By Richard Johnstone in Birmingham | 1 July 2011
Eric Pickles has told the Local Government Association that the government is ‘dismantling the command and control structure of Whitehall’.
Closing the LGA conference in Birmingham yesterday, he said that the government’s move to localise business rates was ‘a decisive change’ and part of its localism agenda.He said that this reform would build upon changes already made to free local authorities, including scrapping the Government Offices for the Regions and scaling back the Best Value performance assessment regime.
The changes proposed by the government would lead to a ‘new wave of municipal activism’, he said.
Pickles also reminded the conference that the government was pulling together all councils’ statutory duties for the first time. In March, it published a draft list, asking councils to add any missing areas and to comment on which should be kept and which scrapped.
Publishing an updatedlist yesterday, decentralisation minister Greg Clark said that any steps to remove specific duties or associated guidance would be a separate process, with further consultation.
Pickles said that the duties were ‘a comfort blanket’ to some councils, adding that half the 1,294 duties imposed on local government since 1840 had been imposed since 1997, when Labour won power.
He told the conference: ‘Does local government need a statutory duty to promote democracy when we have things like elections? And should local government need to petition the secretary of state before erecting a statue.’
He added that the compilation of the list was not a move to remove all the duties placed on public services.
Pickles also confirmed that councils planning to appoint chief officers on six-figure salaries would have to decide this at a public meeting to ‘justify the decision to the press and public’.
Labour leader Ed Miliband also addressed the conference yesterday. He told delegated he backed plans for more English cities to have directly elected mayors.
Miliband criticised the government’s localism plans, saying they had ‘ended up devolving responsibility for the cuts and little else’.
However, he said that he ‘welcomed the ideas coming forward from the leaders of our big cities to learn the lessons from London of devolving housing, transport and wider powers over economic development’.
Plans for mayors to be set up in 12 English cities after referendums are included in the Localism Bill currently going through Parliament.
Miliband said: ‘I do believe done right, especially in major cities, it can make a positive difference. It is right to give people that choice.’
