Category Archives: public sector

Leaders hit back in pensions row

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This debate gets more and more surreal at each turn. Eric Pickles kicks things off by claiming that chief executives are surplus to requirements and that elected members should be able to fill the gap. One of his lackeys then goes on record suggesting that elected members are only volunteers and amateurs in the game of politics – ‘professional’ only applies to members of Parliament it seems.
So which is it DCLG? If it is cull the officers and plug the gap with councillors, are we to assume that this is to be done on a completely voluntary basis and for the love of it only?

I particularly like the use of the term ‘prat’ in this case and the pointed remark made to somebody I know well, ‘He’s one of your prats’.

Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
11 January, 2013 | By Ruth Keeling

Council leaders from across the political spectrum have criticised ministerial attacks on councillors remuneration and may launch a legal challenge against plans to restrict access to the local government pension scheme.

The judicial review is being considered by Labour leaders while their Conservative counterparts said had they met ministers no fewer than four times in the past 48 hours to discuss proposed pension changes.

Conservative, Labour, Liberal Democratic and Independent leaders at yesterday’s meeting of the LGA executive were particularly critical of ministers’ language. Local government minister Brandon Lewis, who has proposed closing the Local Government Pension Scheme to councillors, said elected members should see themselves as volunteers rather than professional politicians.

Mr Lewis’ comments, made before Christmas, has already led one leader to accuse ministers of treating councillors with “contempt”. The issue was also raised by Conservative leaders when they met with Mr Lewis on Thursday morning.

On that same day, during an appearance on the BBC’s Today programme, Conservative Party chairman and former housing minister Grant Shapps added fuel to the fire and widened the row by questioning allowances for “volunteer” councillors and likened them to “scout leaders”.

At a meeting of the LGA’s executive on Thursday, LGA Labour group leader David Sparks said it was “extremely important that we do not just roll over on this [pension] issue” and suggested a legal challenge could be made against the proposal.

He called for LGA officials to compile a report on councillor pensions as well as those of other elected members such as MPs and Greater London Assembly members. “I am expecting that the report we get in February will look seriously at the whole issue of judicial review,” Mr Sparks added.

‘Prat’

Leaders from all parties expressed frustration and some anger at ministers’ comments, although there was widespread laughter when Cllr Sparks described listening to Mr Shapps on the radio that morning as “like driving up the motorway and seeing one of those kids in a car who continually sticks his tongue out…[and] you think one of these days you’re going to grow up and be an even bigger prat”.

Turning to LGA chairman Sir Merrick Cockell (Con) and LGA Conservative group leader Gary Porter, he added: “He’s one of your prats and you really have to do something about him.”

Cllr Porter declined to comment on Cllr Sparks’ analogy but he criticised the “language around the debate” and called for ministers to take a more mature approach. “If there is a genuine need to revisit [the pension arrangement] on financial grounds they could do that in a mature, adult way,” he said.

Describing the proposal as “a stupid idea being carried out in a stupid way”, he said he and other Conservative leaders had already seen Mr Lewis and discussed the pension proposal twice on Wednesday and would raise it again in a further two meetings with the minister on Thursday.

Making the argument for councillor pensions and allowances, Sir Merrick said reducing remuneration would adversely affect councillor diversity. “The idea that only certain people of a certain background with a certain financial security can stand to be a councillor is highly objectionable.” He added: “I hope that our representations, particular those made in private earlier today [to Brandon Lewis], will be heard.”

Leaders and elected mayors at the meeting also questioned the distinction made by Mr Lewis between elected mayors, who are judged to work full time and therefore should be eligible for a pension, and leaders, who are not.

‘Hypocrites’

Peter Box (Lab), leader of Wakefield MBC, added: “As an executive leader I am responsible for a multi-million pound business and to say you can do that on some part-time basis is detached from reality.” The truth was councillors passed up career opportunities to be elected members, he said, unlike “many MPs who seem to have two jobs, and Grant Shapps is one, they have got that much time on their hands”.

Accusing ministers of “hypocrisy”, Cllr Box was one of many to make a comparison with MPs pensions and salaries just hours before publication of a survey of MPs showed they felt their salaries should increase by 33%.

