Managing the Budgetary Process in a Hung Council
| Published date | 01 December 2000 |
| Date | 01 December 2000 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9299.00231 |
MANAGING THE BUDGETARY PROCESS IN A
HUNG COUNCIL
STEVE LEACH AND SUE CHARTERIS
This paper examines the impact of a change in 1994 from majority control to no
overall control on the operation of a strategic medium-term budget and policy plan-
ning process in Kirklees MBC. Six hypotheses are set out regarding the changes
that might have been anticipated in the budget process, in the light of recent trends
in the approach to budgeting in British local government, and the particular political
context and recent political history of the authority. Use is made of a diary kept by
a participant observer (who is also one of the authors) to document and analyse
key events in the budget process. The six hypotheses are examined against the evi-
dence, and with some exceptions are confirmed. It is concluded that Kirklees’s well-
structured budget process did survive the transition to no overall control, but not
without considerable difficulty. Careful management from the Executive Board,
especially in brokering discussion, was a critical factor and highly advantageous to
the success of the process.
This paper examines the impact of a move from majority control to no
overall control on the budget process in a local authority which was at
the time operating a strategic and well-integrated budgetary and service
planning process. The onset of hungness in May 1994 posed a series of
challenges to the process and an analysis of the response of the authority
and key actors within it is of wider interest for two main reasons.
(i) it illustrates the extent to which more ‘strategic’ approaches to
budgeting can be sustained following a move to no overall control;
(ii) it provides (with the benefit of the detailed note kept by one of the
authors) a blow-by-blow account of a process of internal negotiation,
in which the use of tactics by key actors influenced the outcome –
and in particular the interplay of different member and officer per-
ceptions and actions.
Thus although, as with all case studies, much of the evidence and analysis
is necessarily specific to one authority, the implications in this case are of
much wider interest. Hung authorities have become an increasingly sig-
nificant element in the local political landscape. After the May 1997 local
elections, 134 or 30 per cent of all local authorities in Britain were hung
(compared with figures of 16 per cent in 1981 and 27 per cent in 1991).
Steve Leach is Professor in the Department of Public Policy at De Montfort University.
Sue Charteris is Acting Director of Development in the Local Government Centre at Warwick Busi-
ness School.
Public Administration Vol. 78 No. 4, 2000 (793–814)
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000, 108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JF, UK and 350 Main Street,
Malden, MA 02148, USA.
794 STEVE LEACH AND SUE CHARTERIS
Thus every year authorities are experiencing the transition from majority
control to no overall control, which Kirklees experienced in 1994, and are
faced with similar challenges of sustaining (or modifying) budget processes
which operated in different (majority-control) circumstances. There is a
well-established literature on local authority budget processes
(emphasizing in the 1970s the resilience of incrementalism) but little in the
way of recent empirical work which has considered the impact of the rad-
ical changes in the operating environment of local government since 1987
(for example, Compulsory Competitive Tendering, universal council tax
capping) on such processes. This case study provides an opportunity to
examine, in one authority, the recent history of approaches to budgeting
in this context. Furthermore, the role of participant observer, played by one
of the authors, provides a rare opportunity to follow through ‘from the
inside’ the interplay of political and professional actors in relation to the
budget process.
The paper is structured in the following way. First a brief theoretical
review of the literature on local authority budgetary processes is related to
the literature on hung authorities. Secondly, a brief account is provided of
the development of the integrated, strategic budget process in Kirklees,
relating its development to its specific political and constitutional context
and history. From these two pieces of analysis a series of hypotheses are
developed testing out what might have been expected to happen to the
budget process in Kirklees in 1994–95. The experience of the budget process
in Kirklees is then set out, drawing on the personal diary kept by one of
the authors, and is interpreted in the light of these hypotheses. The account
set out in the case study section based on the diary has been verified as
accurate by two other key actors in the process: the Leader of the Council
and the then Chief Executive. Finally, some more general conclusions about
the impact of a move to no overall control on budget processes, in the
current circumstances of British local government, are discussed.
A REVIEW OF LOCAL AUTHORITY BUDGETARY PROCESSES
In both local and central government, the setting of the budget is widely
and justifiably regarded as the single most significant process and decision
which is made by a local authority during the course of the municipal year.
Individual political decisions may be more controversial – for example the
announcement of a programme of schools closures. However, the crucial
nature of budget-setting lies in its comprehensiveness; real choices have to be
made between different possibilities for new expenditure, or in the current
circumstances, expenditure cuts. Because resources are always ‘limited’, the
budget process forces a local authority to prioritize from the various policies
and activities it wishes to initiate or continue. In hung councils it accentu-
ates the differences between the different party policies.
The centrality of the annual budget process in national and local demo-
cratic bodies has long been recognized in academic writing and research.
Blackwell Publishers Ltd. 2000
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