Benn hails localism

Hilary Benn MP, shadow secretary for Communities and Local Government welcomed the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) innovative "What next for localism?" inquiry at the NALC fringe event held on Sunday 30^th Sepember at the Labour Party Conference.

He said:  "NALC is doing a great job. This new policy booklet is excellent, manifesting the wide and cross-party support for the localism agenda, for NALC and for community, parish and town councils.

"Very local councils have a great future, bringing new power to local communities. This is the key to rebuilding local democracy: giving people a real sense of ownership of the decisions that affect their communities." http://t.co/pT3bWCgJ

But this was not enough for LCR. We went and asked him what Labour really thinks of localism.

Q: What is the Labour Party's view on localism?

A: Well it's all about enabling decisions to be taken as close to the people that they affect and to give us a say, a chance to participate, an opportunity to contribute to our community, our neighbourhood. Because actually, society is about the relationships we have one with another and I've been profoundly influenced in that view by my experiences as a councillor. I was a councillor in West London for 20 years, in Ealing, and also as a member of parliament for a constituency, which is a network of different communities, each with their own history and identity.

           

Q: What role is there for local councils within localism?

A: Well, they play a really important role up and down the country where they are in place, responding to very local concerns, using the resources that they have got to provide facilities, to help deal with problems that have arisen. [Plus] in rural communities as well as in some of our towns – obviously, they don't apply everywhere – are helping to run village halls, contributing improved lighting and play facilities, and so on. I think they make a real difference because the job of elective representation, at whatever level, is to one, help deal with problems and two, to assist all of us in realising our hopes and aspirations for a better world. Those are the two parts of the job.

Q: What are your thoughts on Neighbourhood Planning?

A: Well, it's going to be interesting to see how that works in practice. I was in Milton Keynes recently and was talking to someone who is leading there on the development of a Neighbourhood Plan. She said that it was quite an undertaking and there's a lot of work involved and they've got volunteers and supporters. They've had some funding from the pilot schemes.

I think the two issues are going to be: what is the definition of a neighbourhood where there aren't parish councils? Because clearly a parish council self-defines as a neighbourhood as ministers said when the legislation was going through. And secondly, having the resource and capacity to do the work. What will be particularly interesting is to see how communities wish to use Neighbourhood Planning, because when it was going through, if you take the question of housing, some people thought, a-hah, well then we can say, well we don't want quite so many houses in our community.

But of course, the way the policy's been set up is it's a one-way lock; a Neighbourhood Plan could increase the amount of housing but not reduce it. Look, I think it's a chance to give people an opportunity to shape what their community's going to look like. But it remains to be seen how extensively it will be taken up.

Q: Would Labour stick with Neighbourhood Planning?

A: I think we should. I'm all in favour of giving it a chance to work and see what comes out of it. To tell you a story from my experience as an MP, there's a part of my constituency, it actually moved at the last election of the boundary changes, called Halton Moor. It was an estate that has had problems; over the years the council had demolished perfectly good homes, not because there was anything wrong with the bricks and mortar, but because of the problems that there were in the area, for example people didn't want to live on the estate.

Eventually, the residents got together and formed a neighbourhood action group and said we need to do something about this. I suppose looking back at it, although I didn't realise this at the time, we formed a sort of neighbourhood forum. I chaired it, we brought together the representatives of the action group: the police, the housing provider, all of the local services, to say here are the problems – that rubbish wasn’t being collected, there’s a problem of anti-social behaviour, what are you going to do about this, that and the other? Over time things improved, and that's not my judgement, if you talk to the local residents, they would say things got better.

It really brought home to me the power of – at a very local level – people coming together to work in partnership with others, what you could do. It replaced a system that didn't work and where people felt that the powers that be had abandoned them, to a system where you built relationships with police officers who were keen to deal with the crime, housing officers who actually did want to get the repairs done and the people responsible for street cleaning, and I think it's a very powerful model, whether it is in the form of the local councils or whether it's in the form of area committees – and I think it should be a matter of genuine local choice.

It should be a matter of local choice, because you should have, locally, the structure that works for you. But I do believe very strongly in trying to devolve responsibility for those kind of things down the line, because my experience has taught me that you get a better outcome, and in building relationships, you build trust and confidence and people then have a greater sense that they can deal with the problems in their area or achieve things that they want, than if you don't have that kind of set up.

           

Q: What is Labour's thought on the new community rights?

A: The fact is, if you look at communities up and down the country this is something that communities have done already. So, in a sense, you have a right to say, well we'd like to save this building for the community. Now, whether the council responds is another matter, and I think, like Neighbourhood Planning, it remains to be seen how this is going to work in practice. But look, again, drawing on my own experience, we have a sports centre in South Leeds that, in the end, the council is no longer able to run because of the big budget cuts it’s facing. There have been efforts made to try and take it over on a community basis, so far unsuccessfully, but the community tried to do that. I can think of another former school building that was taken over by a social enterprise and is running, now, very successfully, with the agreement of the council, as start-up units for businesses, a meeting space and offices for more established businesses.

So this is certainly something that we should encourage because it's not about where we just have, in a community, facilities – local facilities that are run by the council and nothing else, there really is a place for all of those things, and if communities have got the capacity to do that and runs things through social enterprises which meet a need, that’s great.

Q: Would you give any new powers to local councils?

A: They have a range of powers as set out in the law, but if a local council wants to do something that is outside of its powers, however it is in the interest of the people they are looking after, we should try to enable them to do this. Further, we need to look to move a situation where there is clearer definition of the role of each tier of local government and avoid unnecessary duplication.

It’s about having the clarity about what the division of responsibility is. But what all of this is about for me is a huge amount of innovation, creativity, determination, knowledge of the community, passion to do things, and we need more of that. I often draw on the analogy of how society progressed in the 19th century, because it was local communities at the forefront of making this change happen.

That's really what we're talking about, local government is a form of expression of it, it's the process. But it was local communities, through their representatives and others, coming together, saying, look these are the problems we face where we live. In the 19th century they brought gas, electricity, water, sewers, schools, hospitals, better housing to communities up and down the land. Did they wait for someone to send them a circular to tell them to do it? No, they didn't, they looked around and said we've got a problem, we've got a challenge, we've got things we need to do now let's get on and do them.

There is no denying that Mr Benn and Labour believes that local councils are at the frontline of defenders of local communities. Also that local councils act as a voice for local people to speak to principal authorities and other public service providers. But does he have a localist remedy to solve community problems? Well, the jury is out on that for now.