A proposal for a new form of localism

Today’s Conservative Party election manifesto provided some excellent ideas about reinvigorating local decision-making in England; referendums on directly-elected Mayors in England’s major cities, the power for local residents to take over community facilities in their area and a chance for local residents to block massive rises in Council tax by referendum are all policies we must applaud.

But there remains a massive gap in local government in England. As Simon Jenkins points out in a 2004 paper ‘Big Bang Localism’, in France the lowest level of local government is the Commune which typically has 1,580 residents, in Germany the smallest unit of meaningful local government has 4,925 residents on average whilst in Spain it is 4,930. In contrast England’s’ lowest level of local government (with the exception of Parish Councils) are the 472, metropolitan boroughs, district councils and unitary authorities, the average size of which is 118,400. Notice a gap?

I don’t mean to belittle the work of Parish Councils but they are hardly shining examples of councils working at a local level to benefit their communities. I am sure there are many excellent Parish Councils and Parish Councillors who do a lot of good work but many areas of the UK don’t benefit from the services of a Parish Council. London, with its 8 million residents, has no parish councils; similarly most of the big cities in the UK are without them too. In fact, only 35% of the UK has Parish Councils.

Labour’s answer for devolving more power was to adopt European-style regions which John Prescott championed a few years back. However those plans were shelved as another level of bureaucrats between Whitehall and our town halls with do nobody any favours. It is another aspect of the European system that I suggest England should adopt – the organic low-level units of local government that could really enhance local government in England.

The UK should be divided up in to tens of thousands of Communities with around 1,000 people living in them depending on the geography of the area. The boundaries of those communities should reflect the traditional community boundaries which local people identify with, not the artificial boundaries used by the Boundary Commission for local government wards, but real organic communities which people would identify with if asked ‘where do you come from’?

These Communities should then be left to run themselves. They need not have elected councils, but monthly ‘town-hall meetings’ which any resident can attend and smaller working groups made up of people who are actually passionate about a particular issue – not Councillors forced to make the numbers up on some local authority committee. The residents can then vote on proposals for spending their community budget and community facilities can actually be those that the local people want. Give them responsibility for parks and open spaces, youth services, community centres, footpaths and street lighting (amongst other things).

Decision-making at this local level will give us local services tailored to local needs because it’s local people deciding on those services. It will promote sustainability and long-term cost effectiveness so it’s a policy all parties should embrace.

The Conservative manifesto is a good start at promoting localism but the Tories should seriously consider going one step further.