Monthly Archives: March 2014

Could you ever get 66.6% of 4.5 million people to agree to anything?

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Lib Dems offer councils devolution route
10 March, 2014 | By Mark Smulian

The Liberals want to try to reintroduce regional government for some reason, despite it being a failed experiment under Labour. The danger for Lincolnshire, with a total population of less than 800,000, is that it could end up with regional government by default. The suggestion is that every local authority, would have to achieve a vote of two thirds in favour, but two thirds of what? Also, how would it work if you got a patchwork quilt of councils, where neighbouring authorities voted differently?

General elections average a turnout of over 70%. Local government elections are often lucky to get more than a 30% turnout. The elections for the Police and crime Commisioners, that took place in 2011, averaged a miserable turnout of 15%. Would you be happy to end up back in a regional government arrangement, based on a 15% turnout?

The Liberal Democrats would offer English councils a ‘devolution on demand’ mechanism, the party’s spring conference has decided.

Delegates meeting in York at the weekend voted for the idea, defeating a large minority who preferred a move to devolution throughout England based on the old regional development agency boundaries.

Under the Lib Dem plan, a council or councils comprising at least one million inhabitants would be able to apply for a range of devolved powers similar to those enjoyed by Wales.

Such a change would require a two-thirds majority vote by each local authority involved.

Supporters of the idea argued that this would allow those parts of England that wanted devolution – such Cornwall and major northern conurbations – to go ahead, while areas with little enthusiasm would not have devolution foisted on them.

But opponents argued that assembling the required two-thirds majorities would be difficult, and that even if they could, there would be an untidy patchwork of devolved areas potentially with, for example, a devolved county surrounding a city that was not without devolved status.

Policy working group chair Dinti Batstone said devolution on demand would work better than uniform regional government, citing voters’ rejection of this in the north-east referendum in 2004.

“England does not want a Prescott-style top-down devolution approach,” she said.

Calling for restoration of the old region as a tier of government, Leeds party member Mick Taylor said: “This resolution calls for devolution to a mishmash of collections of local authorities. Are we going to have the NHS devolved in some places but not others?”

He also complained that the paper did not confer automatic tax raising powers on the devolved areas.

The paper offered immediate devolution to Cornwall because of its cultural identity, and further powers to London building on its already semi-devolved status.

It also called for the use of the single transferable vote system for all English local elections, as used in Scotland.

As an interim measure the party would devolve more powers to city deal and growth deal areas.

Answering questions from party members at an earlier session, deputy prime minister Nick Clegg made clear his support for decentralising power further in England.

He said: “City deals have been a really important innovation. I want that approach extended to across the whole country to other cities, to urban and rural areas.”

Is LGA whistling in the wind, because it’s a ‘European’ report?

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LGA demands more power for England
7 March, 2014 | By Marino Donati

The LGA is calling for greater devolution of powers to English councils after a European report concluded that local authorities in Wales and Scotland were better off.

The report from the Council of Europe, Local and Regional Democracy in the United Kingdom, expressed concern about “the financial resources of local authorities, their limited taxing powers and their dependence on government grants”.

It concluded: “Despite significant cuts, in Wales and Scotland local authorities are (still) better off financially than their English counterparts, but lacking diversity of local finances is a concern also there.”

The report said that “ambiguities” around the lack of recognition of the right to local self-government in the law beyond the general powers granted by the Localism Act 2011, also needed to be addressed.

It recommended the UK government reduce the financial burden on local authorities from budget cuts. It also called for better consultation arrangements for local government for “taking into account the necessity or opportunity for local authorities to consult their local population”.

LGA chairman Sir Merrick Cockell (Con) said that English councils were being “short changed” and called for the current model for the financing and running of local government to change.

He said: “Devolution of decision-making and tax-raising powers to local areas is needed to help save money and improve services and English communities need to be given the same significant say over everything from health services to public transport as they do across the border in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.

“Our European counterparts also identified the urgent need for a fair and equitable distribution of public money across the United Kingdom, The 34-year-old Barnett Formula is short changing English communities by as much as £4.1bn a year and a needs-based model is needed for a fairer deal.”

