New survey: English voters want councils to have more say over public spending

27 APRIL 2022 BY JOHN DENHAM

First published in Local Government Chronicle

New polling data shows a real vote of trust in the local authority role despite years of austerity, writes the director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics and communities & local government secretary, 2009–10.

As English voters prepare to vote in next week’s local elections, new polling suggests they would like local councils to have more influence over public spending in their area.

Prof John Denham, director of the Centre for English Identity and Politics and former communities secretary

The YouGov survey, commissioned by the Centre for English Identity and Politics (CEIP) at Southampton University, takes a fresh look at whether voters think devolution would improve services.

A majority of all voters believe that public services would be made better if ‘local authorities had more say in how public money is spent on public services in their area’, a view that is broadly shared across political parties.

If ‘don’t knows’ are excluded, fully three quarters of voters believe that giving local councils more say would improve public services, and many say that services would be much better. Significantly a positive view of the local council role is taken by supporters of all the major parties: the Conservatives, Labour, Liberal Democrats and Greens.

Testing public support

Given that years of austerity have forced local authorities to reduce levels of local service provision these results are a significant endorsement of local councils’ capacity to work well for local people.

Exploring public attitudes to devolution has often proved difficult. Testing possible structural changes like regional assemblies or, more recently, combined authorities, is hampered by weak public understanding of what powers they might exercise — and while regional approaches remain popular with some thinktanks and inquiries like the UK 2070 Commission, it is more than 15 years since regional assemblies were proposed by a major political party and public debate died after the referendum on the North-East Assembly.

Different polls commissioned by the BBC and the CEIP have shown quite different levels of support for combined authorities.

Surveys can also produce apparently contradictory results. Voters want the same quality of services in every community, but they also want to have more decisions taken closer to where they live. Of course, voters might be thinking that local decision making will generate better quality services everywhere, but it is hard to be sure.

Improved services

The new polling asked whether giving local authorities more say over public spending would improve public services. ‘More say’ was intended as a simple but reasonable approximation of current government devolution proposals. The levelling up white paper transfers little or no new power or resources unconditionally to councils or combined authorities. Instead, these bodies might gain government approval to exercise certain powers, subject to new accountability to central government. Local influence, rather than the transfer of powers, seems to be the order of the day.

Those surveyed were informed that “it has been suggested that local authorities should have more say in how public money is spent on public services in their area”. This background information carefully did not tie the proposal to the current government or the Conservative party, nor to a particular policy.

Respondents were then asked, on a range of -5 to +5, to indicate to what extent they thought this would make public services in their area better or worse, where -5 meant it would make services much worse and +5 meant it would make services much better.

Excluding don’t knows, 43% thought giving councils more say would make services ‘better’ (a score of +2 or +3) and 25% thought services would be ‘much better’ (+4 or +5). Only 13% thought services would be worse (-2 or -3) or much worse (-4 or -5).

Cross-party support

Such strong public confidence should encourage the government to move faster and other political parties to produce their own proposals for devolution.

Supporters of different parties do vary in their views with the Greens most positive. Amongst the major parties, Labour (80%) and Lib Dem voters (68%) believe services would be improved. Conservative voters offer somewhat less support, but even here 58% believe services would be better or much better.

It is also interesting that support for the local authority role is high across all England’s major national identity groups.

Although national identity is rarely discussed in English politics, those who emphasise their English identity have often been seen as prioritising changes in England’s national governance — through a Parliament or English Votes for English Laws — over devolution. The ‘more English than British’ are the most sceptical in this survey but still 58% think local government influence can improve public services.

Such a survey is a measure of broad sentiment rather than support for detailed proposals but its findings are still significant.

Over the past decade councils have lost central government resource. All have had to withdraw or modify services and have lacked the capacity to bring about all the local change they would like to see.

That their voters still believe councils could improve public services if they had more say over local public spending can be read as real vote of trust in the local authority role.

Prof John Denham, director, Centre for English Identity and Politics at the University of Southampton

Survey of 1,964 adults in England conducted by YouGov, 21–22 April. Data in charts excludes ‘don’t knows’