Local government has been under attack from all sides for the past 30 years and needs a new constitutional settlement, leading academic, George Jones, has claimed. The emeritus professor of government at the London School of Economics – and a regular MJ columnist – Prof Jones claimed councils had been eroded by central government from above, quangos from the sides, and unelected community groups from below. But, in a report on the future of local government for the Public Management and Policy Association, he said new powers were not needed – councils just needed to have constraints removed from them. ‘Local government can be reinvigorated only by giving local authorities powers to do things that matter to people in the locality, to have discretion over what they do and how they do it, and to finance their expenditure decisions by levying local taxes which bear on local voters,' Prof Jones said. These changes would, he claimed, revive local politics and democracy. ‘The way ahead for strengthening local government, and local representative democracy, is not by keeping the centre in the driving seat.'
