Cutting carbon, delivering local green technology-based economic growth, creating jobs and regeneration, joining-up public services’ budgets and objectives, forging new partnerships. These are all desirable and all decent, clear objectives for the environment portfolio.
But to achieve them all, requires serious partnership working and the progressive, flexible and placeshaping route that local government must, I believe, follow. We need to make Localism work for us, face up to slashed funding, and tackle many wide-ranging challenges in our communities, of which economic growth and climate change are but two. As we digest The Committee on Climate Change’s new report out today, the role of local authorities in cutting carbon emissions is vital.
The reference in the title to ‘I want it all’ came from a recent speech to an Association for Public Service Excellence Conference – ‘Energy Efficiency vs Renewables’ – and developing a political vision for this. I unusually quoted a Queen song (not my taste in music either): “I guess my initial response to the question of energy efficiencies versus renewables would be, in the words of Freddie Mercury, I want it all, and I want it now.”
To return to joining-up, I think it is vital to place these specific aims in the context of broader, and more general, policy. We must continue to strive for energy efficiencies in our operations as local authorities. And we must do all we can to influence and directly impact on carbon reduction throughout the communities we serve.
But time is running out. The International Energy Agency recently estimated that existing global infrastructure is already producing 80% of the total amount of carbon emissions that would lead to serious warming. Its chief economist said “The door is closing. I am very worried – if we don’t change direction now on how we use energy, we will end up beyond what scientists tell us is the minimum for safety.”
It is vital that we proactively increase our own use of renewable energy. We must also take a community leadership role in driving growth of renewable energy use by residents, businesses and other public services.
One theme which I believe must underpin any political vision, is that we cannot develop policy in isolation. We must look at the wider challenges for our communities, from regeneration and economic development to poor public health, from tackling unemployment to improving educational attainment. There is a temptation to develop one-off responses to each challenge we face. But we must not lose sight of the overall goals of improving life for all our residents.
Ed Miliband was right in his Progress speech to draw attention to the low turnout in the recent local government elections and the increasing public disconnection with politicians, the political parties and much of the political system. He was also right to call on The Labour Party to reconnect through adopting stronger links with local communities. 
One of his advisors was quoted in The Observer as saying that politicians have to address issues like “dog shit” on pavements. This is correct. However, the new community politics have to be about more than keeping the pavements free of canine excrement – important as this is.
Any renaissance in popular engagement with politics will have to be addressed in a number of levels. Macro international and national economic policies matter as much as those based on the local neighbourhood or street. Public service reform and the quality of the NHS, education, policing and transport must be addressed perhaps even more than street cleaning. Progressive taxation, welfare reform and redistribution of wealth, income and power are essential for any progressive political revival. The economy, employment and opportunity are important “stupid”.
I suspect that 3 May 2012 will still be talked about in Birmingham Labour circles long after many of us have left the stage. We needed just four seats to end nearly a decade of Tory/Lib Dem rule at the Council House. By the end of the night we had bagged twenty. Wards once thought to be Tory or Lib Dem strongholds are now represented by Labour Councillors. Even the true blue bastion of Sutton Coldfield has fallen with Labour scoring a historic victory in the Vesey ward.
No one would deny that the national scene played an important part in Labour’s victory last week. On the doorsteps the anger of Birmingham voters at the unfairness and incompetence of the Government was palpable. As a city blighted by scandalously high levels of youth unemployment and struggling with the painful consequences of a double-dip recession, Birmingham knows all too well that we are not “all in this together”.
Disastrously low turnouts in last week’s local elections reinforce the sense of local democracy being in a dire state. Dissatisfaction with national politics is on the rise and calls for stronger regional voices grow ever louder, but local politics is clearly not filling this vacuum.
In Manchester, Bristol and Nottingham for instance, even the elected mayor referendums could not entice voters to the ballot box, with turnout hovering around the 24% mark. While a jaded and despondent electorate are unwilling to hold local politicians to account, increasingly we also cannot rely on opposition politicians or local press to fulfil this role. A number of local council results in the north have wiped out any semblance of effective opposition. Knowsley council is now effectively under a one party state with Labour gaining four seats from the Lib Dems to have an astonishing 63 out of 63 councillors. Rotherham, Tameside, Manchester, Halton and South Tyneside are not far behind. Added to this, is the rapid decline of local newspapers which have up to now played a key role in holding councils to account. Many local papers, which had large readerships and influence in the areas they served several years ago, have either disappeared or seen their circulation figures dwindle.
3 May will be most remembered as the day that Labour emerged from its prolonged
post-2010 election doldrums. Despite the fact that the Conservatives still control 51% of councils in England compared to Labour’s 29%, expectations are high in communities across the UK that Labour will provide an alternative to the austerity programme being pursued with such indecent haste by the Coalition government.
The results of the Coalition’s front-loaded, massive attack on councils and their employees are clear for all to see. Libraries closed, adult social care cut and harder to get, dangerous pot holes everywhere, nursery provision restricted, over 200,000 council jobs lost and local government workers’ pay cut by over 13% as a result of a three-year pay freeze. So, if Labour wants to build on its recent successes and win back more of its natural local government heartland in forthcoming local elections, it needs to do some serious thinking.
