What the story of the Local Government Act 2000 can tell us about the challenges councils face today

This summer, executive decision making and overview and scrutiny will celebrate its first quarter century.

In May 2001, most councils moved from the committee system to adopt ‘executive arrangements’ – signed into law the summer before, in the Local Government Act 2000.

There’s a popular story about this moment: councils had to be forced kicking and screaming into the new age by a New Labour government determined to revolutionise councils. It’s hard to remember those halcyon days – especially now. But the story is, of course, not quite as true as it sounds.

In fact, the history of the preceding few years presents a rather different picture: an example of central government struggling to keep up with innovation and experimentation led and directed locally.
It was clear by the late 1990s that the ‘old’ committee system was, for most councils, unfit for purpose.

Increasing service complexity

Before you inundate LGC with letters, let me be clear: there’s a distinction here between this system and the committee system that exists now in some English councils – the two look very different.

The old system, however, was typified in many, but not all, councils by an extremely heavy committee structure, limited and inconsistent delegation to officers, and a degree of member operational control, and oversight over day-to-day service delivery that we would nowadays find surprising.

This had not happened overnight. In the 1970s, two big changes happened in local government that set the scene. The 1972-74 structural reforms to local government created fewer, bigger councils with responsibilities over larger geographical areas. (Sound familiar?)

The Local Authority Social Services Act 1970 introduced duties for upper tier authorities relating to social work. Both measures, and others, served to increase service complexity.

At the same time, since the Second World War party politics was growing in influence; while always present in councils, independents and resident associations had often dominated smaller districts, in particular.More party politics meant more political management, and whipping, which significantly affected how committees were able to operate.

Experimentation

This came to a head with the Audit Commission’s seminal 1990 research paper, We can’t go on meeting like this. It set out the byzantine ways that many councils operated their committee arrangements; the way that in many places a complex web of formal bodies led to a diffusion of accountability and an environment where decision-making was often unduly focused on operational matters – impinging on the role of officers.

The 1990s were a period of innovation and experimentation that saw councils reflecting on this challenge and trying to think of ways – within the existing framework – to resolve it. During this time, central government was not inactive – the Department of the Environment established two internal working groups in the mid-90s to investigate and develop a way forward on the issue. But a lot of the real work was done in councils.

A lot of this experimentation focused on how committee systems could be streamlined to better focus member leadership on strategic decision-making rather than on a churn of report-noting and detailed operational oversight, something which will sound very familiar to many readers.

Some councils established formal and informal bodies with a specific duty to oversee and hold to account delivery – managing performance – while policy development happened elsewhere. This nascent decision-making/scrutiny split was formalised in the 2000 legislation.

Some places chose to dramatically reduce the size, number and frequency of their committees as part of an approach to fundamentally rethink delegation arrangements. No doubt a significant culture shock for many members and officers but some people recognised the potential benefits in thinking very differently about the way they worked, and about how they worked with others in the same council.

Fit for purpose?

This period of dramatic experimentation could perhaps help us think more critically about the moment we are in today. Local authorities’ governance systems have a lot more homogeneity to them – rightly so in many ways. But national understanding of ‘best practice’ shouldn’t stifle more lateral and creative thinking about how we make governance work for a different age.

Naturally, local authorities now face substantial headwinds that make this kind of general experimentation more challenging – not least relating to resourcing. Given this context, it might even seem self-indulgent to engage in such an examination.

But government’s decision that all councils – with some exceptions – will now need to operate the leader-cabinet system, as well as the creation of a large cohort of brand new councils through local government reorganisation, could present an opportunity to think differently about how we ‘do’ governance, in the same way our as predecessors 30 years ago.

How can we make sure that our now-25 year old model is fit for purpose for the middle of the 21st century? How can we take the initiative in redesigning these systems to meet and overcome these challenges?

Questions like these will be part of our 2026 conference, on 12 March, Millennium Point, Birmingham – where we’ll be celebrating 25 years since the implementation of the Local Government Act, and overview and scrutiny. Click here for information and tickets.