unequal partners? local government reorganization and the voluntary sector

Unequal Partners? Local Government Reorganizationand the Voluntary Sector

Gary Craig and Jill Manthorpe

Abstract

British local government has recently undergone its most far-reaching reorganization for twenty-®ve

years. The impact of this reorganization was considerable within local authorities but it also

substantially affected other organizations with which they worked at a local level. This paper

explores the perspectives of voluntary sector organizations involved in social care: a set of actors

which, prior to reorganization, had been encouraged by central and local government, through

notions of partnership and through community care legislation, to undertake more direct roles in

service delivery, consultation and strategic planning. During the consultative period prior to

reorganization, many voluntary organizations reported that they had been marginal to the process.

Re¯ecting on the process of reorganization itself, many voluntary organization respondents

commented that it had been disruptive and provoked considerable anxiety. Post-reorganization,

voluntary organizations felt that rebuilding of relationships was necessary and that the promise of

partnership had meant little in practice at a time of potential crisis for local government.

Keywords

Local government reorganization; Voluntary sector; Community care; Partnership

British Local Government Reform

In the three years to 1998, local government in Great Britain (outside thelargest English metropolitan areas) underwent a major process of reorgani-zation. Despite continuing debates on the structure and function of localgovernment, the Redcliffe-Maud Commission (1969) was the last majorformal English inquiry into local government. Ironically, in the light of theoutcomes of the local government reforms discussed here, both Redcliffe-Maud and the parallel Wheatley Report (Wheatley Commission 1969) forScotland had argued that strategic authorities were fragmented, responsi-bilities were inef®ciently divided between counties, districts and countyboroughs, and that many authorities were too small both in size and ®nancial

Address for correspondence: Professor Gary Craig, School of Policy Studies, University of Lincolnshireand Humberside, Inglemire Avenue, Kingston upon Hull, HU6 7LU.

Social Policy & Administration issn 0144±5596

Vol. 33, No. 1, March 1999, pp. 55±72

# Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 1999, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford, OX4 1JF, UK and350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.

base to be effective. Indeed, Redcliffe-Maud recommended a largely unitarylocal government system throughout England but government did not adoptthis proposal. In Scotland, large regional authorities were created, only to bedismantled in 1996.

The recent reorganizations originated in the 1990 Conservative Partyleadership election when Michael Heseltine's personal manifesto included acommitment to local government restructuring. After losing that election,Heseltine, as Secretary of State for the Environment, began a processculminating in 1998 with the ®nal phase of English reorganization. Hismotive for promoting reorganization, however, did not stem from rationalpolicy development objectives, nor did the government, during the reviewprocess, identify a clear role for local government. Given the hostilitybetween local and central government which persisted throughout the1980s and early 1990s, reorganization was interpreted, particularly inScotland and Wales, as evidence that government was intent on under-mining the democratic power base of (largely) Labour local authorities.Central government declined to undertake the review of local government®nance, electoral arrangements, roles and functions urged on it by localgovernment representatives and, throughout the process of reform, more orless consistently maintained a preference for the replacement of the existingstructure outside the metropolitan areas by a system of unitary (i.e. single-tierall-purpose) authorities. One further implicit government aim was also toabolish the allegedly unpopular ``Labour shire counties'', Avon, Clevelandand Humberside (although by the time of its abolition, Avon was no longerLabour-controlled).

Much of the debate about reform consequently revolved around theappropriate size for new authorities, with larger existing authorities arguingfor large unitaries and smaller ones for smaller authorities. The reality of theprocess of change, in the absence of a clear debate about the role andfunction of local government, became characterized, in the view ofcommentators, by policy confusion, shifts in emphasis, political horse-trading, local government division and, belatedly, central governmentattempts at damage limitation (Leach 1994; Boyne et al. 1995; Pycroft 1995;Bransbury 1996; Wilson 1996). In both Scotland and Wales, strong govern-ment control exercised over the reviews led ®nally to countrywide systems ofunitary authorities established in 1996. In Scotland, for example, thirty-twosingle-tier authorities were created, some of the latter seemingly re¯ectingparty political advantage rather than considerations of size or naturalboundaries (Midwinter 1993); in Wales twenty-two unitaries were created,only Powys remaining on virtually unchanged boundaries.

In England, the process of change was less strongly directed from thecentre and, at times, offered the prospect of more variable outcomes.Consequently, the existing two-tier English local government arrangementswere replaced, by 1998, by what Waddington (1995) described as ``a packetof allsorts'' involving:

. the retention of some two-tier arrangements of counties and districts, with

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a few retaining pre-1996 boundaries but most counties operating onreduced boundaries;

. the creation of unitary authorities, a few of them largely rural in naturebut most based on urban areas which have been split off from a pre-existing shire county (which in turn becomes a smaller two-tier ``hybrid''county); and

. the abolition in 1996 of the three allegedly unpopular shire counties andtheir replacement in each case by four new unitary (single-tier all-purpose) authorities.

