Introduction

In the UK, central government implemented public sector funding cuts following the global economic crash in 2008. These cuts were applied from 2010 and local authorities are at the forefront of central government's austerity measures. This chapter describes Gateshead Council's approach to place-based working during austerity and an initiative it developed. Austerity measures meant that existing levels of service provision were impossible to maintain, and within the council, there was increasing awareness that many residents were also feeling the effects of austerity and were in precarious financial and socio-economic circumstances. Gateshead's response endeavours to coordinate stretched resources, working in collaboration with colleagues from other organisations to influence partnership working in order to achieve better outcomes for residents.

The approach, ‘Thriving for All – Tackling Poverty in Gateshead’ (originating from Gateshead Council's ‘Making Gateshead a place where everyone thrives’ (Gateshead Council, no date) strategy and referred to as Thrive in this chapter), was launched at a conference in February 2018 and brought people together from diverse organisations to tackle key social justice issues around poverty and inequality. The chapter begins by outlining local authority austerity and its effects, and considering the development of partnership and place-based working and the role of the local authority. The development of the Thrive approach is described, reflecting how it might contribute to social renewal and social justice, and the challenges of implementing the approach.

Local authority austerity

To reduce the public deficit caused by the global financial crash in 2008 and the additional debt that was incurred through the British government's rescue of UK banks, austerity measures were introduced that resulted in public sector spending cuts (Blyth, 2013). Between the financial years of 2010/11 to 2017/18, the amount of central government funding to local authorities almost halved (a 49.1 per cent reduction) (Comptroller and Auditor General, 2018: 7). Local government's response to the cuts has increasingly been to limit, begin charging for or reconfigure non-statutory services (Hastings et al, 2015a, 2015b), as well as cutting levels of staff (Lowndes and McCaughie, 2013). In Gateshead, from 2010 to the 2019/20 financial year, the core grant from central government fell by 52 per cent (higher than the national average), meaning a loss of £400 per person and £900 per property (Ramsey, 2018: 11).