The Conservatives are going to publish their new green paper on local government later today – details are already on the BBC website. We’ll be taking a look at the proposals from a democratic perspective in the next few days.
With local government reform in mind, it was interesting to read this piece of research from CLG, setting out how local authorities have used the wide-ranging wellbeing power that was given to them under local government legislation a few years back.
The Power, as the report calls it, was so broad that (with some exceptions) it was pretty much a power to do anything that could be plausibly thought beneficial for an area. Use of the power, however, has not lived up to expectations.
The report suggests a few reasons, but for me the obvious ones are:
- The absence of attached money – not much point having a power if you can’t afford to do anything with it
- Caution among officers about pushing the legal envelope – though this may be receding as time goes on, vide the Bank of Essex
- Focus on the day job at elected member level – new legal powers are hardly the sort of thing that sets politicians’ hearts aflame, particularly if they are part of local government legislation. Combine obscure powers with an immensely pressurised day job, and political leaders won’t have the time to explore stretching their powers in new directions. The idea that councils have freedom to act beyond their traditional service remit is a culture change for members, as well as officers.
Lesson for David Cameron: without fireworks, marching bands and a big song and dance, there’s no guarantee that even quite radical changes in powers will be used by councils.
[...] legislative support from Parliament. The wellbeing power is something that comes close, and lessons from that suggest that there are real institutional barriers to its use. On the basis of that experience, the [...]
I think this is an important grass roots action.