In England, a total of forty-six unitary authorities were created, leaving intheir wake twenty-one ``hybrid'' counties on reduced boundaries.

During the ®ve years before reorganization started, the voluntary sectorexpressed concern about the potential impacts on voluntary agencies, but itsconcerns received little prominence in policy guidance. A number ofstructural features of the new authorities appeared likely to affect patternsof service provision and the relationship of the local authority to thevoluntary sector. First, the political histories and futures of new authoritiescontinued to be signi®cant. As urban cores separated from rural hinterlands,the likelihood of a return to more polarized patterns of political control withpredominantly Labour urban authorities and Conservative rural onesseemed strong (in contrast with the position emerging from the previouslocal government elections of many more local authorities under ``mixed''political control). This polarization began to be re¯ected in the localgovernment elections of 1997 and was re¯ected in concerns expressed byvoluntary agencies in our research.

Secondly, some of these authorities (both unitary and ``residual'') regardedthemselves as ``continuing'' authorities from those in existence immediatelypreceding reorganization (despite super®cial name changes re¯ecting localpreferences); others are entirely new, being created either from a combina-tion of previous second-tier districts and/or boroughs. Of these ``continuing''authorities, some have a corporate memory reaching back prior to the 1974reorganization and view the present changes as returning to them functions,including social services, which were (inappropriately, in their view) takenaway at that time. Other authorities are continuing but within a single-tierstructure rather than the previous two-tier arrangements. The possibility offairly radical changes in policy priorities seems greater in entirely newauthorities, a likelihood seemingly con®rmed by the approaches of some newunitaries to the creation of innovative structures.

A third and probably most signi®cant structural issue, is the question ofsize; more precisely, the population base and distribution of the newauthorities. Powys remains the largest Welsh unitary in size but its largelyrural population is less than half that of the much smaller urban Cardiffauthority. The smallest unitaries within Scotland, England and Wales are,respectively, Clackmannanshire (49,000), Rutland (33,000) and Ceredigion-shire (67,000). The Local Government Commission (LGC), which oversawthe process of English reform, regarded the smallest unitary, Rutland, as ``anexperiment'' in local government (Department of the Environment 1995a).

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The creation of smaller authorities may, however, also have other, indirect,effects. For example, research conducted prior to reorganization revealedconcerns that the creation of a larger number of smaller authorities,particularly accentuating the rural/urban divide, would lead to divergentlevels of provision in different areas (Craig 1993). This was con®rmed byPickford (1997: 5): `òne impact of local government reorganization is thetranslation of these [service level] variations from intra- to inter-authorityissues.''

The question of size featured strongly in debates leading up to the processof change. The two key criteria originally identi®ed by the government asshaping the new structure of local government were ``costs'' and ``commu-nity identity'' with Virginia Bottomley, former Secretary of State for Healthcharacterizing the aim of the review as seeking `èffective and convenientlocal government'' (Department of Health 1995: 1). We have reviewed thedebates regarding these criteria elsewhere (Craig and Manthorpe 1996) butboth of them relate closely to the issue of size. The impact of size on cost viaeconomies of scale, for which there was independent research evidence(Travers et al. 1993; Boyne 1995), appeared to be disregarded by the LGC,which recommended smaller sizes of authorities than had originally beenanticipated. It was also argued that the question of the critical mass for anauthority might differ in respect of differing services. The governmentappeared to take the view that size was a less signi®cant issue than it mighthave been previously, given that local authorities' role as direct serviceproviders was becoming less prominent. Other policy developments (includ-ing compulsory competitive tendering, local management of schools andcommunity care legislation) had shifted the role of local government towardsa system of ``local governance'' in which local authorities increasingly had an`ènabling'' role rather than one of monopoly service providers (Stewart1988; Stewart and Stoker 1990).

The issue of ``community identity'' was also widely debated. The LGC'smarket research (Game 1997) took a narrow view in terms of local people'sidenti®cation with place or with speci®c existing local authorities (and thus,in many instances, with levels of local taxation) rather than, for example, interms of journey-to-work (or indeed, journey-to-service access point) patternsacross rural-urban divides, or (generally larger) areas which might makemore sense within strategic socio-economic planning frameworks, as hadbeen debated in the 1969 reviews of local government. Research whichpostdates the work of the LGC further undermines its approach tocommunity identity (Young et al. 1996). Arguments made in support ofsmaller authorities as reducing the ``distance'' of authorities from those theywere serving were, it was also argued by many larger authorities, weaker inservice areas such as social services where decentralization, delegation orcontracting-out, including to the voluntary sector, were already widespread.

