Cllr Philippa Roe, the Leader of Westminster City Council, says the Chancellor doesn't need to open his cheque book to help local government deliver better services
The Government’s localist credentials are much debated. The rhetoric of the early days is perhaps not as strong as it once was but there are many big achievements that can be pointed to in the areas of planning, education and housing. However, some ministers and departments have not found it easy to hand over real power and responsibility to local communities and councillors representing them.
Unfortunately, the conventional view across much of Whitehall is that local authorities act as a brake on economic growth thus making councils an easy target when departmental budgets come to be handed out. The implementation of Greg Clark’s City Deals and the tentative experiments with Community Budgets are notable exceptions and mark a change in this attitude but much more still needs to be done.
Local government has largely responded well to the challenge to rebalancing the economy and playing a role in driving down the deficit. I would though now urge that the Chancellor uses his Budget on 20th March and the Spending Review on 26th June to entrust councils around the country to help address the big tests facing the country. As well as boosting the economy, the Chancellor’s influence could be put to great use in helping achieve effective public service reform more swiftly across Whitehall that again would deliver efficiencies and save taxpayers’ cash.
There are six things that Chancellor should do in his Budget:
The Chancellor need not open his cheque book to make this happen. Much relies, instead on trusting and empowering councils and the communities they serve, offering them the right incentives to work across local authority boundaries and with others public services to deliver real change.
The experiences of the first two years working with Tri-borough colleagues in Kensington & Chelsea and Hammersmith and Fulham show that substantial savings are achievable and that problems that would otherwise have been impossible to tackle alone can be dealt with efficiently by working in partnership. And there are numerous examples of this type of work going on across the country.
Given the state of the party’s opinion poll ratings and with elections this year for 27 county councils and eight unitaries and next year for most local authorities, there is a possibility that by the time the Chancellor delivers the 2014 Budget his allies in local government may be greatly reduced in number.
The result of the general election in 2015 depends largely on the government’s success in addressing the huge economic and social challenges of our day. It may take a great leap of faith but Mr Osborne could well be surprised how much we in local government can do to give both the economy and the party’s electoral hopes a shot in the arm. Now is the time to trust Conservative local government to deliver.