The Limits to Resilience? The Impact of Local Government Spending Cuts in London

Abstract

Amanda Fitzgeralda* & Ruth Luptonba Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics, London, UKb School of Environment, Education and Development, University of Manchester, Manchester, UKAmanda Fitzgerald is a research officer at the Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics and Political Science and a doctoral candidate at the Department of Geography, University of Cambridge. Her current research includes the impacts of recession, spending reform and social policy change on local government services and residents in London, and the geography of poverty. Her doctoral work is on the themes of European integration, governmentality and learning mobility.Ruth Lupton is a professor of education at the University of Manchester, where she researches poverty, inequality and education. She also researches spatial inequalities, neighbourhood dynamics and neighbourhood effects. She is the author of Poverty Street, the Dynamics of Neighbourhood Decline and Renewal, 2003, Policy Press. Most recently, she has led a programme of work examining the social policy records of the Labour and Coalition governments, from which the current article arises.Correspondence Address: Amanda Fitzgerald, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics, Houghton Street, London WC2A 2AE, UK. E-mail: af252@cam.ac.ukAbstractCompared with other service areas, spending on local government has suffered particularly large cuts under the austerity measures of the Coalition government in England since 2010. This article provides detailed evidence from three London boroughs as to the impacts of these cuts. Following an analysis of the scale and distribution of the cuts, we describe how local authorities have responded, utilising categories of efficiencies, reinvestment and retrenchment. We then address the extent to which these responses demonstrate local authority resilience. We find that the boroughs have demonstrated, in the period covered, a capacity to ‘bounce forward’ from the external shock of the cuts, corresponding to a concept of ‘resilience as transformation’. However, we conclude that a broader notion of resilience is also needed, taking into account not only the nature of organisational responses but also the extent of their capacity to support the needs of residents, which a focus on transformation may too easily obscure.

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