Mr Lewis’ criticism of councillor pensions combined with Mr Shapps’ comments on allowances led Hackney LBC elected mayor Jules Pipes (Lab) to question their wider attitude to local government. Shapps’ and Lewis’ comments indicated the government thought councils “with £1bn-plus turnover can be run by an occasional few evening meetings”, he said. This image was “a world away” from the present day when there were “issues of performance that we are held directly accountable for in a way we weren’t 10 or 20 years ago”.

LGA Independent leader Marianne Overton described the government’s attitude as “an attack on the value of democratic representation” while Chris White (Lib Dem), leader of Hertfordshire CC, warned the pension proposal was “the beginning of an attack and the attack will be on allowances in general”.

He also warned that councillors arguing for pensions would be “a tabloid story. Grant Shapps and others will be absolutely delighted if we make a fuss because that is just writing copy for the Daily Mail”. However, he added, “that does not mean we shouldn’t [make a fuss].”

BREAKING: Council tax benefit cuts to double

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
10 January, 2013 | By Ruth Keeling

Cuts to localised council tax benefit are set to almost double and will reach 18% by 2014-15, it has emerged.

Council leaders learned of a further 8.5% cut to council tax support – on top of 10% already announced – during a meeting with ministers held yesterday.

Sharon Taylor (Lab), leader of Stevenage BC and chair of the LGA’s finance panel said the 8.5% cut in 2014-15, equivalent to £280m, was revealed during a meeting held on Wednesday with ministers and officials from the Department of Communities & Local Government.

“That is not what we were expecting,” she said. The LGA has received verbal confirmation of the surprise cut since the meeting and intends to lobby against the move, she said, which comes on top of a 10% cut due to be applied in 2013-14.

Cllr Taylor said it had been “made clear” in the meeting that the protection of pensioners from council tax benefit cuts would continue. This would mean cuts of more than 18% for other groups of claimants.

The revelation has led to fears that council tax benefit funding will be phased out following its localisation from central to local government, due to take place in April.

Mehboob Khan (Lab), leader of Kirklees MBC, said: “What’s really concerning is the…implications for council tax allowance in the future.” He told the LGA executive, meeting on Thursday, that sources close to the Treasury had suggested council tax benefit “would not be ring fenced” and was “likely to be reduced each year”.

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Extend councillor recruitment drive, MPs urge

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Here’s an article that should get some of my regular readers talking, groaning or seething, depending on their view of elected members.

Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
10 January, 2013 | By Kaye Wiggins

MPs have called for the LGA’s ‘Be a councillor’ campaign to be extended, warning that too many elected representatives did not reflect their local communities.

The cross-party Communities and Local Government select committee praised the LGA’s campaign in a report about the role of councillors, published on Thursday. The campaign aims to encourage people from a wide range of backgrounds to stand as councillors, in time for the May 2013 local elections.

‘Political row over allowances claim’, see bottom of page

“The Local Government Association deserves credit for its work on the Be a Councillor programme, which is playing an important role in encouraging a wider group of people to stand at local elections”, the report said.

“We would encourage the LGA to expand the programme, under its established branding, to enable it to play a wider role in the promotion of local democracy.”

MPs said it was a “matter of concern” that “the composition of many councils does not reflect that of the communities they serve.”

“It is important to increase the proportion of women, younger people and black and minority ethnic people serving on local authorities”, they said in the report.

The MPs also criticised communities secretary Eric Pickles for his use of terms such as “guided localism” and “muscular localism”, accusing the Department for Communities & Local Government of “an inability to let go of the reins” that was “frustrating and confusing” for councillors.

“We once again urge the government to rein in its interventionist instincts”, it said.

