Cuts: does it matter that councils are old, white, male and middle-class?

There has been much grumbling over the socio-economic profile of the Coalition cabinet : between 18 and 20 of those 23 ministers are believed to be millionaires. They are mainly male, and white. A high proportion were educated at elite public schools. The implication is that the ministers who impose spending cuts are "out of touch" with the day-to-day realities faced by ordinary people who have deal with the consequences. But what about councils? At local level, are councillors any more representative of their local communities they serve, and in the age of cuts, does this matter? Some interesting research exploring this question has been published today by the GMB union . This looks at Central Bedfordshire council. This has a big Conservative majority, with a handful of Liberal Democrats and two independent members, and has just agreed a £20m cuts package for 2011-12. Youth services, libraries and school music are targeted, and 300 jobs - around 10% of the workforce - have been axed. The GMB argues that the council's cuts choices show that councillors are "out of tune with what residents want". This detachment from everyday reality, it argues, was inevitable because members are: "Untypical of the residents that they serve" The GMB's research looks at the age, race, gender and social classification of the council's Conservative councillors (and as this gallery suggests , the Liberal Democrats and Independent members may not be much different). It compares its findings with demographic data on local residents aged over 16, and concludes the council is disproportionately white, male and middle class: "Despite the largest percentage of local residents being aged between 35 and 49 years only 13% of the councillors come within that age range and 49% of the councillors are aged over 65 while only 18.9% of residents are over 65. The 100% white ethnic make up of the Councillors again fails to reflect the 4.5% of the residents from ethnic minority backgrounds. One of the biggest disparities is revealed in the occupations of the councillors as 73% of them are in the census classification of 'Managers and senior officials' and 'professional' while 21.4% of residents do that type of work. Residents work overwhelmingly in lower paid occupations such as services, sales, manual and skilled jobs... 74% of the councillors are men while half of all residents are women." Warren Kenny, GMB Senior Organiser said: "Now we know why Central Bedfordshire councillors keep getting it so wrong. They don't reflect the people they represent. This being the case how can they possible understand the values and priorities of the residents whose lives are so different in so many ways. Maybe it's time for residents to think carefully about their voting intentions in the forthcoming May 5th elections. " Kenny is making a political point. But Central Bedfordshire's cuts priorities do not, on the face of it, seem so distinctively different from those of many other councils, of all political hues. The shredding of youth services, libraries and school music, and the deleting of hundreds of jobs, is sadly commonplace. Nor does it seem like the profile of Central Bedfordshire's conservative councillors is dramatically more untypical than other conservative run councils, or indeed of councillors in England generally. According to the latest Local Government Association census of local authority councillors in England , published in 2008: • 68.4 per cent of councillors in England are male, 30.8 per cent are female (0.8% did not provide details). 51% of the over 18 population of England are women. • 16% of councillors are aged between 35 and 49, while 34% were over 65. The average age is 59. • 96.6 per cent of councillors were white and 3.4 per cent came from an ethnic minority background. The proportion of the adult population in England who are white is 89%. Only 1.5% of all Conservative councillors are classed as ethnic minority (8.9% of Labour councillors). London boroughs have a greater proportion of ethnic minority councillors (16%) • 69% of all councillors who are in employment have managerial or professional backgrounds (43% of all councillors are retired). I asked Central Bedfordshire council to respond to the GMB survey. Council leader Tricia Turner said: "We do want to attract more young people into local government and are trying to increase the diversity in the make up of our council... But - we don't accept that an ambition to be more diverse mans that we don't represent the views of the people who elect us. We work hard at our community engagement, through face to face community meetings, consultations and effective communication. We listen and we respond. That is why we have changed our position on some of our budget proposals, including that to scrap our crossing patrols where we took on board the feedback and concerns of the public and agreed to continue funding." But while local authority representatives may not be on the whole reflective of their local communities, it's not clear this has made a material difference to councils' cuts choices. The scale and speed of cuts has been determined by central government. What services and jobs councils cut seems predominantly influenced by decisions taken in Whitehall: by the communities secretary Eric Pickles (such as the cutting of area based grants); by the previous administration (such as the un-ringfencing of the Supporting People housing grant ); or historical legacy (the long list of statutory duties built up over the years). What's been striking about this round of cuts is just how little leeway councils have had, given the frontloading of cuts that will strip away a quarter of their budgets over the next four years. The amount of spending that they have control over is small, relative to their overall budget. Cuts choices have had to be disproportionately concentrated on these discretionary areas. It's not hard to wonder if locally-elected councillors have been mere bystanders at an event orchestrated by ministers and produced by council officers. In the scramble to set a legal budget, the age, gender and ethnic background of councillors might actually have been irrelevant. But what happens in the supposedly decentralised, post-localism bill future when councils might conceivably have stronger powers to set the local agenda? Does community representativeness matter then? Blogger and Liberal Democrat Suffolk county councillor Craig Dearden-Phillips vividly touched on this on this when he wrote, with barely concealed horror, about Suffolk's recent budget cuts meeting : What I took from this awful afternoon was two things. One is how the party system is killing local government. Instead of a balanced and measured approach from Councillors that reflects community concern, they all just line up behind their parties and do as they are told. That this will come back and haunt a few of them, sure, but most are in safe seats in a Tory shire. They don't need to listen. The second is the nature of people in representative roles in local government. The lack of diversity is astonishing. There are no black people in a chamber of 75. Women are fairly thin on the ground. Young people under 40 - hardly any. People in actual paid work - a handful. People with college degrees - perhaps a quarter. People with specialist knowledge - a smattering. This means that officers tend to be the source of most intellectual and managerial drive within the council. If power really does devolve to communities - and assuming local government wields that power - then the white, elderly, male, middle-class professional domination of Town Halls might soon become a serious problem. As Dearden-Philips notes: "The Council is the only place in my life where, at 41, I feel a bright young thing. That can't be right, surely?"