By Alex Klaushofer
The Conservatives have made a bid to grab the localist agenda with the publication of a long-awaited policy paper on giving more power to local communities.
The Conservatives have made a bid to grab the localist agenda with the publication of a long-awaited policy paper on giving more power to local communities.Launching the green paper Control shift in Coventry on February 17, leader David Cameron declared: ‘Decentralisation is an absolutely essential component of our progressive Conservative philosophy.’
The document’s wide-ranging set of proposals includes removing planning and housing powers from regional development agencies and devolving them to councils, and giving local authorities the right to keep the uplift in business rate revenues.
One recommendation likely to be less than popular with councils is residents’ proposed right to veto council tax rises above the national threshold. ‘We think they should go directly to the electorate and say, “We want to put council tax up by x%”,’ shadow local government minister Bob Neill told Public Finance.
Councils agreeing to limit council tax rises to a maximum of 2.5% would be compensated by a central government grant of 2.5% — and could keep the difference if they levied a lower increase. But Neill confirmed that the party had dropped an earlier idea to set up an independent commission to determine councils’ funding allocations.
The document also recommends the abolition of the Comprehensive Area Assessment inspection regime being introduced in April. Instead, the Audit Commission would have a duty to review and report on the criteria for councils
An alternative inspection regime with ‘light-touch indicators’ would ‘not necessarily’ set national standards for public services, he said. ‘We’re prepared to be open-minded about that.’
The prospect of variations in services that were a result of local input rather than funding anomalies was not an issue, he added: ‘Where it’s a deliberate decision by a council responding to their electorate, that’s fine by us.’
The Tories – pleased by the high profile of the Conservative London Mayor Boris Johnson – might also introduce legislation to oblige England’s 12 largest cities to hold referendums on whether to have an elected mayor.
‘We think there’s compelling evidence that they can work,’ said Neill. ‘Look at London.’ But cities such as Stoke, which has recently rejected a mayoralty, might be exempt from conducting a referendum, he added.
The green paper has met with a mixed response from local government experts.
Chris Leslie, of the New Local Government Network – the think-tank that has long advocated localism – said that while the paper contained ‘some positive elements’, other issues were a cause for concern.
‘Referendums to veto council tax decisions by councillors may undermine the nature of representative democracy and prompt many to expect the same right to referendum for national policies too,’ he said.
‘The proposal to abolish the CAA would remove a key driver for joined up local service delivery and needs to be thought through more carefully,’ he added.
The Local Government Association’s Liberal Democrat group leader, Richard Kemp, dismissed the paper as ‘empty gesture that an opposition party makes’.
The proposals on council finances did nothing to address the fact that councils were still reliant on the Treasury for 80% of their funding. Still we end up with council tax that is unresponsive and unfair, and councils acting as supplicants to central government. They have to decide that we’re going to raise our money locally,’ he said.
Under the proposals, councils would also be obliged to publish details of senior council staff’s pay and benefits to ‘provide downward pressure on excessive and unjustified wage inflation’
