Examination of Witnesses (Questions 281-286)
MR ANDY
SAWFORD, COUNCILLOR
MERRICK COCKELL
AND MS
ANNA TURLEY
17 NOVEMBER 2008
Q281 Andrew George: I would like
to be reassured that local authorities want to use the existing
structures and have ambitions that way. You have all, one way
or another, expressed disappointment at the top-down nature of
local area agreements, but have local authorities shown great
ambition in this area? Are they not happier and more comfortable
in the relationship which they traditionally have had of pleading
and appealing and blaming central government rather than taking
on powers which they may be able to negotiate?
Ms Turley: I think partly some
of that response is the fact that 80 per cent of budgets have
come from central government, so it has created a bit of a culture
of pleading and wanting. I am really encouraged and optimistic
about the LAA (Local Area Agreement) process and the way it has
enabled local partners to really come together. It has enabled
local areas to set out what their local priorities are and get
everyone behind a vision and say, "This is the way. We are
all moving forward together", and partnerships become much
stronger. Perhaps when the climate gets tougher financially it
will put some strain on these partnerships but at the moment we
are seeing a lot of enthusiasm to work together, to pool and align
budgets and to do a lot more joint commissioning, whether it is
through LSPs (Local Strategic Partnerships) or through just better
joining up within different parts of the local authority. There
is much more of a sense of that and the LAA has become a focus
for people to do that. A lot of local authorities have also said
to us that one of the benefits of the LAA process for them is
seeing central government come together much more cohesively for
the first time in a long time and have some really good conversations
between departments and with them.
Andrew George: But it sounds to
me like a rather longwinded and complex diversion. What has actually
been achieved in terms of taking control locally? Give me examples.
Q282 Sir Paul Beresford: Could I
add to that? Many of the local government people I talk to say
the LAA sounds good until Government comes in afterwards with
its checks. It is meetings, it is more meetings, it is more and
more targets, and that really it is a bureaucratic nightmare for
you, even though the words are good. Yes?
Councillor Cockell: Bureaucracies
have a habit of adding bureaucracy and, whether it is CAAs (Comprehensive
Areas Assessments) or LAAs, they can start off with sounding much
lighter than the previous touch but very quickly they become more
and more complicated. I had the new partnership manager for our
CAA come to my local strategic partnership last week and she told
me that in future she would be coming to all our meetings, which
did not seem much of a lighter touch to me from the CPA process,
and though we would be very welcoming it was not quite what I
was expecting to hear. I think there is a common misunderstanding
about LAAs, as if the only things that local government did were
what they had agreed with national government under LAAs. My authority
went into the LAA process trying to get as few LAAs listed as
we could, not because other things were not priorities but because
we wanted to focus within the LAA process on things that really
mattered and not just hit a number as if the higher the number
you could hit showed how effective you were. We thought it was
quite the opposite. It is a matter of changing relationships and
local government not always looking to national government to
tell them what to do. I have been working with colleagues quite
recently on housing targets and going through with them what would
happen—this is in the context of London's different form
of housing targets—if you stopped getting housing targets
where the moment you see them you go, "That is ridiculous.
Who dreamt up that number? How could we possibly achieve it?",
to knowing that, especially with the economic situation we are
in at the moment, if you want your area to be successful you have
to be looking at housing, you have to be looking at bringing in
businesses to have economic growth and things like that. It is
not a question of the Government or other people telling you what
to do. You have got to do it for the sake of your community and
you have to work with your neighbours together in order to achieve
that. Again, it is without somebody giving you a blanket figure
that you are supposed to just perform against. We all know relationships
like that do not work.
Mr Sawford: Partnerships are work
in progress, but specifically on your point, Mr George, local
government I think would accept, and we certainly would acknowledge,
that it has not been as ambitious as we would like it to be. What
you are seeing now I think is a tipping point where councils are
no longer able to say, "We cannot do that". They are
being challenged now. I think technology is a driver in that.