The report also said:

The levels of councillors’ allowances “can be a deterrent to people standing for election”. Councils should be allowed to hand decisions about councillors’ allowances to independent local bodies
Councils should consider providing councillors with officer support to help them to manage their casework
The government should incentivise employers to support employees who were councillors
Councillors should not be blocked from influencing local services that were delivered by external providers
Councils should be allowed to compensate councillors for loss of earnings as part of their allowance
Most councillors were hard-working and committed – but some “do little work and, because theyrepresent safe seats, have little incentive to do more.” Councils should set up measures to deal with councilor under-performance
To read the report, click here

Political row over allowances claim
The committee’s report sparked a political row, after Conservative Party chairman Grant Shapps and local government minister Brandon Lewis branded its warning that low allowances could deter would-be councillors and call for councillors to be allowed to be compensated for any loss of earnings that they suffer as a “cynical and sleazy move”. Claiming the cross-party committee’s report had come from “Labour politicians” and pointing to Labour Party rules under which a share of its councillors’ allowances are transferred to the party’s own funds, Mr Shapps said Labour was trying to increase the party’s budget. “Local taxpayers will be shocked to learn that the Labour Party will be quids in from Labour demands for more taxpayers’ money on councillor allowances”, he said.

Mr Lewis added: “Labour are completely out of touch with local taxpayers by calling for higher councillor allowances and defending pensions for councillors.”

However, a spokeswoman for the committee pointed out that the report’s findings and recommendations had been approved by politicians of all parties. Labour MP Clive Betts, chair of the committee, said he was “saddened by the reaction of Brandon Lewis and Grant Shapps who have stoked this negativity and undermined a serious concern of councillors from their own party”.

“Allowances remain low and act as a deterrent for many considering whether to stand for election,” he added. “This is particularly an issue for employed people and those with young families, who lose income when taking time out from work for their councillor duties. The committee therefore called for councils to have the option to have decisions about allowances to be taken out of councillors’ hands and transferred to independent local bodies.

“We also found that people are put off by shallow political point scoring, which makes the response of Mr Lewis and Mr Shapps all the more disappointing.”

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Leaders blast Lewis over councillor pensions

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Pensions for elected members or not is not the issue here. The barefaced arrogance of this 5 year politician is. He has no qualification to be in his job, other than success at the ballot box, just like elected councillors. Yet he is telling those councillors, with exactly qualification as an MP, they have no right to

Copied from Local Government Chronicle online

7 January, 2013 | By Mark Smulian

Most council leaders have rejected government plans to ban councillors from joining the Local Government Pension Scheme, an exclusive LGC survey indicates.

More than half of 105 respondents said they disagreed with the proposal, our poll reveals. Local government minister Brandon Lewis suggested councillors should be stripped of the right to join the scheme in a consultation paper last month.

The idea has already met with strong opposition from prominent Conservative councillors. And LGC’s survey found that 53.3% of leaders thought councillors should remain eligible for scheme membership.

Respondents were particularly annoyed by Mr Lewis’ claim that while councillors should see themselves as volunteers rather than professional politicians, there was an expectation that being an elected mayor was a full-time job.

Almost 70% of leaders rejected this distinction while almost 60% disagreed that councillors were not full-time politicians.

Anyone who thought metropolitan leaders do “less work than – for example – the elected mayor of Doncaster must live on a differed planet to that inhabited by normal people,” one said. Another noted: “The position of mayor probably requires less work as the power of decision lies completely with one person.”

“Any leader worth their salt not only has to direct political direction but work very closely with group members at the same time.”

The most popular alternative to barring councillors but allowing elected mayors to remain scheme members was to ban both councillors and elected mayors from the LGPS, with 17.1% backing this approach. Meanwhile, 14.3% thought only leaders and cabinet members should remain eligible.

LGC’s survey also indicated anger towards Mr Lewis. One respondent, identifying themselves as a member of “one of the coalition parties”, accused Mr Lewis of “scandalous political opportunism on the part of the government, nasty, vindictive and anti-local government”.

Many respondents said their roles’ demands made it impossible to also take up pensionable employment.

“I was a project manager for an international credit card company and there is no way I could have continued in that role,” one said.

A metropolitan leader said anyone who considered the role as part-time was “detached from reality”. A unitary leader said they were “losing money through having to give up my regular job”.

Several also predicted that excluding councillors from the pension scheme would deter new candidates from coming forward.

Last week, Gary Porter, LGA Conservative group leader, told LGC he would ask Mr Lewis to row back on the proposal. “I’ve received a large amount of lobbying on this from Conservative councillors to resist the idea,” he added. “I expect to be putting it to Brandon and [communities minister] Eric [Pickles] that they shouldn’t make savings in this area.”