The report also raised concern about councils’ ability to meet international obligations. It said: “A fundamental question in relation to Article 9 of the Charter [European Charter of Local Self-Government] is whether local government will have adequate (own) financial resources and whether these are commensurate with its functions.”

The Council of Europe regularly reports on the state of local and regional democracy in the EU’s member states. Its local government arm, the Congress, is responsible for the monitoring of local democracy in member states by assessing the application of the European Charter of Local Self-Government, which was adopted in 1985 and ratified by the UK in 1998.

Responding to the report, local government minister Brandon Lewis said: “The coalition government has delivered a fair settlement to every part of the country – north and south, rural and urban, metropolitan and shire. We have given councils new financial flexibilities, such as the local retention of business rates and scrapped top-down interfering quangos.”

Another hidden tax on the council taxpayer is set to increase

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LGA calls on chancellor to freeze landfill tax
7 March, 2014 | By Chris Smith

The chancellor has been urged to freeze the landfill tax as part of this month’s budget by council leaders.

Ahead of George Osbourne’s keynote speech on 19 March, the LGA claimed landfill tax had achieved its purpose and warned any increase would punish hard-pressed families.

Mr Osborne was urged to keep landfill tax at its present rate of £72 per tonne and to redistribute revenue to local taxpayers.

The tax, paid by businesses, is set to increase to £80 per tonne in April and the money raised goes into central government funding.

The LGA warned the costs would be passed by on to residents and claimed each household would pay £30 towards landfill tax in 2014-15.

Mike Jones (Con), chair of the LGA’s environment and housing board, said: “Instead of using the receipts from the tax to boost recycling technologies and reward residents for the gains made in recycling levels, the Treasury has held on to receipts. We need a clear indication from the chancellor that this tax will be frozen at its present rate, with the money raised from it returned to taxpayers and invested in growth.”

The way forward, but is anybody listening?

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It’s unfortunate that, even when there is agreement that unitary is the best and most cost effective way to provide local government service, politicians still waste time and energy protecting their individual power bases.
I’ve yet to fathom Eric Pickles’s reasoning for sticking his oar in as soon as he got in to office in 2010, and stopping those that were in train. Possibly pre-election whinging, from Conservative councillors in those areas, fearful that they would get the boot from the electorate, was the cause of this early interference, something that has continued at a pace.

Too much time and effort is wasted by politicians protecting their own interests under the pretence of championing the interests of those who elected them. The vast majority of taxpayers care little for which part of local government provides the services they need to access. What they do care about, is how much their council tax bill will be every April. Yet despite what should be blindingly obvious, lower tier politicians spend their trying to pass on the cost to the upper tier, or refusing to work with that upper tier, because they can nothing in it for them.

As far as the taxpayer is concerned, a saving in their council tax, is a saving in the council tax, no matter where it comes from. Put another way, if a district council works with their county council, to help that county council save money, then that is as much to the credit of those district councillors as it is the county councillors, if not more. Unfortunately many councillors at the district level can only see the numbers in their own budget and refuse to acknowledge any wider savings that are being made.

However, it’s not just a case of making everything unitary and all will be well in local government. I’ve no idea how well or badly local government is working within the East Riding of Yorkshire. However, given that it’s the largest unitary in England, is divided into 26 wards and has a total of 67 councillors (Lincolnshire County Council has 77 councillors, covering only county council services) it would be very interesting to know and I don’t mean just what the council and it’s politicians would like you to believe.

Would Lincolnshire work as one large unitary? Personally, I don’t believe that it would, but that’s just my opinion. I’m always willing to be persuaded differently based on evidence that unitary councils such as East Riding of Yorkshire Council is serving its rural council taxpayers well.

Copied from the Local Government Chronicle. From a series of articles written by a senior local government officer, who remains anonymous.

Inside Out: Unitary is strength
5 March, 2014

I have always believed unitary is strength when it comes to local government. I was really pleased when it was recently reported that Labour is looking to embrace it.

I was less pleased with the government’s response. They ‘played politics’ with it rather than responding to the issue.

