will shape the sector for years to come and even redefine the role of local government, including governance arrangements and ways in which residents interact with democratic bodies. Risk to statutory service provision also cannot be ruled out when councils collapse.

In the years we have spent looking at local authority finances, accountability and audit, the crisis in the sector has intensified. Yet this is still an under-researched area and the effects of austerity and financial mismanagement need to be better understood. The predominant analysis of ‘council failure’ frames it as either a purely technocratic issue (not enough resource) or a purely political one (bad decisions and/or wrong policies). This binary serves party politics and media soundbites but cannot properly illuminate the causes of these crises or the responses to them. We want to move away from entrenched narratives, explore what is happening in the sector and disseminate that information so that citizens, journalists and other civil society actors can better understand and scrutinise councils and challenge interventions.