by Richard Pooley
The English and Welsh were offered the opportunity to vote on 2 May. Some English people could vote in three different elections. Few of us bothered to do so. All of us could vote for a new Police and Crime Commissioner (PCC). Some English people could vote to elect a councillor or two for their county, district or borough. About half of English voters got the chance to choose a mayor for their city or region.
What does a PCC do? The job description says they are responsible for the budget of the area’s police force (in my case that of Avon and Somerset, which covers Bristol) and can hire and fire the force’s boss, the chief constable. Also: “how the area is policed” and “the information you get about what the local police is doing.” In some areas, e.g. Greater London and Greater Manchester, the mayor is also the PCC. The job is political. Although there were candidates without political affiliation, every winner was either Labour (17), Conservative (19) or Plaid Cymru (1). In the previous election for PCCs, the map was almost blue; there were 29 Tory PCCs. Only one in five people in Avon and Somerset bothered to vote for a PCC. Best in England was Northumbria where 33% managed to put an X against a name.
Why so low? Most people I spoke to while canvassing had no idea what a PCC did. If they did, they knew how little real power a PCC has. It’s central government which slashed police numbers in the decade after 2010. The PCC may draft the police budget but it’s central government who largely decides how much money the police get. A PCC can raise 35% of their police force’s income via the local Council Tax. Our now ex-PCC, a Tory, wrote to me and other citizens in March asking us how much extra tax we were willing to pay in order to reduce the number of police officer posts that were going to be cut in Avon and Somerset. You may need to read that sentence again. Yes, even the biggest tax rise he was allowed to pitch for will still mean fewer police officers.
I did some canvassing in a County Council by-election in Somerset. The sitting councillor for Mendip South, a Liberal Democrat, had resigned, ostensibly because he was moving to Australia. I heard that he had actively sought to get a job there, so fed up was he with his working life here. He was being paid a pittance as a councillor, having to work evenings and weekends and travel far for council meetings, and, no doubt, getting much online abuse from keyboard warriors completely ignorant of how powerless a councillor is. He had never intended to be a councillor in the first place. He had been persuaded to stand because he was assured that he would not be elected. He’d be a ‘paper candidate’. But the Liberal Democrats did far better than expected and a councillor he became.
Local councillors are either retirees or people with two jobs – a day one and their work as a councillor. Why? Because in England councillors are paid an ‘allowance’, not a salary. My local council, Bath & North-east Somerset, will receive £139 million in income this year. It pays its councillors an annual allowance of £10,622 ($13,384). If the councillor is a member of the ruling cabinet, this goes up to £21,424 ($26,994). The leader of the council gets £35,677 ($44,953), roughly the average salary in England. Can you imagine a company with a turnover of £139 million paying its CEO the average wage and its managers less than the living wage? Okay, you say, but councillors are part-timers. Many are but some cabinet members I know have to devote all their time to council affairs.
The Liberal Democrat candidate won in Mendip South, just beating the Conservative. 2774 people voted, 36% of those who could. I was surprised it was that high. Somerset County Council is close to bankruptcy. Voters know this and either blame their councillors for profligacy (and even accuse them of corruption) or, more usually and correctly, blame central government for denying councils the money they need. Either way, why bother voting for someone who can make little difference to your life?
Traditionally, mayors in England were ceremonial posts, filled by local worthies for one year of receptions, ribbon-cutting and speechifying. That’s still the case in many places. Bath is one. But recently regional mayoralties have been established, with a mayor directly elected by people in their region. Half the country now has a directly-elected mayor. After May 2, all but one is a Labour politician. A major proponent of such mayors was the Tory grandee and ex Deputy Prime Minister, Michael Heseltine, who has long believed that England has become far too centralised in London. So, it is a bit ironic that the first directly elected mayor was London’s in 2000. It was the Tory-Liberal Democrat coalition government which got the ball rolling elsewhere. The powers that these mayors have varies a lot according to the size of their area. But they are nothing like as great as those wielded by the mayors of, say, New York and Paris. Sadiq Khan of Greater London, Andy Burnham of Greater Manchester, and Andy Street of the West Midlands have been regarded by commentators as successful because they have been excellent ambassadors for their cities or regions. But none have been given the powers or money to make significant changes. The West Midlands includes Birmingham whose council has gone bankrupt. Street could do nothing to help them avoid doing so. And, despite his popularity with many voters and his distancing from the party he represents, the Conservatives, he lost to the Labour candidate last week by 1,508 votes (out of 605, 562 cast – a turnout of 30%).
