Seeds of change, by George Jones and John Stewart

11 May 06
David Miliband planted the idea of 'double devolution' when he was communities minister. Now the priority of his successor, Ruth Kelly, must be to explain what this concept means and how it will work in practice, argue George Jones and John Stewart

12 May 2006

David Miliband planted the idea of 'double devolution' when he was communities minister. Now the priority of his successor, Ruth Kelly, must be to explain what this concept means and how it will work in practice, argue George Jones and John Stewart

Double devolution was advocated by David Miliband as a major theme in the forthcoming white paper on local government. Now that Ruth Kelly has taken over his responsibility in the new-style Department for Communities and Local Government, she has to work out her approach to the concept – and her first step must be to clarify what double devolution means in practice.

In theory, it seems a straightforward concept: the government will devolve powers to local authorities on the understanding that they will in turn devolve powers to neighbourhoods and to local people. However, in practice, it is not so clear and there are numerous potential problems.

The first issue is whether central government is willing to devolve powers to local authorities to the same extent as it expects them to devolve powers to neighbourhoods. Councils appear to be expected to give neighbourhoods powers over new functions, yet there is no indication that central government intends to devolve powers over new functions to local authorities. Double devolution, by linking the two changes together, implies an equivalence that might not emerge in practice.

It seems more likely that the government is planning to reduce controls over local authorities' existing functions. That would be welcome but is not equivalent to what local authorities are expected to devolve to neighbourhoods.

The word devolution itself is ambiguous in this context: does it mean that local authorities give up all responsibility for a function, or does it mean delegation, or can it mean either?

There are also questions about which level functions should be devolved to. The neighbourhood will not always be appropriate, because what happens in one can affect others. Transport policy, for example, could not be devolved down to this level.

In other cases, the neighbourhood might not encompass the relevant community. It is too readily assumed that there is a community of interest in each neighbourhood, although in practice they vary greatly in composition and social life. For many issues, the relevant community might be one sharing a particular concern, background or interest, which comprises a relatively small minority of people in any one neighbourhood. An over-emphasis on neighbourhoods might overlook more relevant communities.

It is also unclear exactly what a neighbourhood is. It has been suggested that the government would not expect one to exceed 5,000 people, and by implication most would be smaller. If that were the case, many neighbourhoods would not contain – and therefore would not have responsibility for – important local facilities such as libraries or leisure centres. Other functions already have their own forms of devolution, of which education is the clearest example.

Given all these considerations, one is left wondering which functions will be devolved. Some suggest neighbourhoods will be given the right to trigger scrutiny or investigations into issues affecting their areas. But what will this mean in practice? Should one neighbourhood be able to trigger an investigation into an aspect of the work of a hospital trust that is of concern to the whole area? It might prove necessary to have limitations on such triggers, and there is always the problem of whether scrutiny and investigation will lead to action. Expectations that are unfulfilled can too easily lead to frustration.

In many parts of the country, neighbourhoods might not be the natural unit for expressing a sense of community. For example, few parishes see themselves as neighbourhoods. A town with a population of 10,000, with its own town council, might not wish to be divided into neighbourhoods. Although there are signs that the government recognises the need for diversity, the implications have still to be worked through.

An important issue is what devolution would mean for the governance of an area. Four main possibilities have been put forward, but more could be considered, including combinations of these:

  • A parish council with its statutory status, its powers and its right to raise revenues through the council tax

  • An elected neighbourhood council to which the council devolves (or delegates) powers and to which it allocates resources

  • A neighbourhood forum composed of representatives of community groups with the right to be consulted, make representations and to trigger investigations and scrutiny

  • An area committee of the local authority composed of councillors for the area, with delegated powers and resources allocated by the council.

The strength of the parish council compared with the elected neighbourhood council is that the former has a defined status, powers in its own right and powers of taxation. The elected neighbourhood council is dependent on the local authority for resources.

Neighbourhood forums have value as sounding boards for local people, but they are unlikely to maintain their vitality if they cannot be assured their views will have an impact. Frustration will soon kill enthusiasm and leave participation restricted to a few people speaking on behalf of sectional interests.

Area committees established within the constitution of the council have a valuable role. These are growing in number and scope as councils recognise the need to balance centralisation within the new political structures with decentralisation in the working of the council. Area committees tend to operate on a larger scale than that envisaged for neighbourhood governance. If neighbourhood governance is created separately from area committees, the relationship between these two needs to be clear, since it raises the issue of how elected councillors for an area are to relate to the different structures.

The councillor as the elected representative for an area is an asset that should be built on. Whatever approach to neighbourhood governance is adopted, the councillors' position should be strengthened. Many are frustrated by the limitations of their role in the new political structures. They should play a central role in developments in neighbourhood governance, which are closely related to their representative role, providing a potentially important link between those developments and the council. For that to develop, there must be means to ensure that action follows representation.

The danger is that, whatever triggers are given to the new forms of neighbourhood governance, action might not follow investigation or scrutiny, and decisions might not follow representation.

Representative democracy is not just about making representations, it is about decisions being made by elected representatives. Developments in neighbourhood governance can strengthen or weaken representative democracy by enhancing or bypassing the elected representative. The test is whether they do the first or the second.

One issue that is rarely discussed is the role of political parties. One senses that many people welcome neighbourhood governance because it might be free of political parties, but is that realistic where elections are involved? The experience of urban parish councils is that political parties often control them. The implications of political parties contesting neighbourhood elections, either officially or informally, have to be taken into account in any serious discussion.

There is also a danger wherever there is small-scale governance with access to significant resources. Vibrant neighbourhoods might not have any problems. But if the structure falls into the hands of a few individuals with limited public interest, which is always a possibility with a small population, issues of public probity can arise.

Safeguards will have to be carefully designed to provide the necessary controls without imposing an overgrown series of bureaucratic controls.

Various other matters need to be tackled, including the nature of the officer support to be given. The white paper must move beyond broad concepts to the problems of practice. What is clear, however, is that there can be no one answer to these issues. The diversity faced requires a diversity of responses.

Only in time will answers be found to these questions and we will then learn what double devolution means in practice. At present, we believe nobody knows, something Ruth Kelly will have to change. That is why we need exploration not imposition.

George Jones is emeritus professor of government at the London School of Economics and John Stewart is emeritus professor of local government at the University of Birmingham

PFmay2006

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