“@TweetyHall: “The balance of power has shifted in your councils away from your officials to you” – @ericpickles to local councillor’s at #cca12”

I’ve lifted this from Twitter, not just because it’s yet another piece of Pickles tripe, but also because demonstrates the dangerous illusion that Pickles is selling to elected members – they can do the job with out the officers. We’ve seen this start with the scrapping of chief executive posts by some councils and the thinning out of senior management posts in many others.

I’m not suggesting that local government hasn’t become top heavy and bloated and that the taxpayer is being over-charged through their council tax to pay for this. However, much of this bloatation (I’ve just invented that word) was caused by the very same organisation now criticising it – central government. The blunt instrument being used to redress the balance, massive cuts in the central grant, is encouraging the culling of officers and the apparent inflation of members’ egos.

Unfortunately, this situation has been forced on local government and members will never have the remotest chance to grow in to their new roles ( if that was ever possible). This will probably play out just as things did in the 1980s, when councils such as Liverpool and it’s then leader Derek Hatton, gave Margaret Thatcher the excuse to centralise much of local government’s powers.

It’s difficult not to feel that when people look back in another 15 or 20 years, they won’t see this as just a repeat of previous local government history and that nothing will have changed. Of course the alternative is, that we have become America!