No English lessons for Scotland

7 Jun 12
Scotland has not made much progress in decentralising power to localities but has little to learn from the English localism model, leading academics told a gathering of public policy specialists in Edinburgh.
By Keith Aitken | 7 June 2012

Scotland has not made much progress in decentralising power to localities but has little to learn from the English localism model, leading academics told a gathering of public policy specialists in Edinburgh.

Professor John Raine, from the ­University of Birmingham’s Institute of Local Government Studies, argued that while the broad concept of localism appealed across party boundaries, the 2011 Localism Act was contradictory and ambiguous. It did not alter the balance of funding between central and local government and was compromised by two conflicting pressures – the insistence of the Treasury on maintaining tight financial controls and the reluctance of the civil service to relinquish policy-making authority.

This meant localism south of the border was still at ‘embryonic’ levels, he told the symposium, convened by the Scottish Policy Innovation Forum. ‘I don’t think ­Scotland has much to learn from England on localism,’ he said.

Professor Duncan Maclennan, ­director of the Centre for Housing Research at St Andrews University, spoke of the slow progress towards localism since devolution. Scotland had focused on municipalities rather than communities, he said, with the latter having little real input to community planning partnerships.

Maclennan acknowledged that the dialogue between central and local government had improved and the power of some quangos had been curbed, but said devolution had brought little real ­redistribution of resources from central to local government, while measures such as the council tax freeze had reduced ­council discretion.

Maclennan drew on his experience as a former government adviser in Canada to warn against confusing localism with the handing down of responsibilities to local government at a time when resources for them were being centrally cut.

‘That’s not devolution, that’s dumping,’ he said. ‘In Scotland, if we are to learn from Christie and Arbuthnott [reports on public service delivery and resource allocation] in reshaping service provision and to engage community energies in renewal, we have to have a better defined notion of localism.’

But Professor Richard Kerley from Edinburgh’s Queen Margaret University argued that public expectations were also contradictory, as indicated by the disapproving phrase ‘postcode ­lottery’ to describe local differences. ‘Local can mean different,’ he said.

Kerley suggested that few services lent themselves neatly to neighbourhood control: refuse was collected door-to-door, but disposal needed wider policy co-ordination. Similar functional tensions applied in services such as roads and planning, where local concerns could be pitched against both municipal and national imperatives. Spacer

CIPFA logo

PF Jobsite logo

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top