In the event, the LGC, responding more strongly to local views than thegovernment appeared to wish (a tension which eventually led to the enforcedresignation of the LGC's chairman) made a series of recommendations whichcan, at best, be described as inconsistent. The kind of political horse-trading


which preceded ®nal LGC decisions and the resultant contradictions whichemerged, are described in detail in the case of Leicestershire in Wilson (1996).

In an earlier study, Craig (1993) sought the views of a sample of directors ofsocial services, voluntary agencies and users and carers groups in Englandand Scotland, during the introduction of the community care regime,regarding the potential impact of local government reorganization speci®-cally on community care services. Although the outcome of reform was notthen clear, many respondents (correctly) forecast the creation of largernumbers of smaller authorities. Key issues identi®ed then which were feltlikely to impact on the voluntary sector included:

. a multiplication of working relationships with other local authorities andpartner agencies, including enforced joint working with other localauthorities;

. increased variation in the level of services between authorities;

. fragmentation of local care markets with local authorities less able toexercise a strategic planning role;

. organizational, funding and service disruption to the work of localvoluntary and independent providers; and

. further marginalization of carers and users in service planning andimplementation strategies.

Against this rather negative, if widespread, view of potential outcomes, asmaller number of respondents argued that the creation of unitary autho-rities would enhance the possibility of better collaboration between housingand social services departments, identi®ed as a weak link in the developmentof integrated community care strategies (Arnold and Page 1994); that smallerauthorities might be able to get closer to local areas through ¯atter manage-ment structures, which would be valuable in the process of identifying unmetneed and potential care resources; and that the process of review wouldencourage partner agencies to re¯ect on their own arrangements. We returnto these issues below in the light of responses to our surveys. Remarkably,however, neither government Policy Guidance (Department of the Environ-ment 1995b), nor most submissions made by local authorities to the LGC orto the relevant secretaries of state in Scotland and Wales referred to thesigni®cance of local government reform for the delivery and organization ofsocial services. Some local authorities recognized the importance of stronglinks with local voluntary agencies and independent care providers althoughthe views of these ``partners'' appeared, from the local authority submissionsreviewed, not to have been sought in any systematic fashion.

Our own research during the early stages of reform con®rmed the feelingamongst those outside local authorities that, as well as being virtuallyoverlooked by central government as it shaped the reforms, they had alsobeen marginal to the consultative process leading to reorganization in theirparticular area. The Department of Health's own guidance (1995) was itselfunhelpful in this regard: it simply noted that ``a seamless transition will bedependent on close cooperation between the authorities during the shadowperiod''Ðno mention of other potential partners there. Whilst the LGC itself


believed (1994) that ``transitional arrangements should be planned carefullyin consultation with the voluntary sector to ensure . . . that those whodepend on it are not adversely affected during any changes in structure'', inpractice both the consultative process and the process of change effectivelylocated local authorities as the gatekeepers of information ¯ows to thevoluntary sector.

Local Government and the Voluntary Sector: Structuring theRelationship

The notion of partnership between local government and other localagencies engaged in service delivery is now a commonplace: it is central tothe idea of local governance, with ``enabling'' local authorities at the centreof a network of agencies engaged in mapping and responding to local needscollaboratively. This view has been underlined by a range of initiatives suchas Health Action Zones and the New Start Strategy, emerging fromgovernment since the election of the 1997 government. Local partnerships,involving a range of agencies from within the voluntary sector, have alsobeen increasingly a strong feature of strategic responses to local poverty(Alcock et al. 1995) or approaches to social and economic regeneration(Alcock et al. 1998), for example.

There has, however, been growing pressure for some years, particularlyfrom the voluntary sector, to clarify the nature of the relationship betweenthe sector and local government. In part, this re¯ects concerns about thepossible impact of the ``contract culture'' on the voluntary sector. Levels ofcontracting-out received a signi®cant boost from the implementation of theNHS and Community Care Act 1990, which promoted more strongly mixedmarkets in community care delivery and organization at local levels. Manylocal voluntary agencies have perceived themselves as having been drawnalmost exclusively into service-providing roles at the expense of the sector'straditional roles of advocacy, development, representation and campaigningand as being in danger of losing their distinctive, ¯exible voluntary sectorethos to a more rigid business-oriented one (see e.g. Leat 1995b; Russell andScott 1997). Although voluntary sector agencies have become more business-like in terms of their growing professionalism and, indeed, size and levels ofturnover as a result of contracts from local government (Leat 1995a), manyhave at the same time increasingly regarded themselves as unhealthilydependent on the changing ®nancial and political priorities of localgovernment.