Councillors have been able to join the LGPS since 2003. According to the Taxpayers’ Alliance some 4,548 were members of it in 2010-11.

(Some) Districts given thumbs up for tax rises of up to 8%

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
Districts given thumbs up for tax rises of up to 8%
2 January, 2013 | By Ruth Keeling

“Low cost” district councils who have been granted leeway over council tax next year could increase rates by up to 8% without holding a referendum.

LGC has identified the 50 district councils that are set to benefit from the extra flexibility over council tax setting announced in last month’s local government settlement.

Under the proposals set out by local government minister Brandon Lewis, districts within the lowest quartile of council tax rates in 2012-13 will be able to increase tax above 2% without a public vote as long as the increase is not more than £5 in cash terms.

There are 50 district councils in the ‘lowest quartile’ with average Band D council tax rates below £142. They include Breckland BC which has the lowest council tax rate in the country at £65 and where an extra £5 equates to an 8% increase, as well as West Oxfordshire DC and Hambleton DC, where a £5 rise is a 6% increase.

Mr Lewis, speaking to councillors during a Q&A the day after the announcement, said it was only fair that “low cost” authorities be granted some additional flexibility. However, he said it was not clear the same flexibility would be offered after 2013-14.

The potential rises available to each of the 50 councils is listed below. There is no indication yet that any of the councils in question plan to take advantage of the extra flexibility available to them.

Council Maximum increase without a referendum (£5)
Breckland 8%
West Oxfordshire 6%
Hambleton 6%
South Staffordshire 5%
Tewkesbury 5%
Basingstoke & Deane 5%
North Dorset 5%
Wychavon 5%
Hinckley & Bosworth 4%
East Lindsey 4%
Broxbourne 4%
Broadland 4%
South Cambridgeshire 4%
Vale of White Horse 4%
South Oxfordshire 4%
East Devon 4%
King’s Lynn & West Norfolk 4%
Cherwell 4%
East Northamptonshire 4%
West Dorset 4%
Exeter 4%
Charnwood 4%
Stratford-on-Avon 4%
Test Valley 4%
Huntingdonshire 4%
Wellingborough 4%
Sedgemoor 4%
Rushcliffe 4%
Malvern Hills 4%
South Norfolk 4%
West Somerset 4%
Wycombe 4%
Chichester 4%
Eastleigh 4%
Daventry 4%
East Hampshire 4%
South Kesteven 4%
Taunton Deane 4%
Runnymede 4%
Forest Heath 4%
Blaby 4%
South Hams 4%
North Norfolk 4%
East Cambridgeshire 4%
North Kesteven 4%
Chesterfield 4%
Horsham 4%
Fareham 4%
Ashford 4%
Ribble Valley 4%

Local government funding cuts – the truth?

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
Hardest hit face cuts of 15% next year
2 January, 2013 | By Ruth Keeling

Cuts to some councils’ core grant allocations could be as high as 15% next year – potentially rising to almost 40% by 2014-15 according to LGC analysis of data on the local government finance settlement.

Figures for councils’ individual ‘start-up funding assessment’ – which provides a measure of their main basic revenue streams – show an average cut of 4% next year and 9% in 2014-15.

The settlement – announced by ministers on 19 December – saw ministers focus on their preferred measure of councils’ ‘spending power’ which includes a wide range of service-specific grants and an estimate of council tax revenues and showed an average reduction of 1.7% last year.

But a detailed breakdown of each council’s individual allocation was not published until Friday the 21st – literally hours before the end of the last working day before the Christmas break.

LGC’s analysis of these figures show some authorities face cuts to their ‘start-up funding assessment’ as high as 15% next year. With cuts in 2014-15 set to be even more severe, the sector faces an average reduction of 12% over the second half of the spending review, with hardest-hit council potentially facing cuts of as much as 39%.

The start-up funding assessment measure does not take into account payments made under the New Homes Bonus, which stands to substantially benefit many district councils. Furthermore, figures for revenue streams in 2014-15 are no more than predictions as the new system of retained business rates will by then be in effect.

