Exclusive: interview with COSLA chief executive Sally Loudon

COSLA chief executive Sally Loudon - Image credit: COSLA

Sally Loudon has been in post as chief executive of local government organisation COSLA for six months, having joined at the beginning of May from a similar role heading up Argyll and Bute Council.

One would have expected she would want to make some changes, with previous chief executive Rory Mair having been in post for 14 years, and indeed, COSLA is currently undertaking an internal review.

But it has also been a time of great external change politically, with a new prime minister, the return of the SNP government as a minority administration, the re-election of Jeremy Corbyn as leader of the Labour Party and Brexit.

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It’s been a fascinating time to be involved in a national role, Loudon says. Although her current position is “very different” from her previous job as a local authority chief executive, she’s grateful for having had the experience of doing that before coming into this role.

The key difference she mentions is she no longer has direct responsibility for service delivery.

“And not having that frees up an enormous amount of time for thinking, … or more time for working through, the relationships that I want to cultivate, or cement that were already in place before.

“Lots of time for thinking about national policy positions for local government, and I suppose, just positioning local government in its rightful place of being the other sphere of government within Scotland.”

Loudon says she has spent quite a lot of time speaking to councils and civil servants about what that positioning would mean and has had “some frank and candid discussions”, which she hopes will bear fruit over the coming weeks and months.

But given that she’s been in post six months and this is her first interview, does she think she has a high enough profile and should she be out in the media more pushing public awareness?

“I think there’s a number of things,” she answers. “One is I think my profile is good in relation to who I need to speak to and I’ve spent a lot of time…trying to reach out to the people where I think it’s beneficial for COSLA or local government to have a relationship with, and that’s bearing fruit now, so that’s good.

“There’s also, I think…a difference in my role in relation to the senior politicians’ roles in COSLA, and they have presence in the media and I think it’s right and proper that that’s led by politicians.”

In this she follows her predecessor, Rory Mair, who rarely spoke out publicly on behalf of COSLA, until earlier this year, perhaps feeling freer in the run-up to retirement, he gave some outspoken interviews criticising the local government settlement.

Loudon is clear that she sees her role as being behind the scenes making strategic relationships, but mentions that she has spoken at conferences and has a couple more lined up.

“I think it’s important to do things like that, but I think the political messages need to come from the politicians,” she explains.

When Holyrood first spoke to Loudon shortly after she started at COSLA, she had a list of things she wanted to achieve within 100 days of starting. Holyrood asks what they were and whether she succeeded in achieving them.

“A lot of it was about relations…a number of things were about the internal organisation and things like creating council liaison officers, chief officers here acting as liaison officers out to councils, we’ve made all of that happen, the COSLA review – we’ve expanded some of that and done things like surveys out to elected members, so all of those things have been achieved. Developing a good relationship with civil servants, that’s been achieved.

One key area that was not within her plans was Brexit, which she says will have a “big impact” on local government, both in terms of funding and numerous other areas of policy and is a key focus for collaboration, both with local government bodies in England, Wales and Northern Ireland and with national government, to ensure the local government voice is heard.

“I suppose the other [thing] that’s developed quicker than I thought … is the whole local government voice,” Loudon continues.

“And what I mean by that is where we have an area of policy development that we’ve worked with professional associations, trade unions, anybody that’s involved in that space to see where there’s commonality of a local government voice, so that’s been much more collaborative and joined up, and I think that has helped local government.”

Collaboration is the watchword in the public sector at the moment. Does Loudon feel this is a change, that there is greater collaboration?

“Yes, definitely. And the next step for that is to see who we can work with outside the direct local government family, like academics, business, in relation to what serves communities, what serves local government best,” she says.

Loudon mentions areas that COSLA can work more proactively with business on, for example, broadband and mobile technology, and notes that requests to look at more involvement of the private sector and business came across very strongly in the feedback from the recent COSLA/IS annual conference.

As well as external circumstances, there’s also a great deal of change going on within COSLA itself. The organisation is in the middle of a review, which has four strands to it.

One is around communications, with an emerging new communications strategy coming out of that. The second is about how COSLA and professional associations work together, taking a “whole local government family approach”, and the third is about what COSLA’s key priorities should be.

Although still to be approved by members, Loudon mentions that public service reform, the local government settlement, health and social care integration, education and Brexit are likely to be the key ones.

The area that requires a bit more work, Loudon says, is looking at COSLA’s own governance structures, but there is time to finish that, because they are for post-May 2017.

In his conference speech, COSLA president David O’Neill mentioned the reform agenda and how local government needs to be ahead in that. Loudon too made a very strong point in her own speech that the discussion should be about public sector reform not local government reform, but there seems to be a view coming from the Scottish Government that it doesn’t think local government is reforming fast enough. Is it being sufficiently proactive in terms of reform?

“On a local basis, there are many things happening in terms of transformation in local authorities. I think my job is to articulate that more clearly and let the public know more what is happening nationally and illustrate it to the Scottish Government, perhaps more clearly than what has happened before,” Loudon answers.