Although these fears may have been exaggerated (Unwin and Westland1996), the Commission on the Future of the Voluntary Sector in England(National Council for Voluntary Organizations 1996) recommended that a``concordat'' should be established between central government and thevoluntary sector, ``laying down basic principles for future relationships''.This idea has been taken up enthusiastically at a national level by the UKgovernment elected in May 1997, and a national working party has beendrawing up such a concordat. The NCVO Commission's report made noparallel recommendations for similar concordats at local levels although, as


the Commission itself noted, most encounters between the state andvoluntary sector organizations occurred at the level of local government.Although concordats at local and national level have yet to be established(with development and research work also under way in Scotland, Wales andNorthern Ireland: see e.g. CoSLA/SCVO 1997; WLGA/WCVA 1997), it isalready clear that the principles informing such a statement need to takeaccount both of structures and arrangements on the one hand, and processissues on the other (Bemrose and MacKeith 1996). In essence, how thevoluntary sector is treated by local government, particularly perhaps atcritical junctures, is as important as the formal written agreements whichmay offer a written framework to guide their interrelationship.

Local Government Reform: The Scope of the Studies

The ®ndings reported in this paper are based on two major and parallelstudies1 carried out between 1995 and 1998. The ®rst study comprised adetailed case study of local government reorganization in selected authoritiesin the Yorkshire and Humber Region. In particular, this study examinedchange in the former North Yorkshire county area (which was split in 1996,producing a ``new'' North Yorkshire as the result of the creation of a free-standing York unitary authority, itself based on an enlarged York districtarea); and in the Humberside county area. Humberside was replaced in 1996by four unitary authorities, two either side of the Humber estuary (Hull andEast Yorkshire on the north bank, and North Lincolnshire and North-EastLincolnshire on the south bank). With the exception of Hull, these unitarieswere formed by the merger of pre-existing districts. Most of the authoritiesstudied thus moved from district to unitary status and, in the process, bothbecame larger and took on new, strategic functions for the ®rst timeincluding crucially, in the light of the focus of this paper, social services.North Yorkshire, uniquely in the Region, became considerably smaller,losing about 22 per cent of its area and population, in the process becomingsubstantially more rural in nature than before. In this study we interviewed awide range of actors (including representatives of local government, healthauthorities, about seventy voluntary sector agencies, and carers' and users'groups) on two separate occasions: once just before reorganization, thesecond time a year later. This allowed for a range of perspectives and alongitudinal dimension, both important considerations as they provided thechance to ``®t'' differing perspectives together where appropriate and toreview both the process of change and its initial outcomes.

The second, national, study, in effect comprised a series of parallel mini-studies, largely based on postal surveys. Differing but complementaryquestionnaires were sent to local authorities, health authorities, localCouncils for Voluntary Service, and prominent local voluntary social careagencies such as local Age Concern and MIND groups, successive wavesbeing sent to match the tranches of reorganization in 1995, 1996, 1997 and1998. Follow-up questionnaires were sent where possible again to establish alongitudinal dimension. (Postal questionnaires were also sent to a range ofvoluntary children's organizations.) In addition, several further local author-


ity areas were selected for detailed case study treatment, mirroring (on amore limited scale) the Yorkshire and Humberside regional study. This againallowed the research team to gain a rounded view of reorganization inspeci®c areas. The particular mini-case study areas were chosen because, insome way, they provided more extreme examples of some of the issues, suchas the size of the new local authority or innovative structures, identi®ed inearlier parts of the research. This paper reviews key issues for the voluntarysector emerging from all the elements of this research programme.

Voluntary Agencies and the Process of Reform

We have already noted that local voluntary organizations felt marginal to theprocess of consultation over the form which reorganization should take.Many voluntary agencies felt that their voices were ignored or not felt to berelevant: central and local government were perceived as viewing reorgani-zation as a political argument between the arms of government alone. Somevoluntary agencies also took the view that reorganization was a matter onlyfor local government. However, as the new structures were ®nally agreed (insome cases less than a year before reorganization actually took place), thevoluntary sector began to feel the effects of impending change. Key issuesreported to us in the run-up to reorganization were as follows:

Uncertainty and disruption

Both government guidance and ``shadow'' authorities' own publicationsspoke of the importance of a ``seamless transition'' from the old authority tothe new one in terms of service delivery, and this principle should in theoryhave been extended to the operations of the voluntary sector. The picture wefound, however, was a long way from the pronouncement of the LocalGovernment Commission which indicated (1994) that it believed ``that thestructure of local government should allow voluntary organizations tocontinue to play a full part in providing local services and that transitionalarrangements should be planned in consultation with the voluntary sector toensure . . . that those who depend on it are not adversely affected during anychange in structure''. In reality, we found very many instances of voluntaryorganizations which were ill-informed about the process of local governmentreorganization and its impact on their own work: many reported that theylearned more about reorganization from the media coverage than directlyfrom local government contacts. This lack of communication from localauthority to the voluntary sector re¯ected both the insecurity within localgovernment itself, resulting in a period of almost total introspection (notedalso by health authorities which felt left, in joint planning arenas, to get onwith their own agendas); and the immense time pressure under which somenew authorities had to work to establish new structures and organizations.

