Davy Jones Consultancy

Citizen empowerment
I am often asked whether the Government is really "serious" about citizen empowerment. No one is more sceptical and cynical than me about politicians' cries of "power to the people" - which should usually have the words "over my dead body" added to the end for more accuracy!

Deeds or words?
But, judge people by their deeds not their words!

Government has realised that detailed management of local services from Whitehall doesn't work and is very expensive. It wants local citizens to hold local services to account instead. Yet whatever Government's intention, it's a fact that it has done a lot of things recently to make empowerment easier and more likely to happen.

Is this applied consistently? No. Is government doing things that run counter to community empowerment? Yes. Should we give Government a blank cheque on empowerment? No. But credit where it's due - there is a lot to welcome on this agenda.

What has Government done?
1) The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act puts a duty on councils to "inform, consult and involve" local people. We await the final statutory guidance to accompany the Act, but the draft suggested that such involvement should be "as much as possible" and for both routine and major local decisions. The Act also strengthened previous legislation putting a similar duty on health bodies to involve citizens and patients.

2) Government has made a number of performance indicators around citizen empowerment central to the new performance regime for local services. It has strengthened and made more regular the survey of citizens that local authorities must conduct.

3) The new assessment regime for local services/areas (called Comprehensive Area Assessment) puts citizen empowerment at its centre. The consultation document from the inspectorates on CAA clearly argued that assessing the empowerment of citizens would be a crucial factor in the assessment.

4) Government has said it wants to have participatory budgeting in every local area within four years - the first Government in the world to make such a commitment.

5) Government has issued a stream of consultation documents and other guidance notes in the last 9 months related to citizen empowerment. Taken together, they make a strong theoretical and practical case both for why citizen empowerment helps to improve services, but also why it is good in its own right in boosting social capital and community cohesion.

Conclusion
Talking is one thing. Passing laws and issuing statutory guidance is another altogether. Rather than holding fire in case this is all a con trick, we would all be best advised to grab the opportunities opened up by these new laws to make citizen empowerment a reality - before Government does change its mind!