Those worst affected by the cuts have been offered a transition grant in 2013-14, re-badged as an “efficiency support grant” – designed to limit cuts in spending power to 8.8% but which has the effect of limiting cuts in start-up funding assessment to 15% in the first year. However, the efficiency grant is not assured in the second year and depends on whether councils make certain improvements to the way they deliver services.

Without the grant the worst hit – Great Yarmouth BC, which pulled out of a shared management arrangement following last May’s elections – will face cuts of 28% in 2014-15, creating a cumulative reduction of 39% over the two final years of the spending review period. But even councils not eligible to receive the emergency grant could be facing cumulative cuts of potentially 25%.

The table below shows authorities not cushioned by the efficiency grant will face reductions in their start-up funding assessment figure in excess of 20% over the next two years. Authorities eligible for the efficiency grant are marked with an asterisk.

Council 2013-14 % change Cumulative % change 2013-14 to 2014-15
Great Yarmouth* -15% -39%
Burnley*. -15% -38%
Barrow-in-Furness* -14% -36%
Bolsover*. -14% -35%
Hyndburn* -13% -34%
Pendle*. -15% -33%
Hastings* -15% -33%
Chesterfield -14% -25%
Preston -13% -24%
Copeland -10% -21%

‘Start-up funding’ v ‘spending power’

The new ‘start-up funding assessment’ refers to a local authority’s share of the spending control total. This SUFA figure is made up of two parts: an authority’s revenue support grant in that year and the baseline funding level as set for the start of the business rate retention funding system.

‘Spending power’ includes the start-up funding assessment and 13 other council revenue streams ranging from those affecting very few authorities, such as funding for fish conservation authorities, to more widespread items such as council tax requirement, social care funding and New Homes Bonus.

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True scale of settlement cuts emerges

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
20 December, 2012 | By Dan Drillsma-Milgrom

Councils face much higher funding cuts than those announced by communities secretary Eric Pickles, fresh analysis of the local government settlement has revealed.

An LGA briefing on the settlement said council funding would be cut by almost 4% next year and 9% the year after.

The cuts in core government funding for councils stands in contrast to communities secretary Eric Pickles’ claims that local authorities’ ‘spending power’ would reduce by only 1.7% next year.

LGA chairman Sir Merrick Cockell (Con) said the figures showed that local government continued “to bear the brunt of public spending cuts in the spending review period”.

The LGA’s calculations showed that councils’ start-up funding allocation in the new retained business rate funding system would decrease on a like-for-like basis of 3.9% in 2013-14. The following year, while councils’ local share of retained business rates is projected to grow by 3.1%, the revenue support grant which still makes up the bulk of councils’ funding is forecast to fall by 17%. The net effect is for a projected 8.6% decrease in funding.

Sir Merrick claimed that local government’s cuts in the spending review period would now exceed 33%, in comparison to the 28% originally announced.

The briefing also confirmed a number of details from the settlement announcement:

Of the £661m being paid to councils through the New Homes Bonus, £411m would be top-sliced from councils’ formula funding in 2013-14.
The amount held back to fund the safety net has been reduced from £245m to £25m
Twenty areas have been designated as pools for the purposes of top-ups, tariffs and safety net payments. These are: Berkshire; Greater Birmingham & Solihull; Buckinghamshire; Coventry & Warwickshire; Cambridgeshire; Devon; Gloucestershire; Leeds City Region; Leicester & Leicestershire; Lincolnshire; Greater Manchester; Norfolk CC and Broadland; Northamptonshire; Nottinghamshire; Oxfordshire; Somerset; Staffordshire & Stoke-on-Trent; Suffolk; Surrey; Worcestershire

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READERS’ COMMENTS (2)

Graham669 | 20-Dec-2012 2:40 pm
Pickled is doing his usual act of stupidity, the secondary effects of the crazy cuts in LA funding will last far longer than he is in office.
This charlatan will unfortunately leave a legacy of social damage that will take decades to heal.

patrick newman | 20-Dec-2012 4:04 pm
As predicted we only find out the truth well after Pickles has spoken but I doubt if cares too much about that. A further round of redundancies is inevitable thus putting more pressure on state finances through increased benefits and reduced tax yield. There must be many councillors who feel unhappy about being Pickles’ neighbourhood axemen.

