Developing a local government dataset: a tool for enhanced resilience

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Dom, B.K. ORCID: 0000-0002-0889-2571, Jones, M. ORCID: 0000-0002-0802-6470, Collins, A. ORCID: 0000-0001-9805-9091 and Murphy, P. ORCID: 0000-0001-8459-4448, 2024. Developing a local government dataset: a tool for enhanced resilience. In: United Kingdom Association for Public Administration (UKAPA) Inaugural Conference 2024, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, 12-13 September 2024.

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Abstract

Governments and Local Authorities (LAs) have been continuously challenged by the increasing financial and service pressures posed by over a decade of austerity in England as they try to maintain their delivery of public services. This prompted the researcher to create a 15-year longitudinal dataset on the revenue income, revenue expenditure, reserves, and capital items for all principal LAs in England from 2005/06-2020/21 (Dom, 2022). As the shocks from austerity and other disruptive events have continued after 2021/2022, an extension to this longitudinal dataset is being constructed to identify key income and expenditure trends and patterns to help devise better strategies and build capacity and capabilities in local authorities.

The researcher extracted further secondary data from publicly available datasets, namely (i) the Local Authority Revenue Outturn (RO) suite of forms and (ii) the Local Authority Capital Outturn Receipts (COR) group of tables, which are used by His Majesty’s Treasury and government agencies. These groups of financial data were used to extend the current data sets as they are the most informative and authoritative collection of local authority funding and spending data.

Once updated, the quantitative panel dataset allowed for comparison and analysis of English LAs’ income and expenditure over a longer-term period that includes the period up to 2023/24. This dataset provided opportunities and a comparative context for further, more detailed research into particular services and case studies on individuals or groups of LAs. The longitudinal nature of this encouraged further studies exploring LA financial arrangements for long-term comparisons of the periods before and during the austerity era and those associated with other disruptive events such as Brexit, Covid-19, the Liz Truss financial crises and the conflicts in Syria, Gaza and the Ukraine.

This development paper demonstrates how the dataset has been developed and how it has been used to date. For example, the data set has been used to identify and analyse and trends/patterns in expenditure that led to financial distress among LAs in England. (Dom et al. 2024a); how Welsh LAs prioritised limited resources to maintain public service delivery between 2010/11 to 2019/20 (Dom et al. 2022) and more specifically how cultural services in England were affected by austerity – localism (Dom et al. 2024b). Future versions of the dataset will be updated with post-2020 financial data of English and Welsh LAs will be hosted on an interactive online dashboard and made readily available to interested researchers, think tanks, and other interested stakeholders from public, private and third-sector organisations.

Item Type:

Conference contribution

Creators:

Dom, B.K., Jones, M., Collins, A. and Murphy, P.

Date:

6 September 2024

Identifiers: