By David Williams
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.
