Re:Shuffle - An open Letter to Rt Hon Steve Reed MP, Secretary of State for Housing, Communities, and Local Government
Director of Policy and Research
Dear Steve (if I may),
First, may I congratulate you on your appointment.
I think MHCLG is a plum of an assignment. Outside the Treasury and Cabinet Office, it’s the big cross-cutting department that can look outward and see the whole picture.
Whatever else we can say about your predecessor, she seemed able to win arguments with the Treasury, and she gave a lot of cover to her (gone but not forgotten) ministerial team to push forward with a strident reform agenda.
The result is that you’re inheriting probably the most busy and radical part of today’s Whitehall. The inbox must really feel overwhelming. Planning reform. Devolution. Local government reorganisation. Local government finance reform. Electoral reform. It’s an incredible list – and success here is going to be decisive for the Government’s wider agenda. Growth probably won’t get off the ground without a revolution in housebuilding, after all.
You know this sector back to front, of course. But here are three quick thoughts from me about where you should be putting your attention during these crucial first few days in the job:
- Be ready to battle for the future of devolution.
All the easy parts of the devolution roll out have already happened. It’s going to be uphill from here.
This is an incredibly important piece of the puzzle, though – so get ready for a fight. The Bill should get through fine, but then there will be a series of hard choices. Some places will resist setting up a combined authority. Some will insist on illogically small geographies. All of the obvious places already have mayors, or are about to. And some in your own party are going to start thinking that this is just a good way of giving platforms to mayors from other parties.
Our research suggests that it’s the inconsistency of our local government institutions – the patchwork across England – that’s one of the biggest barriers preventing the kind of devolution that could lead to both a more streamlined and strategic Whitehall and a more empowered, capable local state.
To win these fights, a bit of flexibility will be helpful. The Bill will equip you to insist when you have to, too. But whatever path you choose, this is the moment where we either push through and deliver the devolution revolution… or we don’t.
- Reorganisation is worth getting right
There’s a parallel risk that the ambitious plan to reorganise every remaining two-tier area in England could stall. If it does, it won’t be because local government is resistant (though that is true in a few places). It will be because of bottlenecks of capacity, both within your department and the councils themselves. It’s a tight timetable, there is a lot going on.
The more likely effect, I think, is that local authorities will prioritise nailing the essentials: getting themselves safe and legal from day one, avoiding too many dropped balls in service delivery. This is a bit of a pity. So many of the potential benefits of reorganisation depend on an effort to ‘bake in’ new approaches as successor councils come on line: innovative public services, better and more collaborative relationships with communities, more integration between different areas of activity.
While I admire a ‘get it done’ mentality, I think I would explore whether slightly slower change process might result in the more efficient and innovative local state that everyone ultimately wants to see.
- Be bold to make your mark.
With so much going on, it might become too easy to end up managing the agenda points handed over from your predecessor. But I think the prize here – and the reforming momentum – will depend on an appetite for deeper change. We’ve been advocating for devolution of Homes England, for fiscal devolution, for a new era of neighbourhood-scale governance. Ambitions on that scale are not out of line.
There is a window of opportunity right now where profound change is possible across all of the parts of the State that fall within your new domain. That is not a window that opens very often.
I wish you every success.
Sincerely,
Dr Simon Kaye
Policy Director, Re:State