Blog: 2nd February 2024 - Wilkin Chapman, Corporate Partner

Local Government Lawyers and Oscar Wilde

Recently I had an interesting conversation with a dear former colleague. He shall be nameless but is an experienced local government lawyer. I asked him how things were going. He told me that the department had been externally reviewed, to be told what he, his colleagues and I already knew – too many demands on their time, increasing complexity of work, inability to recruit, poor pay structures, too much reliance on locums. All depressingly familiar. I joked that, when I lived through the austerity years in local government, we had the shared office pen, but things have got much worse since then.

The pressures on local government lawyers have never been greater and yet the benefits and attraction of the role have never been less. Every day we read of another council on the brink of financial disaster. S114 notices are popping up all over the place. As I write, a cross-party committee of MPs has called for action to plug a £4bn funding gap for the sector. Similar themes emerge time and time again: the legacy of austerity and reduced government grant over several years; increased pressures of social care, children’s services, homelessness; inflationary pressures.

Even if a council is not in S114 territory, constant budgetary pressures and demands for costs savings, combined with ever new and expanding legislation, means that local government lawyers are, year on year, expected to do more with less. And yet, the message from Mr Gove et al is shiny and positive. A recent announcement from DLUHC was hailed with much fanfare. Local councils would receive an extra £600 million on top of the 24-25 settlement. While welcomed, the announcement was accompanied by the statement, “This additional £600 million support package illustrates our commitment to local government. We are in their corner, and we support the incredible and often unsung work they do day-to-day to support people across the country.” And yet, further down the page, this, “Separately, councils will be asked to produce productivity plans which will set out how they will improve service performance and reduce wasteful spend….”. Oh how grudging. Who doesn’t shudder at the phrase “productivity plans”? Local government lawyers will groan as they continue to manage increasing workloads while being asked to slash the usual 10 or 20% off their budgets. All this while trying to recruit an experienced contracts and procurement lawyer for the 25^th time. I am reminded of Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray”. The image that DLUHC presents to the world is beautiful, clear, crisp; but the hidden reality for local government lawyers is faded, creaking and crumbling.

S114 improvement plans have shown that lawyers have a vital role to play and, indeed, they are fundamental to everything that any council hopes to achieve. So let’s stop underfunding them and banishing them to the corner office by the back door. Let’s support them. As Oscar rightly says, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Estelle Culligan, Partner, Wilkin Chapman