Davy Jones Consultancy

So, the dust has now settled on the release of the CAA results. What do we find ?

No surprises
There are precious few people complaining about their assessment. So, it hasn't told us much we didn't already know. Interesting that 9 green flags were given for community involvement, including three (Norfolk, Tower Hamlets & Wiltshire) explicitly linked to the use of Participatory Budgeting (though inexplicably, Newcastle, the leading PB pilot in the country wasn't one of them !). And around 15 green flags awarded for sustainability. Few red flags in these areas - just 2 on community cohesion (Thurrock and Knowsley) and one on residents' perceptions of local public services (Oldham). But there are lots of people complaining instead about the "burden" of CAA not being much easier than CPA.

Was it a real Comprehensive Area Assessment?
No. Despite Total Place, CAA still assessed value for money in each separate local public agency. And it retained all the separate organisational assessments. So the area focus was mixed at best. It wasn't comprehensive either, with its starting point the 3 year Local Area Agreement , applying only to top tier councils and focusing on the next three years. And while the public continue to welcome an independent assessment of their local services, citizens and services users were entirely excluded from the process.

What's the alternative?
Local Area Agreements should become just that - Local. They should be discussed with and signed off by local people, not with Government. All three tiers of local government should be encouraged to have one as a way of focusing discussion on the priorities for local places. The public will never agree to local services just policing themselves. But if the burden of an army of inspectors is too much, there needs to be another independent element - the public.

CAA should be a process initiated by local services involving not only their peers and staff, but also crucially local people and service users. The process and the outcome should be widely discussed and communicated locally. Councils and other services should seek innovative ways to capture qualitative feedback from local people, including through "Amazon-style" local ratings feedback.

What about inspection?
There will always be a need for unannounced inspection of services for the vulnerable - children, the elderly and infirm. But inspections in other services should be a last not a first resort - triggered by peer reviews or public concern.

Other reforms
Of course, all this would work better if other key changes were implemented too - reforming the finances and governance of local services - but that's a subject for past and future blogs!

Traditionally, New Year and the start of a new decade especially, is a time for new thinking and hopes for the future. So, here goes for priorities for the next 10 years.....

Saving the planet and a new economic model

In this next decade, the greatest responsibility facing humankind is to reverse global warming, the rising of sea levels and the plundering of our natural resources. It towers over (while also relating to) all other issues in terms of magnitude and significance. Any party or politician that does not make it their number one priority is worthless.

Second, and closely linked to the above, is to break from the failed market economy and to develop an economic model based on fairness and meeting the needs of everyone not just the rich (here and abroad). I am currently reading "The Spirit Level" by Kate Pickett and Richard Wilkinson - an excellent book, which proves categorically that economic inequality is the root cause of a swathe of social, political and economic problems. Market economic models are congenitally incapable of producing equality and happiness, which should be the benchmark of human progress.

Democracy and people power

Trust in politicians has plummeted to historically low levels. National politicians are, with a few honourable exceptions, seen as self serving, all part of the same social elite, lacking any moral or social vision, and desperate to hang on to power at any cost. The type of mass "behaviour change" required to rebuild our local communities as low carbon, and the new community-based economic model we need to develop, both require a new Politics and a new breed of political representative.

The next decade requires a move beyond timid consultation and consumer feedback, towards local citizens taking the lead in determining priorities for services and budgets. It will demand more political involvement by citizens, and more citizen control over their politicians - fully democratic voting systems and methods of ensuring that our politicians remain truly "representative".

Stop looking for saviours

Neither Barack Obama, Hu Jintao, David Cameron or Gordon Brown are going to do any of the above. It is down to us.

I am struggling to understand something. Let me run it by you and see if you can help.

The much-lauded private sector, in the shape of the banks, has through incompetence, irresponsibility and greed, caused the biggest international financial crisis for 50 years. The public sector, in the shape of Governments, has bailed out the private sector with squillions and squillions of pounds. And the consensus across the main political parties is that the way out of this financial crisis is ........to slash the public sector ! And then, to force the public sector to farm more work out to........ the private sector !

The logic is baffling !

I put this paradox to a Tory MP recently and while "he understood my point", he lamented that Governments could not control the private sector, so the public sector would have to suffer. Well, I think it is intellectually bankrupt to suggest that governments simply have to go along with whatever the private sector says or does.

Rather than bail out the banks, nationalise them. Make them work FOR the taxpayers, not against them. Use them to fund a huge EXPANSION of the public sector rather than cuts. The banks could create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, supporting a real green new deal of essential public works such as home insulation and public transport programmes. We could se control of the banks to transform the role of the post office into a local bank at the heart of every local community.

And while we are about it, use our control of the banks to pull the plug on all the morally and environmentally irresponsible investments these banks are making around the world.