In England only 6% of the country’s tax is raised by local councils. We Brits used to deride the French for being too dirigiste. Yet 14% of France’s tax is raised by their local and regional councils. In Finland, Germany and Sweden the figure is 29%, 32% and 35% respectively. Worse, under the Tory government English councils who want to bid for more money for pet projects (e.g. to have more public toilets) have to compete with other councils to get piddling (sorry) amounts from civil servants based in London who have no clue about a council’s needs. The Economist magazine recently reported that in 2022 Greater Manchester had had to bid for 110 grants from 15 different government departments. Each bid involves spending a lot of time and money which no council can afford to spare.
Throughout the past 14 years of Conservative-led governments in England councils have seen the income from central government cut in real terms while the cost of the services they are legally obliged to provide has gone up. Last year, on average, 69% of English local council budgets were spent on children’s and adult social care, up from 63% a decade ago. Voters complain of libraries being closed, of pot-holes not being filled, and of rubbish bins not being collected every week. But none of these services are statutory.
English local government is in a terrible state. Several councils other than Birmingham went bust in 2023. According to the Local Government Association a fifth of English councils will go bankrupt soon. Councillors are literally powerless to stop this happening. Voter turnout at local elections has never been lower. Local democracy is barely alive.
What to do? The main solution – a complete reform of how local authorities are funded – has been proposed by any number of think tanks but avoided by every government which has come to power in the last thirty years. The Council Tax came into being after Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s failed ‘poll tax’ was introduced and then ditched in 1989 (it contributed to her removal from office). It was local democracy champion Heseltine who introduced the Council Tax in 1991. It was a big mistake, as he himself recently hinted in a BBC interview.
Council Tax in 2024 is assessed on the market value of a home on April 1, 1991 (note the date). All 20 million houses and flats in England were given a market value (imagine how superficial that process was). Your home was placed in one of eight bands of value from A, the cheapest, to H, the most expensive. Fine in 1991, but not in 2024. The Economist gave an example of what happens when homes which were of roughly the same value in 1991, and so in the same band, have completely different values now. A 3-bedroom flat in Scarborough, north Yorkshire, and a 2-bedroom flat in Hackney in London are both in band C because they were each valued at between £52,001 and £68,000 in April 1991. In May last year the Scarborough flat sold for £200,000; in July the Hackney flat sold for £750,000. Yet their owners each pay roughly the same amount of Council Tax.
Buckingham Palace, valued now at around £1,000 million, is in band H. Its Council Tax, paid to Westminster City Council, is £1,828. My house in Bath is worth around £2.8 million and is in band G. My Council Tax is £3,512. The Economist reckons that 46% of households in England pay more Council Tax than the King does for Buckingham Palace.
The richest councils, such as Westminster, because of the wealth they have built up over many years, don’t have to charge much Council Tax. The poorest councils have no such buffer and have to charge as much as they legally can. Result? It’s those who can least afford it who pay the most: a truly regressive tax. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has calculated that Council Tax for the poorest 10% in England accounted for 10% of take-home pay. For the richest 10%, it was just 2%.
The most obvious solution to this mess is to revalue the now 25 million homes in England and ensure that these valuations are updated every 5 years. The IFS estimates that 80% of households would not see much change to their Council Tax. But 20% would and if many of those were pensioners living in large houses in southern England the outcry would be enormous.
But even this would not solve the fundamental problem: the almost total control of local government funding by central government. A majority of English voters wanted to “take back control” from the European Union in 2016. What is now needed is for English local authorities to take back control from the British central government and to be given far greater tax-raising powers themselves. They used to be much more autonomous and powerful. In Victorian times right up to the 1950s cities such as Manchester, Birmingham, Leeds and Newcastle had councils with the money and power to decide for themselves what was best for their communities.
And while we are about it, can we pay local councillors a decent wage so that we have bright and motivated people, who we might bother to vote for, making decisions on our behalf which really impact our lives?
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