This article forms part of the LGA's Re-thinking local think piece series.
In Northern Ireland, Devolution remains comparatively immature. Councils in Northern Ireland invest less than 5% of the public purse (£850 million of a £23 billion public service annual budget), with most powers and services retained by 7 government departments and its agencies. That being said, the 11 councils’ response to 3 years of no politically led Legislative Assembly (ending January 2020), followed closely by Covid-19, has shown their community connectivity, good governance, innovation, value and immense potential, with councils being asked to do far more than their fiscal fragility and business model can sustain.
Councils are ideally placed, geographically and constitutionally, to drive economic recovery, maintain social cohesion, peace and reconciliation, develop preventative health partnerships to aid emotional recovery, and drive the Green Economy
This is exemplified by Mid Ulster Council during Covid-19, which recalibrated an entire Leisure Complex over 36 hours to ensure that several manufacturing companies working out of neighbouring small business spaces could safely relocate, co-ordinate product diversification and manufacture PPE equipment, with council staff also redeployed to ensure safety as well as to maximise links with the NHS and other supply chains. The initiative led to thousands of the quality assured products being exported to England and further afield.
NILGA during 2020/21 seeks (in September 2020) a Floor of the House debate in Stormont, in regard to the Roles, Resources and Future of Local Government in Northern Ireland, aligned to a more locality and place shaping, co-designed Programme for Government, as the region will need to totally reshape public expenditure and its governance model in light of Covid-19. Councils are ideally placed, geographically and constitutionally, to drive economic recovery, maintain social cohesion, peace and reconciliation, develop preventative health partnerships to aid emotional recovery, and drive the Green Economy, through municipal led achievement of Sustainable Development Goals. In this vein, NILGA strongly supports the policy proposal in the Rethink Local piece:
To convene the wide range of local partners needed in order to deliver a place-based approach to {public health},
And asserts that this convening power should be utilised in Northern Ireland for all neighbourhood services, including regeneration and contingency planning, to be coordinated through councils, with a requisite transfer of resources to make this transformation both certain, and effective.
