Davy Jones Consultancy

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.