Chris Game

Chris Game (University of Birmingham, Institute of Local Government Studies): Every cloud, as the saying goes. It seems that one of the collateral victims of the global economic crisis may be the current round of English local government reorganisation.  

Speaking at a recent Belfast conference of local authority chief executives, Communities and Local Government Secretary, Hazel Blears, claimed her department had gone ‘back to the drawing board’ on any issues that might help local government ‘in the tough times ahead’. These included a possible reconsideration of the Government’s latest bout of restructuring, taking place under the controversial auspices of last year’s Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act (see Michael Chisholm and Steve Leach, Botched Business: The damaging process of reorganising local government, 2006-2008 (Douglas Maclean Publishing); and Chisholm’s ‘Fears for tiers’ in Public Finance, 23 May 2008).

Those of us in the local government world learned long ago to be thankful for small mercies. So, if it takes an economic crisis to prompt at least a delay in what to most outside observers looks like the final destruction of much of English local government, we’ll welcome it as the proverbial silver cloud. It’s sad, though, that there wasn’t even a hint from the Minister that considerations of that quaint concept of local democracy played any part in her thinking.