I was delighted to take part in a debate at Sutton Council’s Full Council meeting last night (22nd July) on the question of independence for local government.
The motion to “rewire local services” was proposed by my ward colleague, and leader of the council, Ruth Dombey, who has been stimulating debate at a national level including at a Local Government Association conference last week.
Cllr Dombey spoke about the fact that Britain’s political system is one of the most centralised democracies in the Western world, and called for a “redistribution” of power to a local level.
Referring to the hugely disproportionate cuts in local council funding over recent years, she said that it often takes a crisis to focus minds on the way forward, and that a “revolution” was needed in the way council’s are organised.
I believe this is the right debate at the right time. This debates is about more smarter services with more local control.
A study by Ernst & Young last year concluded that devolving more power from Whitehall – with Council’s taking on more municipal services from other providers – could in fact save the taxpayer £20 billion over five years. Rewiring local services is simply good business sense.
Nationally the Conservatives have supported, at least partially, the agenda of devolved decision-making and innovation at a local level but their words – telling councils they have more freedom – have yet to match their deeds in giving that freedom away.
The Localism Act was a good start but it needs to be built on if powers are truly to be delegated down from Whitehall to town halls.
Transport, planning, energy, supporting businesses and helping the unemployed back to work. These are all areas where there is a strong case that these services can best be delivered at a local level.
Councils are accountable in a way that quango’s, Whitehall departments and private utilities are not. They are often more efficient too; they have had to become more efficient to save residents the pain of year-on-year cuts.
But councils have are also increasingly strategic planners and commissioners, skills that make Council’s ideally placed to take on new roles.
Barbara Janke, the former leader of Bristol, led the way after getting a grant of £2.5 billion from the European Investment Bank to set up an energy services company.
The principles behind this were simple; local government was best placed to deliver on energy efficiency and guaranteeing the supply of low carbon energy to the city.
There has already been discussion in Sutton about setting up a more limited energy company, taking advantage of the new Beddington energy recovery plant.
Councils are also best placed to ensure the Green Deal becomes a success but lack the cash investment to do so. As a result we see a plethora of companies flooding households with different leaflets, knocking on some doors and not others. And nobody knowing who’s in charge.
Councils would better administer unemployment benefits and help local people back into work by matching skills with available jobs and using an economic strategy to encourage business opportunities where the local skill labor exists.
Sutton already has a proud record of successful partnership working, which I believe is an essential foundation of ‘rewiring’ local services. As such I believe Sutton would be an excellent authority to pilot this approach.
It would need the authority of central government, of course, but if ministers truly believe in devolved government they should not just give councils not just the green light but also free up councils to set their own taxes.
Ministers should allow local people the freedom to opt to pay for investments in services that will ultimately deliver savings and benefits to them in just a few short years.
Sadly the Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has rejected this out of hand. He’s telling councils to drive the car while the car-keys remain firmly in his pocket.
Nick Clegg spoke last week about the idea of local council’s pooling borrowing limits to build more council houses. This idea can be extended to developing other services.
We need to not just reinvent local government but unblock the potential and re-ignite interest in councils thereby returning to era when more people sought to be councillors.
In my view this isn’t just a response to central government slashing billions from local council budgets, it is about designing services around people and communities in a way that saves money and improves services.
Joseph Chamberlain – Birmingham’s Liberal mayor in the 1870’s – did a great deal to improve living conditions for the poor by installing basic infrastructure like sewage, and he brought out gas and water companies.
It was called “gas and water socialism” but it was more of a recognition that unfettered private enterprise often fails to help those most in need.
Today many things have changed but public health remains an issue. Pensioners freeze to death, children go to school hungry not least because energy meters and water bills are so high.
We are not in the 1870’s but we can still learn lessons from this Municipalism in our post-industrial society.
Powerful local government was popular. Democratic councils are popular too – as Sutton’s biannual residents surveys attest – but the question is can extending and devolving democracy go hand-in-hand with exercising more responsibility over more services?
I say part of the answer lies in ensuring these services are fully meshed with the web and new media. Empowering Local Committees is fine, but soon virtually everybody will be online.
This provides a valuable tool to ensure power and decision-making is genuinely devolved downwards to local communities while council’s take on more services.
That means moving away from using websites as an old-fashioned depository of information we deem useful, or to pay bills with, but instead embracing it as a genuine mechanism to engage the public and connect them with council officers in a way that won’t result in them getting fobbed off.
The electronic media can reach communities that otherwise wouldn’t come to Local Committees, and can “personalise” local government by facilitating discussion on local issues between borough residents as Facebook does on a wider scale and responding whatever time of day or night.
It is an important debate and one that I hope continues in parallel with the annual process of reorganising services to lessen the impact of centrally-imposed budget reductions on the public.
By Lester Holloway @brolezholloway
