It will leave a big hole in the municipal policy agenda. Councils will be expected to see how far they can extend their frontiers into ground previously occupied by private developers. So far they have played safe by pursuing partnership arrangements. The risk will then be that councils will become more concerned with commerce than welfare, particularly if the executive mayors have no party allegiance. The leaders of Birmingham and Preston councils will both argue that their regeneration plans have a direct social objective.
Councils still think of themselves as agencies of social welfare.
Local government may only attract men and women with an enthusiasm for procurement and accountancy. To describe a change is not, necessarily, to condemn it. Society has moved on and local government must move with it. But the Civil Gospel, as preached by Joe Chamberlain, is dying. The hopes and ideas of men and women who wanted to clear the slums, clean the air, improve the schools and care for the sick cannot be realised by councils acting as agents for the government and employing outside contractors.