London Calling

London is rightly viewed as one of the World’s great cities as it is an international centre for business, politics, sports, culture and heritage.

But what about democratic representation for Londoners throughout all this. They are represented democratically by the regional structure of the Mayor and London Assembly and sub-regionally by the 32 boroughs and City of London. Some would argue that this is enough governance for one city but we would argue differently and say why is London the only major city in the World, where communities and people do not have a say or control over there public services on their doorstep.

The chances are that not many conversations in pubs or bus queues in London mention the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act 2007. Nor do local (parish and town) councils drop off the lips of most people when expressing views on public services in the capital. All for good reason. These councils has an effective force have been absent from the political landscape in London for over a century and despite their existence throughout the rest of England over the past four decades, their creation in London was forbidden by law. The new Act lifts this legislative bar and allows communities the right to decide the governance arrangements for their area for the first time in decades.

Now these conversations are beginning to happen in communities throughtout the city. No more so than in Queen’s Park in the London Borough of Westminister. The community there is first in London since the new Act has become into being to hand in a petition to the Borough of Westminster to start a governance review for London’s first ever community council (parish council).

Angela Singhate, chair of the campaign for the Queen’s Park Community Council and Queen’s Park Neighbourhood Forum, said: “We want to continue the good work of the Neighbourhood Forum, which is now under threat, to improve the quality of life for local people.

“In the summer of 2010 the new coalition government announced that the government funding to support this work would be cut off from the end of the year. However, Paddington Development Trust, our parent charity, secured an independent grant of £40,000 a year to 2014 to support a transition period for Queen’s Park Forum. We want a community (parish) council in Queen’s Park was launched by residents with the support of Queen’s Park Forum in the hope that this will continue to provide a voice for local residents that cannot be cut off.”

Importantly the group wants to work in partnership with the Borough Council and from the National Association of Local Council's viewpoint, we cannot stress this enough. Local community councils cannot be set up in competition with Borough Councils but to complement them. It is about building a local democratic voice for the community and building cohesion for the area. We believe the Borough Council is looking at this in a positive way to develop Big Society for local communities. Please visit: //www.queensparkforum.org/ for more information.

Could this be a sign of things to come with other community groups like Neighbourhood Forums, Residents Associations and Civic Society following this path?

Residents of the London Fields and Broadway Market area, in the London Borough of Hackney, have started a movement for a London Fields Community Council. The campaign was formally launched at a meeting in February 2011.

Local residents have set up a website which sets out the arguments in favour of establishing a local council and describes the main steps for doing so.

This campaign cites the following as reasons for having a new community council:

· A general feeling of remoteness from decisions currently being made about the area;

· Development pressures, especially on the east side of London Fields, which people feel they have little control over;

· The disaffection of some young people and a lack of local positive activities for them;

· A lack of service provision on some of the area’s housing estates.

It is argued that a community council would deliver:

· More influence over things that matter to local people;

· Councillors who live locally and a Community Clerk who can fight their corner;

· Better services for those living on the housing estates;

· Statutory Neighbourhood Plans

· A local slice of the Local Infrastructure Levy (from planned local developments), which would reduce any precept;

· Running some community and leisure facilities, retaining proceeds from their use;

· A chance to bid to run other local services e.g. managing the Fields and licensing the market;

· The development of other community facilities in the locality.

Please visit: http://londonfieldscouncil.org.uk/ for more on this campaign.

We know these community campaigns are being replicated in Wapping (London Borough of Tower Hamlets) and Surbiton (Royal Borough of Kingson-upon-Thames) amongst others.

The National Association believes that only by giving local people a real voice and say over the way services are provided will communities feel connected to their governance and democracy. The key principle must be to empower communities, not restrict the democratic process. People and communities should be allowed to decide whether or not they want a more localised democratic voice.

Ultimately people have to be trusted to take a little more control over the things that most affect their day-to-day lives. People and communities in London now have a right to set up a local community council if they want one. We believe that Londoners should be allowed to decide what is best for them and take decisions accordingly.

