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.

Will localism win in the end?

People are getting more and more disenchanted and disenfranchised with the political process, so they are voting with their feet and increasingly not turning up at polling day.

 But why is this? There has been much research and analysis in this area but there does not appear to be any conclusive evidence in one direction or another. It is generally felt that people feel that politics does not try to make any connections with them and they feel so distant from the key decisions of those in power.

So is localism the answer, especially in the way that promotes ideas of people and communities being part of the decision-making process on local public services that are delivered in their area? But will the dark forces of centralism and the state allow this?

Participation is about bringing local communities closer to decision-making about key services that affect their daily lives. It is the embodiment of direct, deliberative democracy.Participation allows the citizens of an area (neighbourhood, regeneration or local authority area) to take part in the allocation of part of the local council’s or other statutory agency's (health services, police) key decisions. The aims of participation are to increase transparency, accountability, understanding and social inclusion in local government affairs.

However, local people need to be empowered with information to enable them to engage in a meaningful way when prioritising the needs of their neighbourhoods, proposing and debating new services and projects, and setting budgets in a democratic and transparent way.

For instance, the Conservative Party’s policy planning green paper, Open Space, proposes major changes in our beloved planning system, including giving local (parish and town) council more status and virtually a right of veto over any nearby developments. But how are the choices and the planning detail going to be disseminated to local councils? These councils are not necessarily hard wired with an in-depth knowledge of planning. Luckily, they do have good support networks via the National Association of Local Councils (NALC) and local planning authorities. But it is going to be a challenge for them.

But how does this all square with the party’s commitments for the need to build new houses and incentivise businesses leading to alleged economic growth? The points we should be raising is that what local communities want quite often is not that far removed from what central government wants. Surely people want a sustainable developing community with the right infrastructure and transports links, for example. And is this not the aim of central government. More on this can be seen at (http://www.conservatives.com) or a feature story in LCR Online (http://www.lcronline.org.uk).

Recently, NALC, the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC), Action for Rural Communities in England (ACRE) and the Participatory Budgeting Unit (PBU) worked together on a series of pilots where local councils collaborated with their citizens over what should be the councils’ budget priorities. The pilots were so successful that the organisations are recommending that all local councils should use participatory budgeting.

Participatory budgeting offers rural people their own say in local community investments. We now have practical examples of people deciding local priorities and allocating resources across a wide range of services, including community safety schemes, health awareness campaigns, parish footpaths and much more. This approach can bring communities together, help people understand the complexities of public budget setting and deliver public services, which better meet local needs. For more information on this project visit: http://www.nalc.gov.uk or http://www.ruralcommunities.gov.uk.

So what do you think? Do you think the examples of communities having more say in planning matters or budget setting of local councils is a step in the right direction of localism? Or is it all just window dressing?

 

From notice board to message board

Come what may, in terms of political allegiance or policy thinking, everyone is advocating that there should be more participitation from the ‘ordinary’ citizens in the matters of the state.

I must admit, I dislike the term ‘ordinary’ citizen, it smack of elitism from the political classes who swim in the shark infested waters of the Westminster village. Rather randomly, it is like the phrase coined by the so-called actress Liz Hurley about non-celebrities, she called them ‘civilians’.

In a recent edition of LGC, www.lgcplus.com, there was an interesting piece by Leo Boland, chief executive of the Greater London Authority, and Emer Coleman, London Alliances project director of the Greater London Authority, on managing public services. 

At the heart of it they coined a rather management school term of  ‘communicative governance’. Now don’t let that put you off and switch off. It is the meaning of the term that is important. They argue, as countless others have, that public service delivery has to move from the position of communicating in a top-down somewhat Stalinist style to one of proper engagement with the end users of these services – local people.

If you look at the example of local (parish and town) councils, now I know they are by no means major public service delivery agents, but they run a wide range of services from environmental to transport to leisure and tourism, they are following this trend. Traditionally, and in the past the only forms of public participation they engaged in was a flyer on a notice board to inform residents of a meeting and a parish newsletter. But as Boland and Coleman say for true public participation we need to move from ‘broadcast’ to ‘dialogue’.

And this is where social media has a role to play with interesting opportunities; where people exchange views, share, rate and rank in real time on a daily basis. You only to have to visit Cllr Tweeps’s, website, www.cllrtweeps.com, to see that many parish and town councilors are engaging in a meaningful way with social media and this is a significant step change.

But all of these different forms of communications can actually lead to lower levels of satisfaction among residents because their expectations become much higher, as research from the University of Exeter has shown. So, although it might appear to be a negative, councils that wish to have higher levels of satisfaction are those who dampen down expectations or manage them better. 

Will all this different methods of communications lead to a ‘communicative governance’ utopian model contract between the state and the citizen? I think it is a wait and see game.

 

Who is afraid?

“The old King is dead, long live the new King.”

This corrupted phrase could easily be attributed to the present landscape of the media industry. For decades, and the best part of the last century, print newspapers and magazines were the dominating media outlets. But that is all changing with the economic downturn and the emergence of the internet and social media. 



Nowhere is this being more keenly felt than with local and regional newspapers; they are closing down month by month, with people choosing to get their news from free websites.

Some local and regional newspaper barons are partly blaming local councils for their papers' demise. The arguments being that councils are more than ever producing their own free newspapers and magazines, which are edging out the so-called paid for local independent publications.

I don’t buy this argument. It seems that people are just voting with their feet and anyhow excellent local and regional newspapers are surviving. Also, councils have every right to explain to their electorate and communities what are they doing on their behalf and indeed how they are spending taxpayers money.

So, how are councils supposed to respond to this new landscape? Are they supposed to be jumping for joy with the thought of a lack of journalists sitting in the press galleries scrutinising their actions? Well, no, in a healthy democracy, a robust independent media is important. And lo and behold, on the local and regional scene the internet is riding into town to uphold this.

Up and down the country, many websites and social media are being created to fill this apparent gap in local news and discussion.

A lack of local news provision is one of the reasons website editor, Hannah Waldram got involved and has set up the website: www.bournvillage.com.

She comments: “I had an idea of providing some sort of local news service a while back because we have never had a local newspaper in my area. Because it’s my local community, I feel quite strongly about it.”

It’s similar story for blogger, Ross Hawkes, who set up a Lichfield blog in the city that Trinity Mirror closed the local newspaper, Litchfield Post.

How are councils supposed to react to this new emergence? NALC says: “We encourage councils to treat only accredited journalist as journalists. And treat citizen journalists as citizens. But that does not stop citizen journalists making enquiries in the normal way and if they are a local taxpayer, their questions might resonate more than from a journalist from the outside. Plus, there is no reason why media and press releases cannot be available to everyone as they are public documents.”

Furthermore, many local councils are now creating their own websites and from these sites their own off-shoots of social media, such as blogs.

What is the betting, it is only a matter of time before those who created independent websites start complaining about council-owned websites; like they have done about council run newspapers and magazines.