“But if you look over the last six years, there’s been a real reduction in grant of 14.2 per cent, there’s been a council-tax freeze and there’s been an 11 per cent reduction in full-time equivalent staff in local government.

“You then look at productivity. Productivity levels have significantly increased and performance levels have either been maintained or improved, so you can’t do all of that without there having been transformation, and the point that the president was making, and I was making in my speech, is for us that means that local government has dealt with the first wave of austerity really well and we do need to articulate that probably more clearly.

“However, for the next stage, then there’s more that we can do as a national local government approach for public service reform and we are having discussions with the Government over the next weeks and months to articulate what we mean by that.

“The whole theme of the conference was around what is the next stage of public service reform going to be and that local government wants to play a leading role in all of that, which is a different sort of language than might have been used before.”

‘Community empowerment’ is another phrase that is bandied about a great deal at the moment and councils have been making the right noises in terms of it being the thing to do, but in practice, Holyrood suggests, is it not often a little tokenistic in practice, more consultation than a truly bottom-up approach?

“I think that’s a misconception. There are examples up and down the land where communities…are changing and shaping what’s happening in their areas and local government is supporting that. You could go to any council in Scotland and see examples of that.

“And it’s one area that we, along with the Improvement Service and others, can illustrate clearly.”

She continues: “I think we get slightly frustrated that the media expect massive heroic things, as they did with shared services.

“I think we’re further down the line on community empowerment.  But, you know, there is real progress being made. Just because it’s not the big bang that the media expect, it is ongoing.”

Education is a key battleground right now in terms of messages coming from the Scottish Government such that it is considering taking power from local authorities and giving it to head teachers. What are Loudon’s thoughts on that?

“COSLA’s position’s clear, in relation to where the democratic accountability for education and spend on education should lie, and that’s with councils,” she says.

She mentions an event at the beginning of November, focusing on collaboration in local government, which the Scottish Government was expected to attend and where they would hear of “lots of the positive things” that are already happening or are already planned within local government.

So, does the message on education sound worse the way it’s been communicated publicly than it actually is in private discussions?

“We still remain concerned around it and we still feel we have more evidence to give to Scottish Government, but there is an ongoing communication, it’s fair enough to say,” Loudon answers, neutrally.

One of the key differences, she says, is that now “the whole local government family is with us on this”, whereas in days gone by, it would have been “just COSLA shouting from the side-lines”.

“Now the teaching unions, SOLACE, ADES, and even the Association of Headteachers are involved, so the arguments “have been much more reasonable and better evidenced” than perhaps they have been in the past.

But control of education is just one of a whole range of issues facing local government, funding being the key one, does she feel that local government is under siege?

“There is an element where local government does need to defend its democratic accountability as a sphere of government and there is a concern around looking at different parts of the public sector and reform in silos and…COSLA’s view is that there should be a whole-system approach to looking at public service reform and not looking at reviews in silos, and those are the arguments that we’ve been taking to the Government.”

Funding was a key battleground last year, with strong messages from both COSLA and finance secretary John Swinney over the shape of the local government settlement and the requirements linked to it over maintaining teacher numbers and the living wage for care workers.

And although the Scottish Government won’t be able to confirm its 2017/18 funding offer to councils until after the Chancellor’s Autumn Statement, it is likely to be another challenging budget.

Next year, councils will be able to raise council tax by up to three per cent in addition to an increase on bands E-H, following last week’s voting through of the Scottish Government’s council tax proposals by MSPs.

Meanwhile, Derek Mackay has also indicated that the Scottish Government is likely to reduce the central grant to local authorities in order to direct more money to educational attainment, so councils may not see any more in their coffers overall.

Is there more give in the budget, and if there isn’t, what will COSLA do? Loudon can’t be drawn too much at this stage.

“I think it’s fair to say we’re currently in negotiations with the Scottish Government and we need to let some of those negotiations play out. And then the negotiations will work or the negotiations won’t work, so it’s too early to say,” she answers.

However, in relation to the criticism that last time around that it wasn’t really a negotiation, councils were simply given an offer by Swinney that they couldn’t refuse, she notes that “it does feel like it’s a negotiation, but it’s still early-ish days”.

Loudon is keen to emphasise, though, that the direction of travel within COSLA is towards more collaboration, a more unified local government voice that includes other relevant organisations, and that the relationship with the Scottish Government is not as strained as it might often appear.

“If you look at a lot of the things we do with the Scottish Government, the vast majority of things are co-produced and are agreed.

“The things that journalists want to talk to us about are areas where we’re not in agreement… actually, local government’s aspirations and the Scottish Government’s aspirations around policy areas tend to be very similar.

“The discussion and the debate comes not on the what do we want to achieve; it’s how do we go about achieving it. And that’s the space where there’s often disagreement.

So there’s no disagreement on education attainment and closing the education attainment gap; it is around how do we actually make that happen.”

And it’s clear that that discussion will be ongoing for some time to come.