Localism is dead – long live localism

The Government has failed to grasp the nettle of localism and there is a real danger that new localism will be perceived as just another excuse for cuts, says Dan Corry So we have finally received the Localism Bill, one of the key bricks in the Coalition's attempt to build a different way of managing and governing society. There are useful things in this Bill and in other moves by the Government, where serious and sensible devolution is going on. Mayors are an important move too even if the decision to shy away from city region mayors (like London) and go for mayors for bits of metropolitan areas (like the City of Manchester) is strange. But there are many issues with the way the Government is using the term and as a long standing supporter of localism, if a rather unusual one coming from the centre-left, that worries me a lot. It is absolutely right that localism must include taking away centrally dictated rules, restrictions and monitoring that do not need to be there; letting the default be that decisions are taken at a local level; and making accountability far more bottom up than top down. But the feel of the current set of initiatives is different: it has a bit of a sense of a move to a rather anarchic, anti-state, deregulated free for all. And that is a big danger. Because if there is confusion, uncertainty and poor outcomes, the cause of localism will be set back not advanced by these changes. There are at least four issues where the Government's approach is likely to become unstuck. First is a lack of real clarity of what the rules guiding policy now are. We are told there should be no more ‘top down' instructions, yet local council newspapers are banned, there are to be limits on top pay, and councils are to be forbidden from charging for refuse to increase recycling. It seems perhaps that you can have localism only as long as you do the type of things the Government wants. We are told that communities must be in charge but we see schools taken further out of the local community, except where there are activist parents, and GPs more free from councils than PCTs ever were. We do see a reduction in targets and auditors but in its place come loads of milestones and lots of ‘transparency of data' that, because they are not set against the benefits achieved, play almost entirely into the hands of those who are anti state and anti spending. Perhaps more profoundly, despite a call for councils to take control of their own destinies, we see few urgent moves to sorting out local finance, except for asymmetrical powers to stop council tax increases. And of course all this is in the context of very major spending cuts passed down via central diktat that local councils simply have to absorb and take the blame for. Second is coherence at local level. For me, one of most exciting things about devolving is the ability it gives to ‘join up' services which can only ever properly happen at a local level. But if you get it wrong you can create local chaos that frustrates citizens both in its unclear accountability and its failure to deliver. So we need to consider how whatever you create at local level allows different players to fit together. And I fear that this government is not really grasping that nettle. It feels instead that the Coalition have decided just to throw everything up in the air in an orgy of excitement in undoing anything that smacks of a top-down approach, without realising that there is a need some sort of ‘order', coordination and system at local level, as in almost all other countries. The net result is a severely under-cooked localism. So we get the Government's localism confusion. Government plans include some increased powers for councils; some for other directly locally elected bodies or individuals like the new elected police commissioners; some to elected parish councils; some to self appointed communities; and some to volunteers. There is potential for much conflict indeed. That is not a plea to give everything to an ‘all-purpose' council. There is no need for that and a fairly strong case against such a local monopoly but instead an urging for some sort of care to be taken to link all these interlocking bodies up. Third, is how far we want the localist-induced spatial diversity in services and outcomes to become. Some do not care – I doubt that the current Secretary of State sees that as a high priority at this stage. But I believe that the public do care: the post code lottery, much maligned by localists, is felt keenly by the public who have a keen sense of equity and fairness. The concept of ‘new localism' that Gerry Stoker and I developed almost a decade ago, was an attempt to balance a desire for localism with concern for these issues. It is not easy but unless there is some logic the public will revolt. Finally comes the issue of national or regional ‘externalities' or spill overs – issues that get lost if everything is to be decided locally. Clearly the Government feels that in some areas like the route of the new north south High Speed Rail, but they do not seem to feel it is an issue if communities, despite new incentives on planning and funding, decide to build no new homes. How long will that last? Some will say, don't ask for so much. Yes, not every dot and comma we would want in a more devolved polity is there but experience shows we will never get anywhere if we wait for that to be sorted. The basic direction is right for localists and we can sort out all the detail later. Others will say I am only a semi-localist hankering after a bit of good old fashioned central control and afraid to let go. But if this version of localism comes to be seen as merely a vehicle for cuts that creates chaos and incoherence locally, and brings unnecessary and undesirable increases in geographic and social inequality, then it will not work. The public will then reject the cry of localism, seeing it not as real accountability devolved down, but much more about central government washing its hands. And then we will backlash back to centralism once more. Dan Corry is an economic consultant at FTI Consulting. He is a former Downing Street adviser and former director of NLGN

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WHITEHALL

Localism is dead – long live localism

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