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It is proposed that local authorities should face a new performance indicator, to see if they are fit to govern. The proposition is that councils should be judged on how well residents believe they can influence local decisions. On the face of it, this may seem a sensible, pro-democratic idea, but it is instructive to look at what constitutes a local decision in the minds of residents before gaily adopting this indicator. Simply by reading local newspapers, or better still, talking to people who have been canvassing for various parties in the forthcoming local elections, we can see ‘local' issues are not as easily defined as the Government might wish to think. The list of issues is a long one, and includes – the closure of post offices, crowding on commuter trains, closure of small health units, a lack of dentists, and the cost of water and water meters. On any one of these issues, a local authority may have a view, and may even be an advocate on behalf of its residents, but local householders clearly feel they have little influence over these matters, as, indeed, do local authorities themselves. It is a basic tenet of any private sector business that you try not to carry risk that you cannot manage, and it is a tenet of our parliamentary democracy that ministers at the dispatch box are not held to account for other junior ministers' doings. These eminently-sensible principles look like being broken in local government by this crude performance indicator which equates council decisions to local decisions, something local residents do not do. What this indicator actually does is throw into stark relief just how centralised and market-driven a country we live in. Most of the list of local decisions above, are, in fact, national decisions imposed on local communities. Quite often, these decisions are taken by ministers or distant multinational companies, or a combination of the two. In most European countries, local authorities would have substantial influence and, in some cases, authority, over quite a few of the issues on our list. In the UK, decisions which may appear to the residents to be local ones are, actually, no such thing, and to ask local authorities to be judged on their population's ability to influence them is just plain daft. This is one of those examples where a perfectly-laudable idea has failed to take into account reality, and the Government cannot have it both ways. Either it gives local authorities genuine authority over far more local decisions, or it must be prepared to be judged by a performance indicator of its own, as to how much people feel they can influence government ministers. David Clark is director general of SOLACE

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WHITEHALL

Under the influence

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