It sounds like one of Rudyard Kipling’s ‘Just So’ stories – the ones which explain how the camel got the hump and where the leopard’s spots came from? As with these animal features, the truth about public services – from policing to parks – looks more like something imagined by Charles Darwin than Rudyard Kipling… Evolution is the key word!
Public Service Evolution
Even in times of evident change, we might take the way things are for granted: that police patrol; that bin-men collect rubbish; and that social services is there to care for people who cannot look after themselves? It would be a mistake to do so. Local public services have been developed and innovated every year since the modern version of them was invented – almost 200 years ago. At that time, industrial towns and cities grew at such a rate that a new version of local government was needed to manage them; and to provide services like policing and public health, without which further growth would have been either impossible or, at best, violent. The Industrial Revolution – like the ‘digital revolution’ today – created the need for new services and some of the means for delivering them.
By the late 19th century, the focus had widened. Public services no longer covered preventative measures like policing and public health – designed to keep cities free from riots and epidemics of disease. Schools, provided at first by faith communities, came to be seen as essential to ensuring the supply of apprentices to industries now competing against those in Germany and the US. Globalisation was driving change even 150 years ago.
Municipalism and the ‘Civic Gospel’
George Dawson was the non-conformist preacher who declared ‘a town is a solemn organism through which shall flow, and in which shall be shaped, all the highest, loftiest and truest ends of man’s moral nature’. From the pulpit of his church in Edward Street, Birmingham (close to where the city’s Barclaycard Arena now stands), Dawson preached this ‘civic gospel’ to a church that included radicals like Joseph Chamberlain, Jesse Collings who led local government in Birmingham from the late 1860s onwards.
Birmingham’s Corporation, under Chamberlain, innovated new services to local business and householders: the supply of light, heat, power, fresh water, roads, public transport and parks and open spaces. Birmingham’s private sector gas and water supply companies were municipalised: bought out by the city’s Corporation which – running them more efficiently and on a grand and economic scale – used the profits to build art galleries and public baths and to buy land for parks and new roads.
With municipalism, Birmingham became the fastest growing city in the world. Birmingham-made goods and services accounted for a significant proportion of all the exports traded across the entire world. This prosperity lasted into more recent times. Even 50 years ago, Birmingham was still creating more jobs than anywhere except London; and household incomes in the West Midlands were higher than in London and the South East of England.
The Local Welfare State
Through most of the 20th century, an increasing number of services were brought into the public sector. Many of these services – including schools and social services – were pioneered by voluntary and mutual organisations. Some were funded by philanthropists from the private sector. The steel magnate, Andrew Carnegie endowed public libraries across the US, UK and Ireland. He was the Bill Gates of his day: there were 19 Carnegie libraries in London, 10 in Birmingham, 7 in Manchester and about 100 in other English towns and cities. Funded by philanthropy, they were managed by the local state.
The growth in council housing after 1918 and the creation of the National Health Service after 1946 accelerated the trend toward a local welfare state. (NHS ambulance and community services including maternity and child welfare services, health visitors, midwives, health education and preventative care and environmental health were the responsibility of local councils in 1947).
The reform of local government finance from 1988 onwards saw the replacement of rates and – eventually – resulted in shifting a large share of the cost of local public services onto revenue support grants provided by central government. As councils became the general-purpose provider of a wide range of public services, local authorities were increasingly funded like executive agencies of central government.
Best Value
By the end of the last century, however, government had started to curb the services provided by councils. Water supply was transferred to water authorities in 1974; the 1985 Housing Act enabled the transfer of council homes; public transport went in 1986; higher education in 1989. Those services which remained were subjected to Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT). The aim of which was later reflected in policy on Best Value: to ensure that public services provide best value-added (or social profit) for the community – regardless of who provides them.
Changes since 1979, however, have not all been about limiting the role of local government. The Local Government Act 2000 re-stated the purpose of local government (in terms that Chamberlain would have understood) as being ‘to promote economic, social and environmental well-being within their boundaries’. The Localism Act 2011 expanded on this by giving Councils a power of general competence. That is: to undertake anything legal – including setting up companies and undertaking enterprises – that might be undertaken by any individual or a company. In principle, at least, legislation protects the ability of councils to innovate, even as it demands services are run to maximise social profit.
What has been the point of public services for the past 180 years – why have we innovated new ones? If we define ‘quality’ services as being ones which meet the needs of local people and business, how does having good quality local public services affect a place?
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