Newcastle City Council and the grassroots: accountability and budgeting under austerity
- 17 August 2015
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Emerald Publishing in Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal
- Vol. 28 (6) , 909-933
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to shed light on new accountability relationships between Newcastle City Council (NCC) and its citizens and stakeholders in the wake of the British government’s austerity politics and its budget cuts for local authorities. It seeks to show some of the ways in which various kinds of budgeting, for example, for alternative sources of funding, the use of volunteers for service provision, resource sharing, and asset transfers, as well as a diverse set of accounts of the social implications of resource diversions and service cuts, have been implicated in those changes. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a qualitative field study of some of the uses of budgets in the shaping of accountability relationships through interviews with council officers, conversations with activists and citizens, analysis of council and other documents, and observation of public meetings and demonstrations. The approach focused on the relationship between the city’s political gra...Keywords
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