On paper, John Denham's draft paper Strengthening local democracy looks like great news for local government.
Indeed, its conclusion that, for most voters, the local council is the public entity to which they first turn if they have a concern about their locality, is a welcome emphasis of their community leadership role. Proposed greater powers to scrutinise local agencies should help address this constant complaint by the public that they have to deal with too many organisations for redress.
This is all highly welcome, and reflects the wider cross-cutting agenda, whether LAAs, MAAs, CAAs or more recently, Total Place. But it is not new, and the real issue for councils in trying to align local services better round the user has been, and still is, how to put it into practice when different funding institutions are involved. Mr Denham's paper makes it clear there will be no new powers for councils, so the process of
scrutinising and influencing behaviour by other parts of the local public sector, presumably, must be done through persuasion.
There is also a curious absence of urgency about the paper, which says it is setting ‘parameters for the debate over the next five to 10 years.' In fact, this agenda really needs to be well under way in the next 18 months, in the light of the fiscal cliff edge most councils anticipate meeting in 2011.
The wider scrutiny role plainly contributes to the Total Place initiative, although the link is not always made clear in the paper. This is surprising, since Total Place is the principal game in town right now ,and certain to survive a change of government. Yet, it is already clear there are immense obstacles to be faced, primarily over getting the various funding streams and their institutions aligned. These could have been addressed if scrutiny was backed up by tough new powers.
In its proposals, Mr Denham's paper has its heart in the right place, but is likely to be overwhelmed by the icy winds of spending cuts – when the need for joined-up efficiencies will create their own more brutal timetable for reform.
Michael Burton, Editor, The MJ
