“A Practice of Fairness”: Social Equity Budgeting in Freedom City

ABSTRACT Social justice is often theorized as fairness and expressed in equity as part of public administration and associated budgeting practices. Whereas much literature contrasted deontological positions, emphasizing a procedural justice with fairness based on rules, with consequentialist theory that emphasizes a distributional justice based on outcomes, this paper addresses lack of social justice research into practices. As politics of the budget process is fundamental to who gets what, calling upon practice theory, this paper's theorization of “a practice of fairness” is anchored and operationalized in Social Equity Budgeting (SEB) in context of austerity‐localism in English local government from 2010 to 2024 under Conservative led coalition and Conservative Governments, with specific examples from a longitudinal case study of Newcastle City Council (NCC). The paper suggests social justice needs a practice focus embracing interactions for practical intelligibility and understanding, alongside procedural and distributional aspects found in deontological and consequentialist approaches to justice.