Councillors barred from pension scheme

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This should please many of those who see elected members as surplus to requirements and wish to consign them to local government history as a failed experiment in democracy.

Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
19 December, 2012 | By Dan Drillsma-Milgrom

Councillors are to be barred from being members of the Local Government Pension Scheme (LGPS), local government minister Brandon Lewis has announced.

In a written ministerial statement made on Wednesday morning, Mr Lewis said that councillors would not be able to join the scheme after April 2014 and that councillors who are already members would not be able to accrue any further benefits after that date.

Mr Lewis said the government “did not believe that taxpayer-funded pensions are justified”.

“Councillors are volunteers undertaking public service; they are not and should be employees of the council dependent on the municipal payroll. They are not professional, full-time politicians, nor should they be encouraged to become so.”

However, the statement revealed that elected mayors would not be barred from LGPS membership in recognition of the “greater expectation than an elected mayor is a full-time position”. The government will consult on allowing elected mayors to remain in the scheme “as a voluntary option (but not as an expectation)”.

The salaries of Police and Crime Commissioners, the Mayor of London and London Assembly Members will also remain pensionable.

Mr Lewis admitted that his department did not hold records on councillors’ participation in the scheme. However, he said that “initial rough estimates suggest that this could save £7m a year in taxpayers’ money”. He said there was “absolutely no case” for increasing councillor allowances to compensate for the move.

Councillors have been able to join the LGPS since 2003. The Councillors’ Commission report found that by 2004, 912 councillors had joined the scheme. However, research from the Taxpayers’ Alliance found that number had grown to 3,527 in 2007-08 and 4,548 by 2010-11.

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READERS’ COMMENTS (1)

Roger | 19-Dec-2012 12:55 pm
Another good example of different politicians in the same government department looking in completely different directions on an issue. One the one hand we have this statement, that members are volunteers and not to be considered or encouraged to be full time ’employees’ of the council. Then you have Eric Pickles telling elected members that they can fill the gap and replace officers culled under hiis ‘modest’ local government funding cuts. Do these people actually talk to each other?
If these sort of petty almost spiteful statements don’t deter the younger members of our communities from becoming councillors in the future, then I’m sure DCLG have more up their sleeves to do the job!

Do we stay calm and carry on? No…

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
13 December 2012 | By Michael Bichard

The Public Services Hub at the RSA together with the Social Market Foundation (SMF) recently produced an important report entitled ‘Fiscal Fallout’, which is worth a read…but is not for the fainthearted.

It spells out the scale of the continuing financial crisis and makes a strong case for much greater coherence between the national strategies for fiscal sustainability,sustainable growth and public service reform.

The report – co-authored by Ben Lucas and Ian Mulheirn – explains how growth has been weaker than expected, social security expenditure continues to grow and government borrowing is, this year, running at 10% above forecast.

As a result, using HM Treasury’s method for estimating the structural part of the deficit, the SMF suggests that to remain on it’s planned fiscal path the government will need to make a further £22bn of cuts or tax rises by 2017/18 on top of the already planned £26bn of cuts announced in the last Autumn Statement.

Looked at in Departmental terms, if the NHS, Education and International Development remain ring-fenced then the consequences for other departments, including DCLG will be brutal.

Stay calm and carry on?
In the face of such forecasts the future is alarming if all we do is ’stay calm and carry on’.

As I have argued before,and the report reinforces,we have to be more radical than that not least because of other unavoidable pressures. After all,the LSE predict that an additional 6% of GDP will need to be spent on public services by 2020 to meet the social costs of an ageing society and the LGA estimate that the cost of meeting increased demand for statutory services will leave a funding gap of £16.5bn by the end of the decade.

What we need is for the next spending review to point the way towards a new Public Service model with a very different starting point. As the RSA report concludes, we need to redefine the relationship between citizens and services because value in public services is not transactional; it is about enabling people to achieve their goals to be capable, autonomous and socially responsible’In the language of the RSA you need to build social productivity by shifting resources away from traditional departmental priorities and silos towards the the things that citizens need to build strong and capable communities.

