The UK Experience by Malcolm Morley *
Many people, whether as citizens, customers, Councillors, members of staff, partners, regulators or Government, make New Year resolutions about Local Government and how they would like it to change. Few often feel that their resolutions come true.
The relationship between Councils, citizens and customers is vital to the quality of peoples’ lives. Whether as a service provider, advocate, enabler of service provision, regulator, coordinator or community leader, Councils have a major impact within communities and on people’s lives.
Councils are involved in a vast array of services either directly or indirectly that touches everyone’s lives. This complexity of roles and extent of reach perhaps is one of the reasons that many of the New Year resolutions fail to become reality for Local Government.
If the roles of Councils are viewed as business sectors, it is interesting to reflect that few private sector conglomerates could span so many sectors.
Even fewer could span the market segments that Councils serve in each of these business sectors, particularly given the regulatory environment in which Councils have to work. None would choose the local democratic process to guide their strategy, portfolio development and resource investment.
Throw into this equation the limited size of many Councils and their restricted income base and it is perhaps of little wonder that no private sector conglomerate exists that matches the diversification and reach of Councils operating in such limited geographic and resource limits.
It is also of little wonder that a ‘model’ Council does not exist. The questions that need to be asked in the optimism of the New Year are: What should the roles of Councils be in the future? And what should Councils look like in the future?
To answer these questions an assumption needs to be made. This is that Government and the communities served by Councils want stronger, more confident and effective Local Government. If you don’t think that this assumption is right, trying to answer the above questions could cause New Year optimism to wane quickly!
Answering these questions is challenging because it forces Councils to address other questions such as: If the Council, as Local Government, wants to coordinate public sector resource investment and service provision in their areas and hold service providers to account, can it do so as a major service provider itself?
Does the Council have the corporate capacity to manage a wide diversity of roles to meet the needs of the communities that it serves?
If people in Councils adopt a myopic approach focused only on their service provision, rather than on why their Councils exist and how they can best serve their communities, they and Local Government will not move forwards.
One of the most important lessons I learned working in the private sector was to understand the customer and focus on what adds value. It was less complex in the private sector but the lesson is still relevant in Local Government.
Perhaps all of our New Year resolutions should include challenging ourselves about how our citizens/customers see us, how we see Local Government, what roles we want our Councils to play and what we need to do to focus on adding value for our citizens/customers.
Happy New Year!
* Malcolm Morley is Chief Executive of Harlow District Council and can be contacted via the Editor, email info@lgfocus.com.au The views expressed in this article are not necessarily those of his employer.
