Paint Your Town Red
by Matthew Brown and Rhian E Jones
Repeater Books, £10.99

LOCAL councils have never had it so bad. Since 2010 they’ve been carrying the bag for repetitive government austerity policies and at least 15 have been identified as being at risk of insolvency.

Expenditure on local public services has reduced by almost 20 per cent in the last decade. Recent reports claim councils are planning to make another £1.7 billion of cuts this financial year, use more than £500 million of their reserves to help balance the books and raise council tax by an average of 4.3 per cent.

Despite all of this, a collective £3 billion budget shortfall is being predicted by 2023-24.

Instead of merely trying to manage this increasingly desperate situation a small number of local authorities are fighting back. Preston is leading the way in attempting to break the relentless diet of austerity with ambitious local projects.

Its community wealth building approach uses the collective power of public institutions and local resources to rebalance the economy in favour of local residents and away from businesses that have repeatedly displayed no loyalty to the town.

The council has built alliances with its large local employers that have redirected economic development towards supporting community wealth. By encouraging these businesses, and its own suppliers, to develop ethical behaviours they have shifted the distribution of spending through a process of “positive procurement.”

Preston identified areas where money was leaking out of the local economy and now issues contracts for council services to benefit local people and businesses. Local authority pension funds were even redirected from global markets to local investments.

It became the first Living Wage Foundation accredited employer in the north of England and localises a portion of its spending specifically in support of local worker co-operatives. The council also backed a city-wide credit union to take on high cost loan sharks.

The town has seen a significant economic upturn and real material improvements for its people. By 2020 Preston had achieved its highest employment rate and lowest levels of economic inactivity for 15 years. In the 2019 election it was one of the few constituencies to buck the national swing that saw Labour lose support in its former heartlands.

Their model is still developing and will not work everywhere, nor solve all council problems, but Preston is proving that effective action, done by local communities rather than being done to them, is an important source of hope and change.

This book is not a detailed economic case study and it’s not all about Preston. It offers advice, interesting and inspirational ideas that demonstrate the potential of social activism to make meaningful improvement in all of our lives.