What has the pandemic taught us are the necessary pre-conditions for effective devolution of a public service to the local tier? Within that, what has the pandemic taught us about how accountability, such as managing public money, should be managed? And where does the evidence show that centralisation is more appropriate?

Background

The questions that will help us to grow our understanding to support the recovery from the pandemic, and to inform the medium and long term strategy for ‘living with COVID’, in areas relevant to DLUHC responsibilities.

Next steps

The lead contacts are: Lesley Smith, Senior Principal Research Officer, Analysis, Research and Co-ordination Unit, Analysis and Data Directorate: Lesley.Smith@levellingup.gov.uk and David Hughes, Head of the Chief Scientific Adviser’s office: psChiefScientificAdviser@levellingup.gov.uk.

Source

This question was published as part of the set of ARIs in this document:

DLUHC Areas of research interest GOVUK

Related UKRI funded projects

  • COVID-19 and councils' finances: understanding risks and impacts and improving policy

    Councils are on the front line of the coronavirus crisis, being responsible for key services like social care and homelessness prevention and facing revenues falling due to lockdown. Government has provided them with bil...

    Funded by: COVID

    Lead research organisation: Institute for Fiscal Studies

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project analyzes the financial risks facing different councils and their potential financial resilience, which is relevant to understanding how accountability, such as managing public money, should be managed during the pandemic.

  • The governance of multi-sector public service delivery networks.

    The use of market-inspired instruments for steering public service delivery has become ubiquitous across developed economies and yet the experience with contracting for complex services suggests that we are still in the ...

    Funded by: FLF

    Lead research organisation: University of Oxford

  • COVID and the UK nations' fiscal frameworks: impacts, performance and lessons

    The UK's devolved governments (UKDGs) are responsible for much of the COVID-19 response for 10.5 million people. But they have raised concerns that the funding frameworks in which they operate are constraining their abil...

    Funded by: COVID

    Lead research organisation: University of Strathclyde

    Why might this be relevant?

    The project examines the fiscal frameworks of the devolved governments in response to the COVID-19 crisis, which partially addresses the question about the necessary pre-conditions for effective devolution of a public service to the local tier during the pandemic.

  • Beyond resource allocation formulae: analysing the role of local health authorities and providers in achieving equity in service delivery

    The aim of the fellowship is to acquire the kills to develop and apply an extended framework for the analysis of resource allocation that accounts for how local organizations determine the equitable and efficient use of ...

    Funded by: MRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Manchester

  • De Montfort University And Association for Public Service Excellence

    To develop practical tools and guides to be able to offer specialist services to, and advocacy for, councils addressing the operational challenges of reduced public spending....

    Funded by: Innovate UK

    Lead research organisation: DE MONTFORT UNIVERSITY HIGHER EDUCATION CORPORATION

  • Locked down, locked out? Local Partnership Resilience in the Covid-19 Pandemic

    This is a project about how the Covid-19 pandemic has affected arrangements for agencies that work in partnership within local communities to deal with difficult and complex social problems. It is increasingly well-know...

    Funded by: COVID

    Lead research organisation: Edinburgh Napier University

  • Accountability, Efficiency, Improvement and Change in UK Local Public Services: The Role of Benchmarking and External Performance Assessment

    The knowledge exchange will facilitate the development of a network of policy makers and practitioners who will work with social science researchers to analyse and respond to the challenges of performance assessment in p...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: Cardiff University

  • Shrinking the state: reforming arm's length bodies in an age of austerity

    Calls for a 'bonfire of the quangos' regularly appear on the political agenda in the UK, but often fail to deliver significant reforms. Now, however, the Coalition Government is making a sustained attempt to reform these...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: University of Birmingham

  • Quantification, Administrative Capacity and Democracy

    Numbers increasingly govern public services. Both policymaking activities and administrative control are increasingly structured around calculations such as cost-benefit analyses, estimates of social and financial return...

    Funded by: ESRC

    Lead research organisation: London School of Economics and Political Science

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