Richard Baum

Hazel Blears, the Communities and Local Government Secretary, was in the news today with plans for a “contract” between local government and the people. The plans struck me as a pretty good idea at first. But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s yet another bit of New Labour tinkering that will do nothing to increase either participation or satisfaction.

The idea is that public service providers like Councils will effectively sign a “contract” with local people to provide a certain level of service. And if they don’t live up to their side of the bargain, they’ll be forced to answer for it. This could be through appearing at public meetings, or even refunding some Council Tax if it’s serious and repetitive failure.

This last point is obviously the headline-grabber, but I don’t think it grabs much more than that. I’d be first in the queue for a Council Tax rebate (and I’d pull rank with non-elected people to make sure of it!), but the whole idea is unworkable, and even if it wasn’t on the manic side of impractical, it still wouldn’t solve anything. For starters, who’s going to decide who gets money back? And how much they get back? Will the person who’s house backs on to the dirty street get more than his neighbour over the road? Will the person who sprayed the graffiti benefit with a rebate when the Council don’t scrub it off and everyone gets some money back? If my town doesn’t get something that the next town does, why should I pay more than them?

It won’t work. And the idea that this unworkable solution is the end of a several-step programme of explanatory letters and meetings involving Council officers and the clamouring public is, again, silly. Such meetings already exist, and nobody goes. I know because I sit through most of them.

Nobody goes for two reasons – firstly because they are hugely boring gusts of hot air involving Councillors trying their best to surmount massive brick walls of bureaucracy, and doing so with very little power to change anything. And secondly, because the Council should be doing what it’s paid to do anyway, and we shouldn’t have to come to a meeting in our free time to beg and plead with these people to clean our streets.

If the government is serious about making local Councils accountable to local people, it should give them real powers to innovate and change things. It should devolve far more powers to local communities to decide the services they want.  It should do more than pay lip service to localism, by giving Councillors real powers to lead communities and give local people what they want. More people would come to meetings if they knew they could join us in changing things. And then when things changed for the better, more still would come.

But the government won’t do this. Instead it tinkers and it grabs headlines. So community meetings take place in empty halls, local election turnout stays tiny, and dissatisfaction with Councillors and Councils grow. And we as the elected representatives of the people can do nothing, nothing, to make the Council do what communities want.

So don’t be fooled by these announcements. Power still doesn’t rest with the people at a local level. We are still far, far too centralised, and no amount of silly schemes will change this without root and branch reform of the way decisions are made in this country. It’s a shame the government won’t grasp the nettle and realise this, because I for one want a refund on the money spent dreaming up this latest half-baked plan.

Rick