Fancy Lunch?

As you will probably know by now, The Big Lunch  (http://www.thebiglunch.com) is a one day get-together for neighbours – a Lottery funded idea from the Eden Project, encouraging people across the UK to come together for a few hours of food, friendship and fun.  The initiative aims to create stronger, friendlier communities in which people start to share things, from conversation and ideas to skills and resources. 

Big Lunches can be big or small and take place in the street, back garden, park or local community venue – anywhere neighbours get together.  Since starting in 2009, thousands of events have taken place each year, with a staggering 8.5 million people participating in 2012 when The Big Lunch was an official part of The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations.  The Big Lunch is inclusive and welcoming; it’s a fantastic opportunity to start new conversations in the community, bringing people from different backgrounds, faiths, and generations together. And research shows it works, with 91% feel closer to their neighbours following the event.

There has been wide spread support from town and parish councils to date, but we’d like to see further engagement in 2013. We know that the initiative creates more cohesive communities and can help with your community and housing strategies -meeting objectives around community engagement and integration. Research shows us that 82% of participants stay in touch with the people they met at The Big Lunch and 61% get involved in further community activity. An interesting report, based on four years’ research by the LGiU (http://www.lgiu.org.uk) will be available to councils soon.

What will you bring to the table?

Devizes Town council  (http://www.thebiglunch.com/partners/star-councils-england.php) encouraged people to get involved with the Jubilee celebrations in 2012 by hosting a free event on The Green. This was a true community event with a real village green flavour involving games and stalls echoing those from Queen Elizabeth’s Silver and Golden Jubilees.
 

The council opened up this event to all local businesses, groups and entertainers and road closures were simplified with all red tape cut.

Church Crookham Parish Council  (http://www.thebiglunch.com/partners/star-councils-england.php) proudly supported The Big Jubilee Lunch, organising its own event where people where people were invited to bring a dish and join in the Best Dressed Teddy Bear competition and admire the home made bunting created by local schools of all their Royal Easter Egg designs. The council actively encouraged people to hold Big Lunches on their streets, and waived all fees for road closures.

The Big Lunch has continued backing from  NALC (www.nalc.gov.uk), LGA (www.local.gov.uk) , DCLG (https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/department-for-communities-and-local-government) and the Secretary of State Eric Pickles, who urge councils to support campaign, cut red tape around road closures and simplify the process as much a possible.

This year, The Big Lunch is celebrating the achievements of communities involved to date with The Big Lunch Community Awards. The winners of this UK-wide award will be selected and announced in April, and the initiative is set to generate lots of media attention in its fifth year.

Get involved! Please help encourage more Big Lunches in your area on Sunday 2^rd June 2013 by spreading the word to residents and local community groups and by supporting applications to close roads where possible. ‘Star Councils’ (http://www.thebiglunch.com/partners/star-councils.php) that go the extra mile to support the campaign are recognised on The Big Lunch website (http://www.thebiglunch.com/) and communications.  Council toolkits (http://www.thebiglunch.com/join-in/download-resources.php) with further information and promotional materials, including a ‘Little Steps’ workshop pack to help you organised meetings with the community to discuss the benefits of holding Big Lunches locally are available from the website. (http://www.thebiglunch.com/)

Anyone wanting to organise an event can order a free pack with invites, posters, a planner and much more online. There is also a short film to give you inspiration from the first four years of The Big Lunch. For more information please contact camilla.baker@thebiglunch.com or call 0845 850 8181.

Is it time to get angry?

The traditional view of local (parish and town) councils being cosy talking shops could be shattered by a decision made by the department of Communities and Local Government (CLG) late last year. We are talking about the dreaded CLG u-turn on the localisation of council tax support.

CLG has reduced the local tax base by taking income from council tax benefits away from local councils, requiring them to go cap-in-hand to their district, borough or unitary (principal) council for a share of the government's council tax support grant. There is the very real possibility that the princip council will say, "sorry, we need all we can get to deliver our own statutory responsibilities".

All this comes after CLG gave clear indications in the summer of 2012 that they will take local councils out of the equation on the council tax support grant and that they would receive funds as always. Then suddenly in the winter of last year the department changed their mind and left local councils with holes in their budgets.

Quite rightly local councils are astonished by the brazen disregard of the majority opinion on this by the Government.  On the consultation on this, 94% of respondents said that local councils should be exempt from the impact of localisation of council tax support, but CLG decided they should not. This has caused uproar among England's 9,000 local councils. Eric Pickles MP, secretary of state for CLG, speaking at NALC’s Larger Local Councils Conference in November 2012 (http://audioboo.fm/boos/1093989-eric-pickles-speech-at-nalc-2012.html) brushed off the questions, saying it was up to local councils to negotiate with principal councils. But why should local councils have to negotiate with principal councils on this, it is monies that belongs to them by right.

The new system changes over a hundred years of financial independence of local councils as they will no longer be in charge of their own destiny in setting their budgets and precept. For the first time ever local councils will be reliant on a principal council for an element of their funding. The risk of the new system is at best local councils will receive 100% of grant due, or they may only receive a proportion, and at worst no grant at all. Depending on the scenario, the impact may be mean local councils increasing their precept or cutting back on service delivery.

As practical example of this. In Milton Keynes, the five most affected local councils are Woughton, West Bletchley, Bletchley and Fenny Stratford, Campbell Park and Wolverton and Greenleys. Based on figures calculated in September 2012, the potential loss to these local councils would be £169,000 if Milton Keynes Council were to distribute grants at the cumulative level suggested by the Government. This would represent 68% of the total loss to Milton Keynes local councils and have a huge impact on service delivery in those deprived communitiesm

Now to be fair and balanced, it has not been all disastrous from CLG towards local councils.

In the same speech in Novemeber, Eric Pickles described local councils  as "localism's magic wand". This is very supportive but like in magic acts, sometimes you need to look beyond the 'smoke and mirrors'.

Since the Localism Act became law last year, the Government clearlys sees a role for local councils to be leaders of their communities. So we have had the recent announcement of more money going directly to local councils who have put neighbourhood development plans in place from the Community Infrastructure Levy, as well as the community rights to build, bid and challenge and the encouragement of more devolution of services to local councils.

But all of this new responsibilities and service delivery opportunities does not happen by magic, it needs capacity, skills building and resources. This is where there is a head on collision possibly between rhetoric and reality. This is a dilemna that the Government needs to solve as soon as possible. But at the grassroots level of democracy the anger towards the Government's recent decisions on local government is growing.