Next time, you get a lecture from a (private sector) consultant or media pundit about how the public sector needs to learn from the private sector about efficiency and value for money, just repeat after me: "BANKERS" !

Economy and State

The latest intellectual offering from David Cameron argues for less government or more self-reliance, a smaller state and more social capital. Many of us will recognise much of his diagnosis of the problem. But in arguing over the size of the state, he implies that the economy is neutral. It is not. The capitalist economy by its nature causes inequality, by its nature is in conflict with the views and aspirations of citizens, by its nature reinforces individualism and competition rather than collective approaches and social capital. It's the economy, stupid !

Hands up all the doubters - all those who said it would never take off, it was too radical, too "foreign", or wouldn't last beyond Hazel Blears or a Labour Government !

The latest count suggests between 80 and 85 areas of the country are now experimenting with some form of Participatory Budgeting - and the majority of these areas are controlled by Conservative councils. Even in the South East, there are now PB pilots in 8 areas with a further 8 seriously considering or planning such piloting - more than one in 5 local areas in the region. And the spread of PB has now gone beyond local councils in urban areas - reaching rural areas and parishes, police and fire services, housing associations and community organisations.

Can it survive ?

Yes. The underlying drivers for citizen involvement remain very strong - the public thirst for voice and choice grows rather than diminishes. The scale of tough economic choices and the resulting reconfiguring of local services will require greater public consultation and involvement. The logic of the emphasis on Total Place will lead to demands for citizens to have a greater say on how public budgets are spent.

And there is no sign yet of the Conservative front bench turning its face against PB. Many local Conservative councillors are now supporting PB pilots. Some see advantages in allowing citizens to have a say over tough budget decisions or on allocating their delegated budgets. The Conservative Party "Control Shift" paper proposed a local referendum on council tax rises above inflation. But this is not necessarily counter-posed to PB either. While I don't favour such referenda, potentially they could sit alongside one another.

Now take PB to the mainstream

There are now lots of local areas letting citizens vote on how small pots of money should be allocated. Great. It helps everyone get used to the idea that citizens can make sensible financial choices. But now it has to go further. A number of areas round the country are looking at using PB to determine how large strands of mainstream money should be spent and at how overall financial priorities are determined. That is inevitable and welcome. It is not serious to propose citizen involvement only when the decisions and budgets aren't very big or important ! The spread of PB in the UK now seems assured. Our task now is to deepen it and embed it into the mainstream.

John Denham is by general consensus a "good bloke" and takes local government seriously.

So when I received the press release about the consultation paper, Strengthening Local Democracy, claiming that it "heralded the biggest single transfer of power to local government in a generation", I was temporarily quite excited!

Until I read it.....

The consultation paper is many things, but "the biggest single transfer" etc, it ain't.

All hail scrutiny
It makes the right noises about councillors and local people needing more say over other local public services, and then proposes............more scrutiny powers for councillors!

Leave aside for a moment the likelihood of many councils going back to the old Committee system rather than cabinets and scrutiny if the Tories win the general election next Spring. The reality is that scrutiny is pretty powerless to force cabinets to do something they don't want to do, let alone to force other public sector agencies to mend their ways. Scrutiny has no teeth - extending it is better than nothing, but not by much.

It argues for local citizens to have more say over how public money is spent in their area, referring to the Total Place programme as facilitating that goal. But again, the only proposal is extending scrutiny. What about extending participatory budgeting into other local services? Department of Health has notoriously done nothing to support the spread of PB pilots wanting to use health money, why not force them and other departments to actively encourage more PB pilots using multi-agency money?

More powers, vicar?
The consultation asks whether local government needs more powers to carry out its wider remit, or barriers removed including the inspection burden. The Tories have rightly proposed that local government should have a "general power of competence" to allow it to do anything unless legislation explicitly excludes it. The paper is silent on this.

On climate change, it suggests some modest proposals but misses out the most important change needed. We need a statutory duty on all those who provide public services (whether from the public, private or voluntary sectors) to promote the long-term sustainability of their local communities.

Streamlining inspection? Yes please. Start by ending separate use of resources judgements on local providers and replace it with an area-based value for money judgement across the LSP, using the Total Place approach.

Central/local relations

But the best is left to last: how can we better articulate and improve relations between central and local government? And the answer is..........to publicise the 8-point status quo, and introduce either an Ombudsman or a joint parliamentary select committee to police it.

No wonder local government is rejoicing round the country!

How about ending the system where national targets have precedence over locally agreed priorities? How about giving local government back full tax-raising powers?

Such a missed opportunity. And such an epitaph for New Labour.

There is a new BIG IDEA in town - Total Place. It's a good idea but it does now appear to mean all things to all people.

First to coin the phrase was Sir Michael Bichard in his Efficiency Report accompanying the Budget. He argued that the recession meant marginal savings would not be adequate in this recession and a new cross-services review of provision was needed in every locality.