Granted, the move to unitary councils has never been smooth.Councils disappear, people lose their power and influence, places can feel they lose their identity, and there are always transitional costs. However, the advantages when unitary government is established far outweigh the transitory downsides.

I have worked for a district that became a unitary council, a county unitary and a district unitary. One size does not fit all circumstances. It seems to be assumed these days that unitaries should always be based on counties. This is a disservice to the strength and professionalism of district councils and will be a barrier to change in some circumstances.

There are three secrets to make moving to unitary local government successful. First, the area covered needs to make sense to residents. My hometown was moved from Lancashire to Merseyside in 1974. I still address Christmas cards to my relatives using Lancashire, 40 years later. The boundaries of unitaries need to be determined locally.

Second, there needs to be strong national leadership. The whole of England needs to be covered by unitary government. Unless this is made clear, local vested interests will fight change and drive up costs.

Finally, it needs strong local leadership, seeking consensus on change and then managing the change well. There are savings and service improvements that can be unleashed by bringing together tiers of government, but they have to be realised. They don’t happen on their own.

Given the financial struggle matched with rising demand, no element of transformational change can be dismissed. My heart sinks when I think of yet more organisational change. But maybe it needs such a shake-up to unlock the other changes we need to embrace. Unitary is strength.

Mr Localism offers yet more of his loud mouth ‘guidance’

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Pickles set to move on publicity powers
6 March, 2014 | By Chris Smith

The communities secretary is preparing to step in and use new powers to try to prevent councils from publishing newspapers more than four times a year.

Five London councils are at the top of Eric Pickles’ hit list when he acquires new powers next month, LGC understands.

When the Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014 comes into force on 4 April, it will allow Mr Pickles to direct councils to comply with his 2011 publicity code, which states that councils should not publish more frequently than quarterly.

According to the most recent figures held by the LGA, 41 councils in England currently publish a newspaper more than four times a year. But Mr Pickles is understood to be focusing on five London boroughs: Tower Hamlets, Hackney, Greenwich, Newham and Waltham Forest LBCs.

Highest on the list is Tower Hamlets LBC, whose weekly publication East End Life, was named by Mr Pickles in Parliament as the worst offender in publishing frequency.

However, the legislation does not give Mr Pickles any powers of enforcement or intervention, so it is unclear what would happen if a council that had been issued with a direction chose not to follow it. It is thought that any legal challenge would need to be brought by residents or campaigners. The councils involved estimate legal costs of pursuing a case would be between £50,000 and £100,000.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance warned of potential court challenges but stopped short of committing to pursue a test case. Chief executive Jonathan Isaby said: “Those council leaders choosing to ignore the guidance are exposing themselves and their local authorities to legal action.”

The councils involved say that newspaper closures would lead to an increase in advertising charges from local paper owners. They also say increased costs would contravene the publicity code’s demand to be cost effective. They also say that the reach of their communication would be limited.

Hackney LBC said its review of costs for Hackney Today found that to produce a quarterly newsletter and place statutory advertising in a local newspaper would be more expensive than continuing fortnightly publication. The findings were supported by the council’s district auditor.

Hackney mayor Jules Pipe (Lab) said: “I have repeatedly told the secretary of state and his colleagues, both in writing and in person, that we will cease fortnightly production of Hackney Today as soon as he ends the costly and outdated requirement on councils to place statutory advertising in a local newspaper.”

A Greenwich RBC spokesman defended its publication, Greenwich Time: “The paper is published on a weekly basis to inform residents about local services and to promote social housing available through our choice-based lettings scheme. It has also reduced expenditure on advertising costs by approximately £1.5m per annum which we have passed back to our residents in the form of successive council tax freezes.”

A Department for Communities & Local Government spokesman said: “Ministers have been clear that they intend to take action to defend the independent free press from unfair municipal competition and stop any abuse of taxpayers’ money.”

The Local Audit and Accountability Act 2014

This received Royal Assent on 30 January and comes into force on 4 April. It enables the communities secretary to direct one or more councils to comply with all or part of the publicity code. He must first write to a council informing them of his proposed direction.

Councils have 14 days to make their representations about the proposed direction. After the 14 days the secretary of state may make the direction.