What does it take to be local, actually?
Policy Director
This is a period of profound and rapid reform for the English system of local government — so much so, it almost feels churlish to be setting out another set of proposals, calling for yet more change.
But addressing the absence of hyperlocal governance in England is an important matter. Even before the new spate of reforms, this was one of the many ways in which our country is an international outlier. In France, there are more communes — the basic, hyperlocal unit of local government — than there are councillors of any type in England.
Now, for totally legitimate reasons, we are planning to consolidate our local government system further — and, with a new ‘normal’ size of 500,000 — take local authorities to a larger scale and a higher altitude of operation.
The democratic gap produced by these changes will matter — and will affect different places in different ways. In some parts of the country, there are parish and town councils to work with communities to protect green spaces, support local businesses, and run essential services. Some of these organisations are extraordinary: a true focus for the communities they serve.
In others parts of England, though, no such institutions exist. This is especially the case in urban areas, where neighbourhoods are often rich in community life but effectively voiceless in decisions made about them. Even in places where parishes are present, there is no guarantee that they will be active enough to make a difference to the locality. The result is a deeply uneven patchwork, with 64 per cent of the English population living in places with no hyperlocal government at all.
As regional devolution accelerates and unitary authorities grow more distant, that lack of neighbourhood representation becomes more than just another curiosity of the English system. It becomes a problem.
Our new report, Local, actually, proposes a solution. A new layer of Neighbourhood Councils and Combined Neighbourhood Councils, formed either by strengthening and pooling existing parishes or supporting new governance where none currently exists.
These institutions would operate at a larger scale than many current parishes, typically serving 20,000–50,000 people, to give them an impactful footprint and a decent local tax base. They would have the potential to take on new powers, responsibilities, and resources, playing a full role in the maturing local systems of which they would be a part.
As the shape of the local State continues to evolve, there is scope for the neighbourhood to finally take its place within it, with a layer of government that has a porous, interactive relationship with communities themselves in a way that larger scales of governance will always struggle to achieve.