Most crucially, this failure of communication affected future ®nancialsecurity. One major provider of accommodation and support reported thatthe shadow authority had not started to communicate with them till threemonths before reorganization was due: this agency's income was largely


derived from contracts and these were to expire on the day beforereorganization. Similarly, a small rural project's three-year agreement wasdue to expire on the day of reorganization. The worker commented:

``We had to tell the families we were supporting there was a possibility of servicesbeing withdrawn. Most of our committee are carers and they felt families had a rightto know.''

Both these agencies had felt obliged to issue redundancy notices to staff. Insome cases, grants and contracts were ®nalized some time after reorganiza-tion had occurred. Additionally, some agencies reported that the anxieties ofstaff were picked up by users. Two mental health voluntary groups foundthat service users became ``very anxious about change and loss''. In a few cases,these anxieties were turned to advantage as carers' groups used theirlobbying skills to good advantage to secure continued funding. Nevertheless,most agencies felt they had been left to cope with an unnecessary degree ofuncertainty and that it re¯ected a dismissive attitude to the voluntary sector:

``They should have been ready to talk and should have given the voluntary sector somepriority. It's an appalling way to treat people. It stinks of `you're only a secondaryservice'.''

Local Councils for Voluntary Services (CVSs), and their rural counterparts,as the voice of the voluntary sector, felt under pressure in many directions.They had to keep smaller groups informed, had to build new relationshipswith councillors and of®cers, and try to ensure ``proper consultation and clearinformation about the transition''. This typically had involved ``a huge increase inpaperwork and consultation documents'' and, like the additional legal workinvolved (see below) was usually unfunded (in some cases, local branchesreceived subventions from national parent organizations to help them copewith extra ®nancial costs). At the same time, CVSs were trying to ensure thatdecision-makers in the shadow local authorities understood the impact oftheir decisions on the voluntary sector.

Refocusing work, rebuilding organizations

The issue of non-co-terminosity of boundaries was identi®ed in our researchmore generally as a key issue for social services and health authorities as,whilst local government reform led to the creation of a larger number ofsmaller authorities, the concomitant NHS reorganization in 1996 led torestructuring in the opposite direction, a classic example of differinggovernment departments failing to communicate effectively. New structuresand multi-authority joint working between health and social care agenciesthus became the order of the day. This left, in many areas, the healthauthorities getting on with their own agendas and local authorities and thevoluntary sector catching up later on.

However, changing boundaries also had a considerable impact on thevoluntary sector. At a purely practical level, local government reorganization


forced a number of voluntary agencies to consider their own geographicalarea of interest. For some, there was a certain weariness in that they had onlyrelatively recently changed their boundaries to suit those of the old localauthority. Some agencies had, at the very least, to change their names, oftento help them in their negotiation for funding with new local authorities: thisprocess, however, involved consulting their membership and then, at a moreprotracted pace, changing their constitutions and dealing with inquiriesraised by the Charity Commission. One Council for Voluntary Servicecovering a small district enlarged its area of interest to cover the new largerunitary area in which it was based and did so without the agreement of aneighbouring CVS. Other groups began the process of merger or collabora-tion with similar groups in neighbouring local authorities which werethemselves to be merged. One disability group representative commented:

``Reorganization made us have to go with [the other group]. They needed us asmuch as we needed them. We hope to work by post and phone.''

In this case, the group argued that there would be bene®ts in workingtogether because the other group had greater experience and expertise.However, in many instances, groups were reluctant to follow the logic of localgovernment reorganization, and resisted merging with other organizations inneighbouring ``old'' authorities, feeling that their particular focus or interestswould be swamped by those of their prospective partners. Many respondentsin this situation recognized that the new local authorities would be unlikely tosupport the continuation of more than one distinct voluntary sectororganization offering similar speci®c services within their own areas andfelt driven unwillingly towards merger or rationalization.

