By Tania Arrieta and Jonathan S. Davies
In our recently published article in Policy & Politics, we explore the context for local authorities in England that have been pushed to develop “resilience.” This has been as a result of the austerity policies that have led to the phasing out of the Revenue Support Grant (e.g., a grant given to local authorities to finance expenditure on any service), increased service demand and the need to absorb more responsibilities in their communities. Whilst having a reduced capacity, local authorities also faced the challenges imposed by the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living-crisis. Several have issued Section 114 “bankruptcy” notices indicating that they cannot balance their budgets as required by law, further escalating pressure on local services in responding to the growing inability of many to meet basic subsistence costs, such as the cost of food and housing.
Exploring resilience through the lens of crisis management, our article investigates in what ways and for whom resilience generates positive, zero and negative- sum outcomes. We believe this is a crucial moment in understanding the medium and longer-term consequences of resilience measures deployed by councils to ameliorate the effects of austerity, as they face rising financial hardship with a severely depleted resource base. Our work centres on four resilience strategies used by two unitary authorities in the East Midlands in England: Leicester City Council and Nottingham City Council. These resilience strategies are savings, reserves, collaboration, and investment.
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