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 30th 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.
