01 July 2005
The government's push to improve neighbourhoods will not be carried out at the expense of councils, local government minister Phil Woolas claimed this week.
Speaking at a central London conference, Woolas assured local authorities that they would play a central part in enforcing change at community level.
'Our attitude towards councils and councillors should be to see how they can help deliver what we are trying to do, not seeing them as part of the problem,' Woolas told the Local Government Information Unit-sponsored event on June 29.
Some councillors fear that ministers will use voluntary and other local groups, rather than local authorities, to enforce its neighbourhood plans.
A government paper published earlier this year, Citizen engagement and public services: why neighbourhoods matter, outlined a vision for local renewal that included neighbourhood improvement districts, devolved power to neighbourhoods and delegated budgets to local level.
However, Woolas added: 'Councillors will have to change their roles. Their role as local civic leaders, agents of change, political leaders will have to increase.'
Some councils are already 'grasping that agenda', added the minister, who is MP for Oldham East and Saddleworth.
Woolas said the neighbourhood agenda was important for the whole of the government, not just the department directly responsible for it, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister.
To prove the point, he highlighted a Home Office paper that was launched on June 28 by six ministers, including David Miliband, minister of communities and local government, Work and Pensions Secretary David Blunkett and Home Office minister Hazel Blears.
The 'action plan', called Together We Can, represents, the Home Office said, 'a significant shift in the balance of power between local communities and central government'.
The plan envisages the involvement of 12 government departments. Woolas said he would be charged with looking at revitalising neighbourhoods as part of the approach.
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