No voice at court

One consequence of local government reorganization was that there was aheightened degree of mobility for local authority staff. Many moved to newauthorities out of the area, some had a key role in establishing new authoritiesin the area, and yet others took on new roles. From the perspective of thevoluntary sector, this meant generally that most lost key of®cer (and member)contacts, with whom relationships might have been built over a long periodof time and which, particularly in smaller areas, were key to the continuedsupport for the agency. One local Council of Voluntary Service, whosecommittee, typically, enabled local voluntary and professional interests tonetwork effectively, reported that the local social services manager, amember of the CVS committee and that of several other key voluntaryagencies, increasingly found it dif®cult to attend meetings as reorganizationapproached. In some cases, key personnel were replaced by others on a``holding'' basis: these substitutes often did not really know what was goingon, and could not therefore respond to the needs of the voluntary sector forgood-quality information.

This loss of of®cer contact became crucial in relation to funding as the keypoint of the budgetary cycle coincided with the demise of the ``old''


authorities. Funding issues became even more complicated where ®nancialsupport had been derived through joint funding mechanisms. In some areas,the joint care planning and ®nance structures were more or less in abeyancefor a period either side of reorganization, leaving voluntary care agencieswith yet another channel of communication closed off.

Differing local authority priorities

Many ``successor'' local authorities were not only new legal entities: they alsoespoused differing political or policy approaches from those of their``predecessor'' authorities. This in itself produced tensions, notably betweenthe declared intention of ensuring the ``seamless transition'' (``no change'')referred to above, in the interests of service users, and the ``all change''rhetoric of the new controlling political group. The reality in most areas wasthat relatively little major change was immediately possible in terms of policypriorities: most authorities were anxious simply to survive the point of changewithout a major crisis. Our earlier rounds of surveys suggest that manifestostended to begin to be operationalized more markedly from the second yearafter reorganization, although this was also the point at which the (oftenunpleasant) ®nancial realities became clear to many members. Localvoluntary agencies nevertheless felt under immediate pressure to repositionthemselves in response to these new political realities. One agency, formerlyworking across a part of an abolished county, found itself providing adifferent service in each of two new unitary authority areas where the newauthorities had very differing priorities. In one area, it had been involved inthe production of the community care plan; in the other, there had been littlecontact and the respondent felt that he was not certain if the new authorityeven understood what it was funding.

In some cases, voluntary agencies welcomed the opportunities representedby local government reform. Some new local authorities adopted a muchmore proactive and positive stance towards the voluntary sector:

``There is a very clear voluntary sector strategy document accepted by the new councilwhich endorses their support.''

However, this appeared to be the exception rather than the rule and, oneyear on (see below), most new local authorities had yet to establish a strategicpolicy for the voluntary sector: this again appeared to re¯ect the level ofenergy absorbed by getting a new system in place and operating effectively.The loss of economies of scale inherent in the creation of smaller authoritieswas particularly worrying for smaller voluntary agencies which felt that a``slimmed-down social services would move to be a purchaser and administrator ofcontracts'': they felt this would favour larger voluntary groups with authority-wide coverage.


The Early Outcomes of Reorganization for the VoluntarySector

We returned to most of our respondents a year after the new local authoritieshad been created to examine the early outcomes of reorganization. Somenew issues had emerged: others were continuing to cause anxiety.

Financial pressures

For some, reorganization had literally brought their work to a close. Severalorganizations, mainly in the area of children's services, but also specialistcare services such as a mental health users' group and a group for deafpeople, had been closed as a result of funding dif®culties. In some cases thiswas because new local authorities did not have the ®nancial capacity tosupport the range of voluntary agencies which had been funded bypredecessor authorities: this was generally a function of strategic size. Manynew local authorities were considerably smaller than the population base(roughly 120,000±150,000) indicated by research to be necessary to underpina viable unitary authority. In some instances this was a question of changedlocal authority priorities either in terms of the range of provision preferred orof the market split between public, private and voluntary sector provision.About one-third of the individual voluntary agencies surveyed in ourregional study reported that their ®nancial support had been affected, nearlyalways negatively, in the ®rst year after reorganization, and almost two-thirds that ®nancial aid was being cut in the second year.

The later national survey of CVSs revealed that cuts in funding to the localvoluntary sector had occurred in more than half of new local authority areas.These cuts reached such drastic proportions in Scotland that the ScottishOf®ce was obliged to release supplementary transitional funding to mitigatethe effects of the cuts on voluntary agencies which had lost more than 5 percent of their budgets as a result of local government reorganization. Again,this appeared often to be the consequence of the reduced capacity of smaller(including ``hybrid'') authorities to sustain previous levels of activity but insome cases it resulted from the inability of neighbouring authorities, whichhad inherited joint responsibilities for voluntary agencies working acrosstheir boundaries (previously to larger ``ancestor'' authorities), to come to anagreement about continuing joint funding. In some cases cuts were appliedunevenly: one local authority applied severe cuts to agencies which it feltcould obtain funding elsewhere (e.g. from the Lottery); in another the overalllevel of cuts was 6 per cent but some agencies, re¯ecting the new localauthority's changed priorities, lost up to 30 per cent of their budget.