BIG SOCIETY PRESENTS RISKS AND OPPORTUNITIES

First comes the prime minister extolling the virtues of the Big Society, then politicians and thinkers of all political persuasions weigh in with their views, but the evidence about all of this was thin on the ground.

Recently, LCR Online, www.lcronline.org.uk and LGC (Local Government Chronicle) (www.lgcplus.com) published a survey looking at the attitudes of principal (county, borough, district and unitary) authorities, local (parish and town) councils and the third sector (charity and voluntary organisations) to the Big Society. The conclusions reached were one where local councils more optimistic than other groups about the potential of the Big Society and a lack of agreement on who should be included in the Big Society.

Now the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) has published the results of its analysis of over 70 submissions of evidence from civil society organisations and other public sector bodies on the economic aspects of the government’s Big Society agenda. The report, Economic conditions for organisations contributing to the Big Society in rural England is available at: http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/2010/10/15/big-society-risks-and-opportunities/

The CRC drew on these submissions to prepare a report to Defra’s secretary of state. This report, Rural Economies Intelligence Report: The Big Society is available here:
http://ruralcommunities.gov.uk/wp-content/uploads/2010/10/ruraleconbigsociety.pdf

The report shows that the principles of the Big Society are already well embedded and supported in much of rural England. But that many civil society organisations have significant fears that the current funding climate will significantly damage further progress in delivering the Big Society’s objectives. Moreover, demand for many of their services is growing at a time when resources are reducing.

There is also a fear that rural communities may be disproportionately affected by the forthcoming spending cuts.

There are fears that local authorities and others may set up new delivery organisations that start competing with existing voluntary organisations of various types.

There is a view that in future, local rural communities may have to depend more on actions from their local parish and town councils.

The respondents call for more clarity from central and local government and others on what the practical impacts and consequences of the Big Society approach will be. There is a feeling that there is little hard information available about the Big Society agenda.

The civil society organisations that gave evidence were clear that with the right support and encouragement there is much more that they could do to help rural communities and particularly vulnerable people within our rural communities.

ARE COUNCIL NEWSPAPERS DESTROYING THE INDEPENDENT LOCAL PRESS?

So is Eric Pickles, the erstwhile secretary of state for communities and local government (CLG), at it again? CLG has announced a consultation on a draft revised Code of Recommended Practice on Local Authority Publicity.

Is it a case of using a ‘hammer to crack a nut’? Even in opposition, the Conservative Party has long held a view that local council newspapers create an unfair advantage in the local media market and distorts it. Further to this, the Conservatives argued this was why local newspapers were being binned by publishers – this has continued now they are in power.

According to the CLG: “In recent years there has been a marked growth in the frequency and scope of council publicity techniques funded by taxpayers’ money, while local papers have struggled in a saturated news environment.”

Key elements of the suggested revisions to the Code in relations to newspapers are:

· new central principles that will "make sure", for example, that council publicity is lawful, cost effective, objective, even-handed and appropriate;

· a new rule that councils should not publish newspapers in direct competition to local press, and that these council publications should not appear more than quarterly (and should only include material directly related to council services).

Mr Pickles, adds: "An independent local press is an essential part of our open democracy helping local people scrutinise and hold elected councillors to account.

“The rules around council publicity have been too weak for too long, allowing public money to be spent on wasteful town hall papers that have left many local newspapers looking over the abyss.

"The proposals I am publishing will close off these inappropriate practices and encourage councils to focus taxpayers’ money on where it should be spent – protecting frontline services.”

It looks like lobbying from the Society of Editors (the member organisation that includes local newspapers’ editors) is succeeding with its campaign that says the main reason for the decline of independent local newspapers can be laid at the door of local council newspapers. The evidence to prove this, I would argue, is sketchy at best.