It’s gonna be tough. The worst of the cuts are yet to bite and the Coalition has more than half of its electoral term to complete. Labour has to demonstrate that it can rise to the challenge of delivering more with much less in the short term , while developing longer-term economic and social policies which recognise the critical role played by local government and its workforce. Councils are key to economic sustainability, the provision of stable local employment and the sense of belonging which results from high quality services which all groups within society can rely on and therefore ‘buy in’ to.
Last week I did a news interview about the significance of the local elections in Southampton. The reporter asked me what percentage of the result is influenced by local factors. It’s a great question and it got me thinking. Some voters will make up their minds on entirely local factors, such as the quality of key services, or the local candidate. But watching the news coverage as the results came in, you would think its all about Westminster. The Labour Shadow Cabinet members on the telly were saying “this swing to Labour is a verdict on the Tory led government’s failed economic policies”. That is only part of the picture though, for some voters the elections were a verdict on the failure of their council to fix the pot holes, or in support of a local candidates local pledges.
Opposition parties can be in danger of mistaking government unpopularity for a popular endorsement of their own party. Locally though, the public have given Labour a mandate in many areas of the country, which brings with it a huge responsibility to deliver. In Birmingham, Southampton, Cardiff, Dudley, Harlow and Glasgow, new administrations must show they can govern effectively when times are tough. There are three key tests of this. The first is to keep taxes and charges down – Councils shouldn’t ask people to pay more at a time when they have less. The second is to stimulate local economies – jobs and economic recovery should be the top priority in every town and city because it is the key to everything else, including funding good services. Third, councils must provide the best possible services by using resources efficiently, by partnering well, by connecting up local services and levering in additional resources.
Tomorrow sees a Westminster Hall debate on the North East economy. I am looking forward to hearing the government try to justify its assault one of our most important regional economies.
The government’s austerity drive is already impacting hardest on areas like the North East, which has the highest unemployment rate of the English regions (10.8%) and which received higher than average cuts to local government grant. And research published this weekend by the ippr North’s ‘Northern Economic Futures Commission’ shows the UK economy would be £40bn better off if the government recognized the potential for growth in the north.
Yet despite this, the government has dismantled key regional economic drivers and is implementing economic policies that are risking the recovery in our regions, as well as hitting hard working people at a time when the cost of living is rising sharply.
The Co-op Councils Network
The swift development of the Co-operative Council movement has taken even its originators by surprise. It now counts 17 councils in its number with a growing body of thinking and real live examples of the approach in action. When people feel moved to pose for pictures on sweeping municipal staircases, its time to take notice! Could it be that a genuinely new local government model is with us? The Co-op Council idea has instant appeal; people instinctively connect with it. It has grown out of local government itself and is not reliant on massive central government machinery for its fulfillment. It gives a positive role to public servants and an opportunity for planned participation and empowerment, which is a great antidote for laissez-faire ‘big society’ voluntarism. Continue reading »
The schools system in England is going through the most fundamental restructuring in the post-war period. Barely a day goes by without further policy announcements and extensive media coverage. The last week alone has seen statements about the new OFSTED regime, and the undermining the value of many vocational qualifications by stating that they will not count towards league tables.
Add to that the rapid growth of the sponsor academies and support and encouragement being given to the for profit providers, and it is clear that this part of the Government’s reform agenda for public service is moving fast and penetrating deep into established structures.
Many local authorities, proud and defensive of the school system they have built up over the years and the support services they have put in place, now face the challenge of moving to a new role. They see strong schools convert to academies and weaker ones pressured to become part of sponsored academy chains, whilst educational support services are reduced as financial pressures bite. Having worked hard on strategic plans for schools capacity through the Building Schools for the Future Programme, the financial viability of some of those schools is now threatened by the rapid marketisation of the system, with new entrants such as free schools, University Technology Colleges and Studio Schools all competing for the same learners. Schools that under-recruit will accumulate financial deficits as there are not enough young people to go round, yet the PFI contracts remain secure and the tax payer picks up the bill!
The education landscape that councils will face will be radically different in 2015.
1,500 academies and 24 free schools are in place already, and the possibility is that most secondary schools will be academies by the next General Election.
I have yet to meet anyone who wants to see the tide reversed to a situation where schools are effectively run by town halls. However, there is a deeper question, which the Government seems to be ignoring of what role local government – in its widest sense – can play in areas such as commissioning, extended services, ensuring fair admissions and raising standards.
Bizarrely, despite the claims by both Michael Gove and Eric Pickle to be in favour of devolving power and local accountability, the Government is seeking to hoard control at the centre.
Gove and Pickles’ clumsy reforms – they are the Laurel and Hardy of politics today – mean that the school system is increasingly centralised and dogmatic. All new schools are now funded through central seven year funding agreements and are only accountable to ministers and civil servants – not local families or elected representatives. At the same time, new schools are exempt from the changes to the curriculum, and in the case of free schools can even hire teachers without any qualifications.