The ®nancial dif®culties faced by smaller authorities also impactedindirectly on voluntary agencies. Most authorities, faced with the twinpressures of a loss of economies of scale and a deteriorating ®nancialsettlement from government, had introduced service charges where nonehad existed previously or had raised charges, often substantially. Users andcarers consequently were placing increased demands, both directly and


indirectly, on voluntary agencies as a result both of service reductions andincreased charges.

Boundary issues

Local authority boundaries remained an issue for voluntary agencies afterreorganization. Traditionally, many service users, particularly from ruralareas, had travelled to access services located in the urban cores of shires:these patterns of usage were, to a large extent, a re¯ection of public transportpatterns. To do so now, however, meant crossing newly-created localauthority boundaries. Some voluntary agencies were open about this,mapping their pattern of service provision and usage and negotiating jointfunding from neighbouring authorities. However, others, particularly whereparty political differences meant that the likelihood of a successful jointpackage of ®nancial support being achieved was small, proceeded as beforebut on a covert basis. One disability group, for example, commented that itwould not turn anyone away from its doors but that it had to be less thanopen about the fact that it was supporting people from outside its strictgeographical area of operation. In some cases, the split between rural areasand urban cores had resulted in the effective withdrawal of service from therural areas. One CVS re¯ected the complexity of the post-reorganizationsituation:

``About forty groups operate across [local authority] boundaries and are now facedwith separate agreements from two or three authorities.''

CVSs themselves were faced with complicated organizational choices. Onesuch, for example, now related to three authorities instead of the one it hadworked with previously. It faced the choice of remaining as one strongerorganization dealing with three sets of policy priorities (and managing thecorresponding political dif®culties); or creating three smaller organizationseach relating to one authority. In some cases, voluntary agencies felt obligedto withdraw services from areas where the new authority provided nomatching funding.

Rebuilding structures

Many respondents commented on the dismantling of familiar structures forjoint planning and policy discussion, and the corresponding loss of keycontacts. There had often been a hiatus for a considerable time afterreorganization before new structures were created. In some cases, thesestructures were felt to be less user-friendly than before: for example, regularconsultative meetings for individual service user groups were replaced byinfrequent ``big meetings'' where a wide range of issues were raised but localgroups felt less secure about the prospects of following particular issuesthrough and less certain of the ability of some groups, such as mental healthusers, fully to participate in them. Even where new structures were created towhich voluntary agencies felt they could relate, these often required an


increased level of time and commitment from voluntary sector agencies, ®rstto create them and then to participate in them. These were frequently quitecomplex structures. Many health authorities reported that they were nowhaving to work with more than one local authority: in one Welsh and oneScottish area, the local Health Authority/Board was having to relate to,respectively, six and twelve local authorities in joint planning and ®nancework. These complicated structures were often re¯ected in liaison work withthe voluntary sector. Where the voluntary sector might only have one seat ona joint forum, questions were raised about the extent to which a voluntarysector representative from local authority area A could represent thevoluntary sector from local authority areas B, C, D . . . and so forth. Formany voluntary sector respondents, the experience represented in rebuildingstructures highlighted the wastefulness of reorganization:

``Having made the former administrators aware of the problems of carers and users,we now have to start again.''

``People feel very demoralized. Previously one felt that both local government and thevoluntary sector were moving forward together.''

Opportunities and threats

Although this analysis reveals a strong sense of pessimism and demoralizationconsequent on reorganization (with one-quarter of our respondents statingthat they could see no bene®ts at all from reorganization), there were somepositive messages. Often, these were the other side of the coin to whatvoluntary sector respondents perceived as dif®culties inherent in the newstructure of local government. For example, the potential for a morecoordinated approach within unitary authorities to services (such as betweenhousing and social services) which were central to the work of the localvoluntary sectors, was commented on positively. Although the small size ofmany authorities was actually and potentially a source of concern, respon-dents noted that a more local focus could work to the advantage of serviceusers: need could be identi®ed and responded to more precisely. The splitbetween rural areas and urban areas, for example, was cited as helpingparticular kinds of issues to be more clearly focused. At the same time, fearswere expressed that a growing gap would again appear between the levels ofservice provided in urban areas compared with their rural neighbours. Andfears were also expressed that small authorities would become too ``parochial''with ``a narrow vision''.

