By Will Mapplebeck, Public Affairs Manager, Core Cities UK
I usually live by Groucho Marx’s tenet of refusing to join any club that would have me as member, but I’ve come to realise that I do belong to a gang – the local government one.
Not that there is an official gang and if there was we wouldn’t be the cool kids on the block. We’d be the ones talking about the block itself and whether it was clearly signposted, had adequate drainage or was built to the correct safety standards.
Let’s just call it a gang, one I joined almost 20 years ago as a temporary press officer at Newcastle City Council. My first experience of local government involved sitting around waiting for a reporter from the local paper to call and then finding answers to their many, and startlingly similar, questions by deadline.
This was reasonably low stakes customer service. As we used to say after a mistake, remembering the pressure our colleagues in adults and children’s service were under, ‘well, at least no-one died’.
I’ve made it sound easy, and sometimes it was but – cliché alert – I soon realised that no day was the same. A big win for someone like me with a dangerously short attention span.
When not in the midst of major national crisis where reactive statements and local political careers were scattered like confetti, I came to realise Local Government’s unique strength – it touches on so many aspects of people’s everyday lives.
Food safety, parking enforcement, bins, social care, social housing, civil defence, leisure services, planning. It sounds like a roll call of things you wouldn’t want to talk about at a party, but during my four years at Newcastle I learned a Wikipedia-sized amount about how the local state works and its massive impacts on communities.
And all this was done with a council in the grip of austerity, when we were no longer the defender of the city, but often – unfairly – seen as an organisation that was trashing it.
I eventually tired of reactive communications – although secretly I still miss it sometimes. I went on to do more important – ahem – strategic stuff involving bigger words, longer job titles and posher meeting rooms with buffet lunches.
And I was then lucky enough to get a job with Core Cities UK representing the case for the local state and devolution to friends – and enemies – in Westminster and Whitehall.
The love for local government remained – my epic train journeys around the UK soon made me a civic building nerd as well – and, to be honest, I can’t see it going any time soon.
Those press office days were a career catalyst, helping me see the difference that a council, often in conjunction with other local actors, can make to local people’s lives.
I’m not misty eyed on local control, more power to place is no magic bullet. Councils can make catastrophic mistakes and be just as prone to group think and top down thinking as their national counterparts. But they are often far more agile and have more impact than private sector critics would give us credit for.
Council comms aren’t for everyone. I get that some people prefer their public service a bit more specialised and a little less chaotic.
But for me there’s no other sector. Nothing with the variety or the ability to touch so many aspects of everyday existence. It’s a club I’ve not only joined but am privileged to be a part of.