WHY CUTS?

Let us pause a minute here. Why are all the "main" political parties and most commentators (see Steve Bundred of the Audit Commission's outrageous recent pronouncement on the subject) agreed that savage cuts in public spending are inevitable ? They are not. There is a perfectly credible alternative of INCREASING public expenditure as a way of getting out of recession - ploughing money into public services and sustainable jobs ("A Green New Deal") that all these experts are coveniently ignoring. Beware the "cuts are inevitable" brigade - they are ideologically driven by old-fashioned market economics.

But I digressed...

Total Place could be a good thing. Government has latched on to it and launched 13 pilots round the country. More areas have jumped on the bandwagon. Primarily the pilots are looking at mapping all the public money coming into a local area and then how it is spent. This has been tried before. In the Area Profiles pilot I led at the Audit Commission we attempted the same but were thwarted by the lack of civil service/politician's political will to challenge old ways of doing things.

But making transparent how local money is spent is pretty much a prerequisite for any serious attempt at involving citizens in mainstream budget decisions (PB especially). So the momentum behind Total Place is encouraging.

Impact of Total Place

But Total Place is coming to mean more than just financial mapping. It is also increasingly being portrayed as a first step to reconstructing all local public services from the bottom up in a more rational and cost effective way. This makes it very interesting. In particular, this approach makes it possible to begin to "think the unthinkable" and to address those extremely difficult issues in shaping low carbon communities for the future. It will be a tragedy if local authorities don't grasp the opportunity afforded by the recession and Total Place to engage citizens in a meaningful dialogue about how best to do this.

The future is local

None of this will happen though unless Government (of any persuasion) significantly shifts power back to the local level - including raising the finances for local services. The latest John Denham consultation on "Strengthening Local Communities" proposes a few modest steps in this direction - extending council scrutiny of other local services and the possible introduction of local carbon budgets. But these steps are nowhere near enough.

The results of the most recent survey of LSPs (in 2008) have just been published. I was one of the report co-authors. Its findings include that the least progress has been made locally on pooling local budgets, and that LSPs still feel that Government centralism is the greatest obstacle to LSPs being able to fulfil their roles properly.

Step forward Total Place - but let's make it TOTAL LOCAL SUSTAINABLE PLACE!

Political meltdown hits local public services.

Blears has gone ! The champion of PB and advocate of the "empowerment" agenda has been ousted over her expenses claims and the failed Blairite plot against Brown. In comes former councillor and left of centre MP John Denham to replace her.

And John Healey has been shifted from local government to Housing, with Rosie Winterton replacing him with a brief of local government and regional economies, reporting jointly to the Department for Business Innovation & Skills and to DCLG.

What's the damage?
Many people who are passionate about citizen involvement are worried about Blears' departure. On balance, I would say: "don't be". It has been an advantage having a champion for PB in the Cabinet for getting action from (some) sections of the civil service. But in the country as a whole, the strong association of PB with Blears has been a double-edged sword. For many, it has been a red rag to a blue bull. It may actually be easier to push PB in Conservative areas now that she has gone. And John Denham was a strong supporter of the PB pilot in his local Southampton Thornhill area.

And the fact is that the underlying drivers for the citizen involvement agenda are much more powerful than individual Ministers. The need for more public involvement and transparency in decision-making has never been on so many people's lips, especially since the MPs' expenses scandal. The power of the internet driving the choice and voice agenda has not gone away. Citizen involvement is here to stay - the real argument in the next few years will be about how significant it should be in determining important local choices.

Business takes over
But hang on, what's this about local government reporting jointly to Mandelson and John Denham !!! Some commentators have welcomed this as a sign of how important Government is taking the need to stimulate local economies. This is naive nonsense. It is utterly retrograde that local government should be seen as in some ways subordinate to business, especially to the wretched ("intensely relaxed about people becoming filthy rich") Peter Mandelson. Has New Labour learned nothing about the public mood in the last few weeks?

And of course it follows a sinister pattern. Higher eduction too now reports to Mandelson's Business Innovation & Skills Department. This formalises in structural terms what has been going on for the past two decades, as colleges and Universities have been transformed into arms of business, rather than seats of learning.

Is there a contradiction?
Nothing exemplifies better the contradiction between the Government's policies for local public services than this structural reporting line. On the one hand, Government wants local services to be much more responsive to local people. On the other it wants them (and higher education) to be subordinate to business. The interests of business and those of local people are NOT the same - frequently they conflict, as the experience of privatisation and PFI over the past decade clearly demonstrates.

Take the post office debate - while local places need post offices and local authorities fight to keep them, the Business Secretary closes them or sells them off to the private sector. Which way will the local government minister jump when faced with that contradiction?

Local public services should be driven by the needs and views of their local citizens, not by those of big business, whose shareholders have no interest in their local areas.