A further dif®culty resulted from the fact that, on average, the newunitaries had no more than two members on the social services committee(the committee which usually oversaw relationships with the voluntary sector)with previous experience of social services work, most having come fromlower-tier districts. Until they became better immersed in the work of theunitary authorities, most members were felt to lack a strategic vision of thevoluntary sector's place, often espousing what were seen as old ``district''habits: some respondents indeed felt they were going to have to ®ght a battle


all over again to demonstrate that the voluntary sector was not a politicalthreat to the role of the elected councillor.

The fragmentation of relationships involved greater levels of adminis-trative and liaison work, particularly for coordinating bodies, and for thosewith small staf®ng levels, time demands for management work were far toohigh. Again, although joint working had become complicated in some areas,in a few local authority areas, voluntary sector respondents noted that as theywere now working with only one authority rather than two (as in the two-tiercounty areas), this would produce a clearer sense of strategic direction for thevoluntary sector. In some areas, changing political priorities meant eithergreater political support for the voluntary sector or at least more work, as agreater range of services were put out to contract. However, although thecombined effect of disruption and uncertainty, the loss of key contacts andcuts in funding meant, as some respondents judged, that the clock had, if notbeen wound back, certainly stood still for around two years in terms oforganizational and service development, by the end of the ®rst year afterreorganization there was at least a sense that ``things were beginning to settledown''. The voluntary sector could see where it might come to rest. Whetherit liked the position accorded it by its relevant local authority was anothermatter, but at least the parameters of the debate were beginning to be clearerand some sensible programme planning could be undertaken.

Conclusion: A Basis for Real Partnership

The 1995±8 local government reorganization is coming to be widely re-garded as an almost unmitigated disaster, both in terms of process andoutcomes. This is not to say that many of the new local authorities,particularly those which have returned to or newly achieved unitary status,are not pleased to have done so, and see opportunities both for improvingservice delivery and development and for a more effective form of localgovernance; or that local government as a whole will not try energetically tomake the new system work. However, there remain many questions aboutthe strategic capacity of many authorities to realize that vision, particularlygiven limitations on their size (Craig and Manthorpe 1998), which may takesome time to be answered. It would be surprising if the issue of further reformdoes not reappear in the relatively near future (particularly as otherunreformed authorities are still hankering after unitary status), with thequestion of the size of local authorities central to any future debates. Onehopes that future reforms will be informed, furthermore, by a proper debateabout the role of local government.

Local government is working to recover from the effects of a majorrestructuring which it neither sought nor whose outcomes, in many cases, ithad much in¯uence over. It is rightly critical both of government's failure toset out a clear vision for local government which could inform the process ofreform, central government often appearing more concerned with partypolitical advantage than with any rational approach to reform, and of theclumsy and disruptive way in which the process of reform took place.However, the voluntary sector can justi®ably point to failings in local


government itself for the way in which it, in turn, handled the process ofreform.

The process of change might have been made considerably less stressful ifuncertainty had been reduced, particularly over funding (for example, byguaranteed transitional funding across the reorganization divide as had beenrecommended by National Association of Councils of Voluntary Service1994, for example), but also in relation to information and communication,through effective and workable consultative structures involving old and newauthorities and the voluntary sector. Much of the stress and anxiety withwhich local social care agencies had to cope made a mockery of the principlesof user and carer involvement which had informed some of the bestcommunity care planning and development work prior to reorganization.Part of the dif®culties undoubtedly arose from the inability of some localauthorities to put aside competitive rivalries in the interests of managing asmooth transition. Whether the general lack of effective consultation will begenerously interpreted with hindsight by voluntary organizations as some-thing which was inevitable given the speed at which ®nancially andorganizationally stretched authorities had to act, remains to be seen.Reorganization was a critical test for the reality of partnership, and theevidence from this research suggests that, notwithstanding all the pressureson their own resources as they faced up to the process and outcomes ofreorganization, local authorities failed to bring voluntary agencies properlyinto partnership. The fear expressed in a brie®ng document (Local Govern-ment Management Board 1995: 1) that ``the two sectors may fail to recognizehow they work together as partners'' itself failed to re¯ect the realities ofpower as between local government and the voluntary sector. For someindividual voluntary agencies (particularly those without the support ofnational networks), and for many carers' and users' groups (which felt at thebottom end of a long decision-making chain yet again) lasting damage mayhave been done. More generally, the possibilities for a thriving, autonomousvoluntary sector were set back in many areas. And most damaging of all,many local voluntary sectors continue to understand that they are subservi-ent to and dependent on the local authority, rather than equal partners withit in policy development and service delivery.

Note

1. The studies were funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Association ofDirectors of Social Services, the Association of County Councils and several largenational voluntary childcare organizations.

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unequal partners? local government reorganization and the voluntary sector

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