To counter that, David Holdstock, national chair of LGcommunications, the professional body for council communicators, said: "These proposals will limit councils' ability to communicate in the most appropriate and cost-effective way about local issues that matter to people. As restrictions are placed on council publications and local newspaper circulations continue to fall, residents will have less and less access to information about their local public services."

There is strong evidence that council newspapers are critical to the reputation of local councils. A report on LGcommunications' own research into the impact of council publications can be found at:

http://www.lgcomms.org.uk/documents/PrvngCommsWrks-ImptOfcnclPubs.pdf

It is easy to argue that local council publications are only distributed a handful of times a year and cannot be seen as competitors for advertising revenue, news and information for local newspapers. And the arguments put forward by the coalition government and other supporters of this initiative comes slightly unstuck here in terms of advertising; the Conservatives recently said that all local council recruitment advertising should be placed on council websites and no where else to save taxpayer money. So this possible area of where advertising could be placed in local commercial newspapers is being recommended, only for it not to be.

Local council newsletters keep residents informed about what the council does and can do for them. Whether it is by providing a telephone number to report opening hours of playgrounds, allotments, burial grounds or libraries, or even letting the public know what time the library is open or when and how you can meet your local police community support officer, these are the services that only local council publications can do.

No one would argue that local councils want some sort of totalitarian state system where there is only one source of news, what they want to see is a successful and vibrant local media. It is essential for local democracy that the workings of local councils are scrutinised and elected representatives held to account.

For more on the consultation please visit the CLG at: www.communities.gov.uk

I am writing in this in personal capacity and it in no way reflects the position of the National Association of Local Councils; which will be responding to this consultation shortly.

WHAT IS THE POINT OF LIBRARIES?

Where can you go to reduce your fear of crime, have a massage, ring a church bell, get some information about council tax and engage in some heavy petting without being told off? Answer – a library of course.

But the latest survey on library attendances suggests the point of them is a diminishing one. Clearly people are voting with their feet because library attendances nationally are dropping.

The number of adults visiting libraries in England has fallen steadily over the last five years. In 2005, 16.4% of adults attended their local library once a month. New research indicates that the figure dropped to 12.8% last year. However, children's visits remained steady during the five-year period with around 70% using the service once a week.

Overall, 39.4% of adults surveyed said they had visited a public library at least once in the last year, compared with 48.2% in 2005.
The figures were published in a report commissioned by the Department for Culture, Media and Sports (DCMS).

So libraries appear to be another British institution that many people love, but hardly anyone uses anymore.

And this becomes all the more crucial with the Comprehensive Spending Review coming in a couple of weeks, which will state the exact extent of the spending cuts being imposed on the public sector. We know that local government is likely to be one of the hardest areas hit and that means principal (county, borough, district and unitary) councils will have a lot less money to spend and public libraries are going to be in the firing line.

But is all lost? Not for some.

Communities in Suffolk are being given the chance to run their local library as part of a pilot scheme.

The countywide network of book loaning would remain, but groups could set local opening hours and choose events.

Suffolk County Council says grants would be provided to the groups, who would then employ the library staff.

"We want to make sure that the services are as efficient as possible and as close to the community as possible," said Guenever Pachent, Suffolk County Council's service director for culture information inclusion and learning.

The scheme is one of ten projects in the country for the government's Future Libraries Programme.

Mr Pachent says the scheme is already underway and that four groups have expressed an interest in being involved.

"We would be interested in any organisation that might want to run [a library]," she said. "There would be a minimum service that they would need to provide in exchange for a grant.

"They would need to be part of the network, so that they can circulate their books around Suffolk.

"The local parish council or other social enterprise running it would be able to make other changes themselves, so if there was room in the library they might bring in other activities.

"I think we'd set minimum opening hours, but I think people might extend opening hours."

In David Cameron’s much heralded vision of the ‘Big Society’, libraries are often held up as an area where local authorities can work with the public to maintain services in the face of shrinking resources.

But in Dorset, this approach has been successfully developing for a number of years, with local communities providing volunteers, management and even money to help protect and sustain their branch library.

