Care, public services and the importance of integrated local public ownership
After decades of austerity and market-led reforms, local public services in many countries are under strain; fragmented, under-resourced, and too often driven by profit rather than public need. In the face of mounting evidence of the failures of privatisation, a growing number of cities and towns are reclaiming control through remunicipalisation. This briefing explores how bringing services back into public hands can help build more integrated, democratic, and caring local economies, and why this shift is essential for creating more resilient and equitable communities.
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Introduction
The importance of integrated local public ownership and control of services was highlighted during the COVID Pandemic where some of the world’s wealthier countries – notably the US and UK – experienced some of the worst infection and mortality rates.1 Research has suggested that a lack of local public capacity, as a result of decades of cuts to public services and the reduction of trained staff, often driven by austerity policies, hampered initial efforts to combat the spread of COVID. The effects were especially evident for local government services, where so many vital functions and activities related to care, health but also the basic infrastructures for everyday life are located and managed. Particularly hard hit were poorer communities, where the lack of access to decent affordable local health and social care was often a critical factor accounting for much higher mortality rates than in wealthier sections of the population.
The Pandemic came on the back of almost four decades of dominant neoliberal policymaking around the world, which assumes that forms of market provision and private enterprise are more efficient than the public sector, or a planned approach, in the delivery of critical public services, across a range of sectors from water to energy, to health and social care, and transport. Yet the evidence of poor performance of privatised and outsourced local services has mounted, as they put short-term profits of private operators over good and affordable provisioning that cares for communities. When for-profit services rely on cost cutting measures this often involves downsizing and deteriorating conditions for workers. In response to these failures, there has been a growing trend towards what is termed remunicipalisation.2 This is where cities and towns take privatised and outsourced public services back into local (municipal) ownership and control.
In this short briefing, we demonstrate the importance of remunicipalisation as a key dimension in creating better, more integrated, democratic and publicly owned local service provision. We show that this is critical to shift away from economies driven by private profit and growing inequalities, and towards an agenda around more equitable and caring societies.
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