According to one of the great 19th-century champions of municipal government, a well-run town was “a solemn organism through which should flow … all the highest, loftiest and truest ends of human nature.” Local leaders, argued the influential Birmingham preacher George Dawson, were charged with delivering beauty and dignity to all the members of a community, as well as order and health.
The vision of Dawson’s “civic gospel” is, of course, a world away from present realities. Hobbled by funding cuts since 2010, England’s 317 councils are paying the price of the failures of central government. Statutory obligations relating to adult and child social care and the homelessness crisis mean they are struggling to offer even the bare minimum to local electorates.