As is often the case, necessity was the mother of invention. In 2006, Dorset County Council was facing a shortfall of £850,000 in its library service budget.

Initial proposals to close 13 of its 34 branch libraries were met with widespread public disapproval and eventually dropped.

To help make the savings, cuts had to be made to the book fund and the number of qualified staff, while core opening hours were reduced across all libraries. But crucially, the council also gave local communities the opportunity to add ‘extra’ hours – either by providing volunteers, trained by the council, or by paying for library staff to extend opening times. And to support this approach – self-service facilities were introduced across all libraries.

Newham has bucked the national trend. Recorded visits to its libraries have increased by 8% in just one year.

Sir Robin Wales, elected mayor of Newham, says: “Libraries impact on Newham residents’ quality of life every day through their activities and services. We make a difference by identifying new audiences while satisfying the established customer base. This is achieved through the delivery of the highest standards of facilities, services and customer care.

"We believe libraries need to be more of a one-stop experience. Rather than taking library services into pubs or supermarkets, we’re looking at bringing more services into libraries so our residents can get more of what they need from us in one place.”

Meanwhile, culture minister, Ed Vaizey MP, says: "A strong library service, based around the needs of local people, can play a key role in our ambitions to build the Big Society by providing safe and inclusive spaces for people to read, learn and access a range of community services.”
He said he wants people to think, "imaginatively, about where libraries could be".

So you there you have it. There is a future for the public library service but it is going to be run, managed and delivered in a very different style to what we are use to.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

So the phoney war is at last over with regards to public sector spending cuts. Last month's emergency budget outlined plans for 25% spending cuts in ministerial departments.

But as ever, it is not as simple as that. We have also recently learned that we could soon be witnessing 'a mexican stand-off' between government departments because the Treasury is allegedly asking them to draw up plans of 40% worth of cuts.

However, is was all clarified by Phillip Hammond MP, secretary of state for transport, who said that the average cuts in departments will be 25% but some departments will be asked to make no cuts, such as Health and International Development, while others will have less cuts, like Education (10–15%), and therefore some other departments will be asked to make more than the 25% cuts.

So it will be stand off between departments to see who ‘blinks first' and opts for a greater cut than 25%. Which department is voluntarily going to take on this mission impossible?

And so it seems departments that work closely with local government will be forced to make cuts greater than 25%. But we are going to have to wait to the autumn's Comprehensive Spending Review for the final results. We already know that Communities and Local Government (CLG) is initially being asked to make £1.2bn a year in expenditure savings.

But what about the people in all this? We know that from surveys that people don’t want to have cuts to services such as litter and bin collections, parks and leisure facilities, and street and road cleaning. Clearly these ‘quality of life’ and ‘feel good’ factors are important to people. But these are the areas likely to be most threatened by principal councils (county, district, borough and unitary councils).

So who will be listening to people’s opinions. One answer is communities themselves – if they are allowed to.

As Simon Jenkins, columnist and former editor of The Times, says across cities and towns: “Communal services are still divided into national silos, prevented from the sort of local collaboration that should be natural, and save money.”

He goes to say that we need: “more freedom for a neighbourhood authority, even as small as wards, to be allowed to ‘tax-and-spend’ for services such as parks, crèches, clinics and job centres, with ‘micro-mayors’ to tackle litter and antisocial behaviour.”
For more information on this please visit: http://bit.ly/9UID46

The government and others in power, like principal councils, need to allow real localism in action give people the chance to have more control and say over local services. Set up more local (parish and town) councils, I say.

How local are you?

While the true test of how much this general election has captured the public imagination is measured by the voter turn out at the ‘only poll that matters’. Undoubtedly, with the race so close and the TV debates it has been fascinating to watch from all angles.

While all three main political parties produced weighty tomes of manifestos (no concern about the environment here) and talked about championing localism, there was a contradiction in that there was no detailed role outlined in for very local government (parish and town councils) or indeed principal local government in place-shaping and bringing greater coherence to local plans and priorities.

