"Reset" Needed Between Local And National Government, Says New LGA Chair

The new head of the Local Government Association wants a “reset” in the relationship between Westminster and councils, having been “almost like a parent child relationship” in recent years.

Louise Gittins, the Labour leader of Cheshire West and Chester Council, was appointed to the cross-party position of chair of the Local Government Association earlier this month. 

In an interview with PoliticsHome, she said that her “immediate priority” is going to be working with ministers in the new Labour Government, as she believes that councils hold “many of the solutions” to issues they want to solve. 

“The immediate priority that I’ve got it to work with the new government because we need to reset our relationship: the relationship between central and local government,” she said.

“It was quite challenging, I would say in the past.

“I know that it was quite a strange relationship with national government, almost like a parent child relationship.”

She added: “My first priority is to work with the new government to reset that relationship, because we hold many of the solutions for the missions and the challenges the country is facing: house building, childrens and adult social care, homelessness, all the messages around economic growth and climate change.”

The way central and local government work with one another was thrown into the spotlight during the Covid lockdowns thanks to issues such as tiered restrictions and financial support. 

Andy Burnham, the devolved Mayor of Greater Manchester told the Covid inquiry last year that there had been “a London centricity in decision making” over that period. 

Gittins recalls the time around the pandemic in particular as being “hugely frustrating”, and a marker of the moment she believes the