27 July 2010
Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has berated councils for not making full use of their wellbeing powers, and challenged them to become more ambitious and radical.
Speaking at a Local Government Association conference today, Pickles promised to be local government’s ‘champion at Cabinet’.
He said: ‘Be as ambitious as you can, be as radical as you like. Be as bold as you want. Make me an offer I can’t refuse… I absolutely trust local government to deliver.’
Pickles emphasised that he wanted to give councils more power and freedom, but also asked: ‘Why is it that only around 15% of councils have used their power to promote wellbeing?
‘Power to sit on your hands and freedom to twiddle your thumbs isn’t real power or real freedom.’
The secretary of state promised that a power of general competence for local government would be instituted in the autumn, and claimed the credit for councils being given a new role overseeing public health in this month’s NHS white paper.
But, he added: ‘Obviously, there have got to be limits. I’m not going to be the secretary of state who let Passport to Pimlico happen on his watch’, referring to the Ealing comedy in which a district of London declares independence from Britain.
‘I think it’s reasonable that councils shouldn’t use their new found freedom to saddle up the horses, arm their citizens and invade France. Apart from that, the world will be your oyster.’
Pickles also indicated that he was willing to go further than the Total Place efficiency pilots in reforming local spending. Revealing that the prime minister, deputy prime minister and chancellor were all firmly behind the idea, he said his department was working on ‘community budgets’ that would go beyond the Total Place model.
‘Total Place may have been a step in the right direction, but it was the smallest, most begrudging step possible,’ said Pickles.
In a separate speech this morning to the Policy Exchange think-tank, decentralisation minister Greg Clark set out how he intended to devolve power.
Clark explained that communities would be given a presumed ‘right of challenge’, changing public services where a better proposal existed. Although he said such judgements would be taken ‘at the most local level possible’, Clark did not spell out whether that meant the lowest tier of local government or by residents at a neighbourhood level.
He also hailed private philanthropy as ‘the purest expression of the Big Society’, and set out his doctrine of ‘social finance’, in which local people would have more say over how money is spent, and be given the right to take control of their community facilities.
