Today we have had an insight into the new way of running government with the publication of draft “Structural Reform Plans” (video of the PM and his speech at the No 10 site here and the CLG’s SRP here). The format will be the same in all the plans apparently (please don’t make me read them all!), you get a page on “Our Ambition”, which for the CLG is: “Our ambition is localism. Real change driven by local people working together in their communities.” Followed by a set of “Departmental Priorities”, around the theme of localism, and the Big Society. For instance, priority 4 says: “Make localism and the Big Society part of everyday life – by increasing accountability" and “Reinvigorate local accountability, democracy and participation by freeing local government from central and regional control, decentralising power, providing greater freedoms and flexibilities to local government and simplifying and deregulating local government finance”There then follows a list of stuff that CLG intends to do with timings. The costs are presumably being held over till the spending review.And that’s it. No great detail of what the purpose of the stuff is beyond increasing localism and encouraging the Big Society which looks like an excellent opportunity for local authorities to define what they mean in their own areas.Mind you, I can see that some of the stuff is quite big stuff, for instance, a glance through the list of the CLG’s actions to 4.5, paragraph “v” says “Local Government resource review Summer 2011 2012”. This will be a tricky exercise if local authorities have not actually defined what they exist to do and got the backing of their local people, as one who contributed to the Deputy PM’s suggestion box contributed “...scrap council business rates, I pay 9500 a year for nothing! It is a unfair tax, and a un fair law (sic) that we have to pay for it. May be understandable if the council actually did something for it.” Tricky indeed.