Now we know the Conservative Party has won the race for power. What does that mean actually for localism? We are not going to know the details straightaway. But we can draw some clues from their policy papers of this year and last year combined with their general election manifesto.

The new Conservatives – as I call them – are like the old Conservatives and like the Republicans in the US and think that central government is too big and has taken too much power to the centre. So that should be brilliant news for localism and people power right? Well maybe.

The Conservative’s Big Society ideas are a welcome suggestion to strengthen local community activity but it needed to recognise the important contribution local government will make in citizen renewal and engagement.

There is a disconnect here because the party has already acknowledged the important part, say local (parish and town), councils can play in housing and planning, but surely they are not excluded from other parts of the civic society.

When considering how we renew our neighbourhoods and communities, it is vital to recognise the role that local (parish and town) councils and their army of community leaders play. They are the closest layer of representation to people and they are already demonstrating real localism in action.

The National Association of Local Councils (NALC) continues to work with all the political parties to ensure that the needs and contribution of grass roots, community-led local government are fully understood and addressed.

Finally, is all this talk of devolution and more power to the citizens just a cost-cutting exercise, which is not really the point of localism?

Calling time on pub closures

So, the government is apparently going to call time on the number of pubs closing down in our villages, towns and cities.

The government, via the wonderfully titled pubs minister (somehow I don’t think he spends his time on one long pub crawl), John Healey MP, has produced an action plan to help community pubs. At the moment around 40 pubs are closing every week, which results in job losses, millions of pounds lost to the economy and the focal points of communities being ripped out.

Principal councils will now be given new powers through the planning system to intervene before a pub is demolished. This measure aims to create a ‘pause in the system’ for the local community to have their say on any proposed demolition. Restrictions preventing premises continuing as pubs once they have been sold will be also banned.

And planning laws will allow pubs to branch out the business without planning permission into new commercial ventures. This could see pubs operate gift shops and books shops, without the additional expense and time of seeking council approval.

Landlords will be able to access specialist, tailored business advice through Pub is the Hub, www.pubisthehub.org, currently a voluntary support service for community pubs.

Local (parish and town) councils up and down the country are striving hard to save pubs and possibly turn them into multi-use centres. These councils can now use the power of well-being to save pubs as community centres in a local area.

The White Horse Pub in Hitcham, Suffolk, was a dilapidated pub, which, through the support of the local parish council, local principal authority and Pub is the Hub, turned it into a highly-regarded food-led business.

The Dykes End pub in Reach, Cambridegshire, is now a community-owned one. The pub was known as The Kings, which was the last remaining amenity in this small village. It fell into hard times and then the owner applied for a change of use to residential. A local action group, assisted by the local parish council, fought this very hard and won its battle; with East Cambridgeshrie District Council saying the move contravened its local plans. The local action group changed themselves into a company and bought the pub for community gain. So a considerable number of villagers are now shareholders in the pub.

The village of Stratton in Bude, Cornwall, lost its post office in 2006. However, local owners of the Tree Inn pub saw an opportunity for multi-use of the pub if they were able to extend. So Stratton Parish Council and Pub is the Hub, along with the planning authority and South West Regional Development Agency got together to assist their proposals of a multi-use centre for the village. The pub now runs post office services, free broadband internet services, catering and accommodation businesses.

Not everyone is happy with the government’s proposals. The Tory Party has attacked Labour for allowing supermarkets to continue to ‘engage’ in loss leading on alcohol, leaving pubs less competitive.

Caroline Spelman MP, shadow Communities and Local Government minister, said: “Under Labour there has been a surge in alcohol-fuelled violence in our high streets, while local community pubs go to the wall. Conservatives will stand up for local community pubs and give residents new rights to protect them, while giving police and councils strong powers to tackle the binge drinking violence that ruins our towns at night.”

But aside from this political squabbling between the two main parties, it is important to note that given the power and influence, local people can really make difference to improve lives and well being of communities.