Co-operative places: the five foundations of local change

Local government needs to be at the forefront of collaborative, place-based change, says Henry Kippin

Abraham Lincoln famously said that ‘the best way to predict the future is to create it’. Bittersweet wisdom from an era in which an American president thought for more than 20 seconds before opinionating. And a prescient reminder that uncertain times call for being both humble and pro-active. We can’t predict the future; but nor are we passive bystanders as it plays out.

Fast forward to today. In a month’s time, the UK will conduct a general election. And despite some pretty banal campaigning so far, the consequences are likely to be far reaching, both for the political parties themselves, and for the people and places whose votes they are seeking. The future agenda for public services is up for grabs. But you wouldn’t know this, because Brexit dominates the agenda, gums up the process and squeezes out other possibilities.

This means that the only way of delivering on Lincoln’s maxim today is at a local level. Place-based change driven by collaboration. A body of research and practice developed at Collaborate suggests that not only are local authorities are well placed to lead this collaboration; but they will be increasingly unsustainable unless they do.

This notion is explored in a recent evaluation written by Collaborate and supported by the Co-operative Councils Innovation Network (CCIN). The CCIN is itself a network that was established to build an alternative to the mainstream – a cohort of councils struck by the need for a new ‘contract’ with citizens, and with enough political and administrative energy to mobilise behind this realisation. The movement has achieved notable success in some important areas – addressing fuel poverty in Oldham and democratic deficit in Newcastle, for example. But as a movement for broader change, it has arguably punched below its weight: a victim of perhaps both political flux at a national level, and austerity and demand more locally.

Our review argues two things: First, that Co-operative Councils can model the future that local government needs to create for itself, based on a collaborative model of change underpinned by co-production and partnership. Second, that unless these councils do more to show how this ethos can drive more sustainable models of health, social care and economic growth, they will lose this opportunity.

Local government as a whole cannot lead places effectively without a fundamental re-alignment of its role and purpose. This should be based on five new strategic foundations – each cross-cutting and interdependent:

1. First, a Co-operative Growth Strategy, based on the recognition that economic growth and industrial strategy will be imbalanced without deliberate action from a range of social partners and anchor institutions, led by local authorities.
2. Second, a Place-Based Health Strategy, based on the recognition that the social determinants of health cannot be influenced without local authorities playing a strong and more creative role in prevention and out-of-hospital care.
3. Third, a Human Capital Strategy, based on the recognition that deep and whole-life-cycle connections between skills, jobs and the ‘liveability’ of places is the only way to create sustainable growth and improve individual life chances.
4. Fourth, a Demand Management Strategy, based on the recognition that supply-side solutions cannot solve the structural crisis facing public services, and that working on the root-causes of demand is the only solution but requires systemic reform.
5. Fifth, a Social Capital Strategy, based on the recognition that reducing isolation, loneliness and marginalization within communities is the only real route to resilience in a context of reduced public service budgets – but that this can only be done through collaboration.

We can see these strategies at play already, and certainly not only within Co-operative Councils. For example, Suffolk’s ‘figure of eight’ model emphasizes the interdependence of economic growth, community development and service reform – a good example of co-operative growth.

Barnsley’s approach to community-led service reform is based on ‘thickening’ networks of peer support within neighbourhoods – the essence of a social capital strategy.

Sunderland’s celebrated Work Discovery Week shows what is possible when you bring together employers, civic institutions and young people to explore what the future might look like.

And the Sutton Plan has opened up big questions about what it means to live in the borough through focusing on some ‘hidden’ issues driving public service demand.

These are all examples of local authorities building collaborative approaches to problems that go beyond their own organisational boundaries and are inherently complex in nature. What the CCIN can – and should – be doing is to show how these approaches could be amplified through engaging and involving citizens as fundamental partners.

You can find Collaborate’s report for the CCIN here, and assess this proposition for yourself. Read it and let me know what you think. It could be that Abraham Lincoln was right all along.