Duane Leo, the PSA National Secretary responsible for the Public Service Association’s Local Government sector.
PSA members working in local government also live and pay rates in the communities their council serves.
They are well aware of the significant rate increases in most areas over recent years and well aware of the projections that show that rates will need to increase considerably more to cover the range of things that local government is required to fund in future.
The Government has announced a programme of reforms it says will get rates under control. The voices we’ve heard from councils on the reforms are sceptical at best. We agree.
We do not support rates capping by central government. This has been proposed before and rejected for good reasons that still stand. It cuts to the heart of what local government is – local people making decisions about local matters important to them. Elected councillors should set rates as they are accountable to local people for getting this right, not central government.
Rates capping and removing the four well-beings from the Local Government Act are an unwelcome distraction. The Government’s yearly reports on councils risk even more distraction. While transparency is important, the measures in these reports will need to measure things that matter most to communities. They will need to be well-designed to avoid undesirable consequences, and this may not be consistent with the Government’s political aims.
Councils are under pressure from the central government to cut what they call “nice to haves” and to raise revenue from council services – this means increasing user charges for libraries, pools and rec centres, sports grounds and other services local people use and care about.
But, much of the actual and projected rate increases that rate capping purports to moderate are needed to address historical under-investment in water and other infrastructure and services, to undertake deferred maintenance, to deal with the implications of climate change and to meet community demands for new activities.
Significant increases in civil construction costs and insurance also haven’t helped. This is all important and necessary expenditure, and of course it places major pressures on budgets, including on budget for staffing.
There is also the issue of the costs to local authorities of implementing central government legislation and other programmes. There has been a rise in the transfer of central government responsibilities to local government.
This is not necessarily a bad thing since it is an important public management principle that service delivery should be as close as possible to the people who use the services. Still, it highlights the need for such transfers to be supported by adequate funding for delivery.
In addition, councils are at the frontline of adapting and responding to climate change and of recovery following climate-related [weather] events. They are often in the position of having to fill gaps in central government resourcing and provision on the ground, or responsibility is unclear, and communities suffer because of this. Responsibility and funding for adaptation, response to and recovery from climate-related adverse events need to be clarified with urgency.
As the representative of nearly a quarter of the local government workforce, we understand that councils cannot deliver their important work without the right people with the right skills. We see a close parallel between running down staff capability and conditions due to pressure on funding and deferring maintenance in infrastructure. Eventually, the workforce system will fail due to a lack of capability or will require expensive fixes.
Underinvesting in staff and capability leads to problems with recruitment and retention and creates hidden costs. Staff dissatisfied with pay and conditions will leave, and it is hard to recruit for the specialised occupations local government relies on. The consequent loss of experience and institutional memory impacts the ability to deliver the necessary infrastructure and services. Councils can use contract staff to plug gaps, but this is an expensive solution to a problem that could be addressed by better managing the issues around capability development, retention and recruitment.
Local authorities are obliged by the Local Government Act to be good employers. While there may be costs in meeting this obligation, there are also significant downstream benefits. Things like workforce planning that enable enhanced skills development and investment in staff add value to the contribution that the employees can make and to their ability to deliver the quality of infrastructure and services that citizens rightly expect.
Our members employed by local authorities also legitimately expect that their pay and conditions of service will be fair and equitable and that adequate resources to do the job well will be provided. They also expect that they should be able to bargain collectively with their employer and that wages will at least increase in line with the cost of living and that any pay inequities will be eliminated.
So, here’s our challenge: Over the next two years, we want central and local government to work with us and with the relevant professional bodies to agree on the institutional arrangements and other settings necessary to have a robust workforce strategy in place for local government by mid-2027.
This should be based on an evidence-informed, futures-focused vision for local government, and informed by robust data. It could include strong collaboration across councils on training and leverage shared interests in the strength of capability of occupations in common between central and local government.
We can do this as a coalition of the willing and because of our shared interest – not because of any top-down direction. If local government does not take ownership of its own future, we risk central government doing this for us.
As the representative of over 12,000 local government workers, and with a membership of over 96,000 people living, paying rates and voting in all areas of the country, the PSA has a strong interest in working with councils to support well-functioning, effective and efficient local government institutions that provide high-quality services and are underpinned by strong democratic foundations.