We have to move away from social protection to social productivity and we need to move on from a philosophy primarily concerned with response to one which gives much greater emphasis to prevention,early intervention and demand management; and we should know that this approach works because it is already happening in some local authority areas.

Councils like Oldham and Sunderland have begun to develop innovative approaches based on decentralising services,developing local commissioning capacity and taking a community leadership role in brokering and catalysing neighbourhood behaviour change thereby reducing demand for public/state services.

The question for me is whether the centre understands the importance of these radical initiatives and is capable of redesigning a public service model that has been shown to be expensively flawed.

Lord Bichard, senior fellow, Institute for Government

Eric Pickles: a response

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Copied from Local Government Chronicle online
13 December, 2012 | By Dan Drillsma-Milgrom

Those that listened to the Department for Communities & Local Government’s ministerial team give evidence to its equivalent select committee on Wednesday will have heard Eric Pickles make the bizarre claim that quoting from LGC is like “quoting from a Labour party press release”.

The thoughtlessness of this comment can be demonstrated by simply pointing out that just a month ago, Mr Pickles’ own department was happy to quote LGC’s research into council chief executives’ salary levels in a press release about ending chiefs’ “golden goodbyes”. We don’t necessarily agree with the policy but were happy for Mr Pickles’ department to quote from our research, just as we were happy for David Cameron to do so last year.

Still, mud can stick. So for the record, let me restate Local Government Chronicle’s editorial position.

LGC has absolutely no affiliation to or bias towards any political party. Our editorial position is that we act as a friend to the sector – albeit a critical one where necessary. Our objective is to report on policy issues that affect all councils and, where we can, to put forward the case for local government to be part of the solution to some of the social and economic issues that the country faces. To do this, our reporters speak regularly with senior council officers, civil servants and local and national politicians of all parties.

Mr Pickles’ comment on Wednesday came in response to a question about DCLG’s permanent secretary Sir Bob Kerslake being branded a ‘doom denier’ for dismissing the LGA’s predictions of a looming financial crisis. The actual “doom denier” label was coined by the organisation’s Liberal Democrat group while the original ‘graph of doom’ was created by Conservative-run Barnet LBC. It was the LGA’s Conservative chairman Sir Merrick Cockell who said that while “denying” the growing funding gap that local government is facing “may be convenient for some”, it is “not accurate to suggest the view is overly pessimistic”. It is hard to see how reporting on this issue is representing the Labour party’s viewpoint.

To be honest, with Labour having not released much policy on local government, LGC has not devoted an awful lot of coverage to the party recently. One exception was when we exclusively revealed Labour councillors’ anger at their party’s leadership for forcing peers to vote against plans to give councils greater flexibility to deal with council tax benefit reforms – again, hardly the stuff of central office press releases.

LGC has, however, been critical of the lack of support Mr Pickles and his department have shown for local government. Our lead story and leader article in this week’s issue give an example of why this is.

But at the select committee hearing, Mr Pickles himself gave an interesting insight into why there’s such anger within the sector towards him. The communities secretary was asked by MPs whether Greg Clark’s decentralisation report, published last week, had implicitly criticised his department by saying “it should come to a more settled but ambitious view of the role of local government and communities and neighbourhoods”. He replied that he had inherited a department that was “the voice of local government within government” and that had changed to being “the voice of the council tax payer, of the citizen inside local government services”.

It is quite right for Mr Pickles to act as the voice of the council tax payer – Mr Pickles’ predecessors would surely claim to have done likewise – but many officers and local politicians now feel that councils do not have an advocate within Whitehall. Mr Pickles’ comment seems to confirm that this is the case. Or at the very least, if there is one, it’s not him.

Incidentally, it’s worth pointing out that reports in the press this week that Ed Miliband and Ed Balls are planning to oppose George Osborne’s plans to raise benefits and tax credits at a below-inflation 1% have important implications for local government.

If spending on the NHS, schools and overseas aid is to be protected whilst overall spending is reduced, then a decision to also protect welfare expenditure implies extra cuts for other spending departments, local government included.

Councils will be unlikely to sit higher up the pecking order under a Labour administration.