Seize the moment
Author: Jonathan Werran, The MJ |
A fourth senior minister this week urged councils to ‘push back’ at Whitehall edicts and use new powers to improve communities ? indicating the coalition remains keen on its devolution agenda as it heads into Parliament’s summer recess.
Francis Maude, lead minister at the Cabinet Office, told a meeting of the All-Party Parliamentary Local Government Group on 9 July that councils should fight centralist diktats which impose unnecessary burdens on councils and hinder localism.
‘If there is something you are being told to do by the Government that you think is unreasonable, then push back. Get back to ministers, or me, and moan at them. There is a mindset, still too much of a culture [in Whitehall] that says if something is difficult, then let local government do it,’ he said.
Mr Maude fielded questions from councillors concerned that despite the Government’s localist rhetoric, they were being overwhelmed by instruction from Whitehall departments ? especially in adult and children’s care services.
Mr Maude said councils should look at the detail of departmental circulars ‘chapter and verse’ to ascertain if specific action was really necessary.
A National Audit Office study published last month found that departments still rushed through policy consultations affecting local authorities and deluged council officials with time-consuming, burdensome and sometimes-irrelevant paperwork.
Government departments, agencies and quangos sent 744,000 e-mails to local government in March 2012 alone, the study found, leaving council managers ‘exasperated by the poor signposting’ of messages. Mr Maude even argued it was not necessary for councils to have a legal right to challenge to takeover public services. He cited the example of his constituency, where he has asked West Sussex CC to collaborate with NHS providers to co-fund a new hospital. Mr Maude suggested authorities should still present ministers with proposals on how localised services could be delivered cheaper and better ? circumventing sceptical Whitehall officials.
His words echo those of his DCLG peers. In his speech to the Local Government Association (LGA) conference last month, communities secretary Eric Pickles urged authorities to ‘be pushy’ in pressing for more powers from Whitehall.
‘The next stage of localism demands that local government takes the lead and grabs the power. Don’t wait for permission ? if you do, it will almost certainly be too late,’ he warned.
‘Rather than wait for the Government to give you permission, knock the door down,’ Mr Maude explained this week. ‘This is what the general power of competence is meant to do ? to empower local government to do things it has been inhibited from doing.’
Decentralisation minister, Greg Clark, and housing minister, Grant Shapps, have also encouraged councils to tackle a wider range of public services.
Sir Merrick Cockell, LGA chair, told The MJ: ‘Councils will continue to push back against unreasonable demands, but we shouldn’t have to repeatedly ?knock the door down?. If there is a culture in Whitehall in which difficult policy areas are simply pushed on to local government, it is clear that the civil service is in need of urgent reform.’