If you take the Post Office as an example, where Essex have done
some good work that we have been involved in around their local
post office network, all round the country I get other councillors
saying, "Blooming Essex". People are saying to me, "Why
can we not sort out our local post offices?", so you get
challenged to be more innovative. Specifically on your examples,
we have worked on a report that has been published today by CLG
with INLOGOV (Institute of Local Government Studies) and others
around the power of wellbeing. It sets up a whole load of case
studies but I will just give you in a sentence two of those case
studies. One is how Nottinghamshire County Council reduced its
carbon dioxide emissions by creating a non-profit renewable energy
company—and these are by no means the best; I am just picking
them at random—and another was how the London Borough of
Newham created a partnership with the local PCT, which they called
the Local Finance Improvement Trust, and specifically you will
know that the power of wellbeing gives you an opportunity to look
at how you finance things in a different way, to build new premises
and provide social care services in three London local authorities.
Councils are being more and more innovative up and down the country
and I do not think they can hide in a corner any more and say,
"We are all being done to. Central government is constraining
us and we cannot meet the public's expectations", but they
are getting better and better.
Q283 Andrew George: Are you confident
though that the opportunities available to local authorities through
multi-area agreements are going to be taken up? Are you confident
that central government are going to respond positively to the
kinds of approaches which local authorities, I imagine, will be
wanting to make?
Mr Sawford: I would say two things
and they are not necessarily compatible. One is that I do not
think there is anything that a council cannot do if it really
wants to, and I would say that to any of the councils we work
with; and the other is, do not always look to central government.
Meet the expectations of your community. On the other hand it
could be made a lot easier for them to do it and they could be
supported to do it on more fronts if they had a better relationship
with central government, if the balance of funding was improved,
if there was a better statutory relationship between central and
local and if things were properly funded. This is a very relevant
important debate and just saying "You can do what you want
to do" does not mean that you should not strive to make the
framework easier and better for local authorities.
Q284 Andrew George: Is there anything
that your organisations can do to assist local government here
because when I have asked the magic wand question, "If you
were given wide-ranging powers what would your ambitions be?",
often what comes back is something which really lacks ambition.
It is the development of a new road scheme which they have been
very ambitious to achieve for many years but have not been able
to. It is that kind of scheme, not about bringing social services
and health together and providing a background service.
Mr Sawford: But they are still
constrained.
Ms Turley: I would agree. There
is certainly a greater realisation that local areas should and
can provide leadership. There is progress in terms of some of
the funding through the ability to pool budgets, but there are
still restraints. My concern would go back to your LAA point as
well, that if more targets come in and contradict them I would
really like to see the capability of local areas to say, "If
this contradicts our local area agreement process and our outcome
that we have agreed with you, we want to have the ability to override
it". Some kind of safeguard like that I think would be very
important. For us as organisations being able to share that ability,
being able to share capacity and to spread some of the insight
of what local authorities can do, using, for example, things like
the Sustainable Communities Act, which is another tool, a good
piece of legislation, means local authorities really are starting
for the first time to realise the capability they have, and also
just by better dissemination of what is going on out there and
people just having the ambition, because again capacity was a
big issue. There certainly is a lot of potential.
Q285 John Cummings: In your evidence
it appears as if the LGIU (Local Government Information Unit)
support the establishment of an independent commission and yet
the NLGN (New Local Government Network) opposes the establishment
of an independent commission. Would you like to tell the Committee
where your differences lie?
Mr Sawford: We would like to see
a radical reform of the balance of funding but we, like probably
many of you because you have been in local government, have looked
on in frustration as successive reviews of the balance of funding
have been shelved and Sir Michael Lyons' excellent report sits
gathering dust. Where we are is fairly mealy-mouthed stuff. There
is a big agenda but we welcome the work that the Conservative
party is doing nationally. We are in a dialogue with them looking
at the model in Australia where you take some of the politics
out of grant setting, out of the way that grant is allocated into
authorities, out of the way that the formula is calculated, and
we are certainly happy to engage with the Conservatives if they
are going to do more than the current Government to really reform
the balance of funding.
Ms Turley: Where we would certainly
agree is that the system at the moment is fundamentally flawed
and really does need quite a radical shift. From NLGN's point
of view we are cautious about an independent commission because
in a way it feels a bit like rearranging the deck chairs, just
taking the power away from central government ministers who may
perhaps have quite a good understanding of the need for some redistribution.
We are always conscious of unaccountable—to use the word
"quango" I think is a bit mean—but we are always
conscious of new bodies that are not necessarily always democratically
accountable in making these kinds of decisions. We would rather
see a more fundamental approach to local government finance that
looks at better balancing those powers of fund raising and so
on at the local level and moves away from this 80/20 split. An
independent commission is not enough in our view to fundamentally
shift the politics of the grant.
Q286 Mr Betts: Have you got one big
idea about how we could change the relationships between central
and local government, because the reality is we could talk about
who looks after police and health and we could get an agreement
but then in two years' time whichever government is in power could
change it. Parliament could pass an Act that alters the relationship
between central and local government in a way that the Scottish
settlement now could not be undone without some degree of consensus
between Westminster and Scotland about any change in arrangements
in the future.
Councillor Cockell: I suppose
I would comment, bearing in mind I speak cross-party (London Councils
is about cross-party representation) that the representation you
have got is cross-party, and the organisations either side of
me, and indeed other ones, have historically been seen as left
of centre, I think. There is a lot of common ground now I think
between the parties and between those involved in local government
that there could well be a settlement which is not going to be
changed by the next incoming new government. I think people have
accepted that the current system of centralisation simply does
not work in a whole variety of ways—the level of service
accountability, transparency, people feeling they have been dealt
with fairly, that they have some way of changing things, having
an influence on things, and the current system at a local government
level is not working either because we are too reliant on the
centre. We do not really, overall, take the opportunities that
are there, we are less willing to take risks and things like that.
I think that can all change and I think that across the parties
there is an acceptance that we have to do something differently
and that if the default for local services is that they are accountable
at a local level then that would seem a good principle to unite
around. The detail beyond that, the mechanisms, how to deal with
failing services, no doubt can be sorted out, but the fact is
we do not have a perfect system now and there has to be a better
way of doing it if we are all united in saying that local is likely
to be the most effective way. As far as a single independent commission
is concerned, I think it is transparency we are after, whether
it is a single person or a commission or whatever. In London 28
out of the 33 authorities are on the funding floor. That indicates
a financial system that is bust.
Mr Sawford: Just on the one thing
we would do, because it is a nice opportunity, it is really boring,
it is not going to excite anybody else, it is not even going to
excite anybody watching us on the web, even if they do, but I
do think that if we had a new constitutional settlement, something
that we could try to achieve at a national level, that would stand
us in good stead to make real progress in areas like policing
and healthcare where we can make a real difference, but the silver
bullet is finance. If you put more control back in the hands of
local councils about how they raise their money and how they can
spend their money then we really could see a different approach
from local government and a much more innovative approach.
Ms Turley: I agree with those
comments and the idea of a debate on the constitution would be
warmly welcomed by us. We are really pleased to see regional select
committees and ministers, something we have advocated for a long
time, and I think the best representation in Parliament is in
terms of having some kind of devolutionary scrutiny committee
along the lines of the overview and scrutiny committees[1],
or perhaps instead of departments, of having to do a regulatory
impact assessment some kind of devolutionary impact assessment.
We want to see local government leaders at the policy-making table
and involved much earlier in the conversations around policy-making
generally.
Chair: Thank you all very much.
1 Note by witness: My reference to `a kind
of devolutionary scrutiny committee along the lines of the overview
and scrutiny committee' should have been the `Delegated Powers
and Regulatory Reform Committee' Back
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