Stephen Greenhalgh: Help me write a bold Conservative blueprint for local government

Stephen Greenhalgh is Conservative leader of Hammersmith and Fulham and a key member of the team that Boris Johnson has appointed to audit City Hall.  He won ConservativeHome.com's 2007/08 'Local Hero Award'.  In this article Stephen introduces the aims of the new Conservative Council Innovation Unit and its aim to write 'the bible' of best practice for Conservatives in local government.

This May we have witnessed the death of both New Labour and old Labour in power. Last week Eric Pickles masterminded Labour's first by-election defeat since the 1978 by-election in Ilford North, a Labour seat, when a young Tessa Jowell lost to Vivian Bendall who is currently my Association Chairman. A couple of weeks ago my Labour predecessor as Council Leader described the loss of Ken Livingstone as Mayor of London "as the worst blow to Labour since the 1992 general election defeat".

However, many of our critics point to a lack of vision or programme for government. As we already dominate local government, our challenge is to define and articulate our Conservative vision. It is an opportunity for our party to demonstrate our priorities and goals for the communities we seek to represent.

We need to find the right language, establish Conservative values and develop a new Conservative lexicon to replace the New Labour mantras that dominate public sector thinking today.  Frankly New Labour's sole political legacy has been to rewrite the language of local government. For instance this month's pamphlet published by the SOLACE Foundation which is the professional network for local authority chief executives and senior managers is entitled "How equality shapes place: diversity and localism". Their rhetoric has been about "equality and diversity", "fairness" and "social justice" and the reality has been greater levels of inequality and a decrease in social mobility.

A Conservative vision needs to focus on “quality services that meet local need and offer value for money".  We need to deliver high quality local services at the lowest possible cost to the council taxpayer.  In London my council is the only council that is cutting council tax year on year at the same time as increasing our residents' satisfaction with council services and achieving the Audit Commission's top rating of four stars.  Hammersmith & Fulham, Kensington & Chelsea, Westminster and Wandsworth set the lowest levels of council tax in London and we all deliver four star council services locally.  We must also put "excellence" and the pursuit of excellence at the heart of our vision.  We need to recognise and reward excellent council officers, teachers, and public sector professionals who strive for the excellence that has been lost in much of the public sector.  Finally the challenge we all face is to tackle the huge levels of dependency and entrenched poverty that the welfare state has caused.  We need to create a language of aspiration based around "opportunity" where councils give a hand up rather than the hand out.  In the 1980s Wandsworth became the Brighter Borough and established themselves as a beacon to other Conservative councils. In this decade we want Hammersmith & Fulham to become the Borough of Opportunity by offering state schools of choice, creating a housing ladder of opportunity with home ownership at its core and regenerating the most deprived parts of our borough.

However, it's not just enough to provide value for money and good quality public services.  Conservatives also need to respect individuals' rights, liberties, and privacy. Contrast this with the Labour Government - and obedient town hall officers - who have no respect for personal freedoms and personal space.

I am delighted that Eric Pickles has asked me to head up the Conservative Council Innovation Unit to formulate a bold Conservative blueprint for local government. In the next few weeks and months we will be working with the best Conservative minds in our councils up and down the country and drawing on expertise from groups such as the TaxPayers' Alliance to develop a 'bible' of best practice for our Councils.  We are fortunate to have the support of the respected think-tank Localis in this initiative, and we will produce a series of reports along the way. We hope to report to David Cameron and the Shadow Cabinet in September, and that if agreed, our proposals might form the basis for Conservative groups throughout the country and we will be able to report to David Cameron and the Shadow Cabinet in September. Time is short.

Comments

[Sally Roberts]

Well done Stephen on the work you are doing and I hope that the good work being done in our borough will be looked at and emulated by other local authorities across the land!

As a Hammersmith resident I am delighted that my Council Tax continues to come down and services continue to improve - so unlike life under the previous Labour council. A small example of how things have improved for me is that now when I want to renew my Parking Permit I can do so simply and online without having to pander to the ridiculous bureaucracy which existed before and which meant I had to take photocopies of various documents proving I was who I said I was and that my car belonged to me...It used to take quite some planning I can tell you!!!
There are other numerous examples of how life is better in a Conservative Hammersmith & Fulham. Good luck with the work you will be doing at City Hall and I look forward to some of your ideas being used at National level.

[RichardJ]

1. Bring back the old system of rubbish collections. Conservatives in Essex and Westminster can do it, why can't others?

2. Sack all the diversity co-ordinators and other non-job employees.

3. An end to absurd health and safety regimes e.g. bans on hanging baskets and chopping down horse chestnut trees

4. Council money only to go to essential public services and traditional local festivals/carnivals. Attempts should be made to obtain funding elsewhere for the latter if possible

5. Sell off any excessively large council offices

6. Allow local people referendums over local planning decisions

7. Ensure that any new buildings or developments are not horrific eyesores

8. Sacking of overzealous council officials e.g. traffic wardens who hand out fines to motorists who arrive a few seconds late late back at their vehicle or litter enforcers who fine people for accidently dropping litter, even if that litter is then eaten by a passing bird (yes, it did happen)

[RichardJ]

I've just realised my post is a list of policy ideas rather than a general vision. So here's this for a vision:

Low-cost local councils that do what local people want and don't interfere where they are not wanted.

[Dave B]

Glad to hear the Taxpayers' Alliance is involved, looking forward to the outcome.

[Dave B]

I came across the following comment on Political Betting yesterday:

"I have worked in local government for the best part of forty years, God help me, and for most of that time nearly all the senior officers I have come into contact with have been left/liberal, in many cases very left indeed. Many have openly admitted that they intended to ignore or twist policies that they disagreed with, and to progress their own agenda no matter what the elected members decided."

Looks like a tough job ahead, best of luck.

[John Ledbury]

Replace the regressive Council Tax, and define what Councils do.

[Mark Wallace]

Hammersmith and Fulham have been delivering great value and much-needed tax cuts to taxpayers, and other councils would do well to learn from their success.

Council tax has doubled nationally in the last ten years, and yet in many areas services have failed to improve - and many councils continue to claim they are cash-strapped. H&F have shown it is possible to reduce taxes and improve services at the same time. It can be done, and if other councils follow suit it can make a real difference to the lives of millions.

Council tax is a severe burden on ordinary households, and particularly for those on low or fixed incomes. The TaxPayers' Alliance will happily submit evidence and research to the Innovation Unit in order to help other councils find ways to reduce waste, reform services and cut taxes.

[Tony Makara]

I look forward to seeing the effects of council tax hikes having to be justified by a local vote in favour! I hope this idea is soon up and running.

[Essex Boys]

Richard J above has many of the right ideas. Recruitment should be halted and jobsworths redeployed or removed. Council tax should be frozen for 12 months and then allowed to increase at no more than inflation for 3 years before further review. New policy-making should be halted for 12 months with concentration on making things work better and elimination of waste. At all times every part of goverment should be subject to 'THE COMMON SENSE TEST'.
COMMON SENSE & COMPETENCE must be the cornerstones of Conservative strategy in both local and national government!!

[Cllr David Sammels]

Stephen - I have quite a few thoughts about Children's Services - is there an email address we should send submissions to?

[Jane Gould]

I broadly agree with Richard J.
however, having read Stephen's excellent article, there are two other points that I would like to raise.
1. the issue of LANGUAGE ("a new Lexicon") is huge. A return to Plain English certainly sounds horrendously reactionary.
But it would help people to feel that Government - Local or otherwise - is relevant to them and understands their lives. the ability of officials to hide behind jargon and impenetrable phraseology is hugely off-putting.
2. Councils are often forced to fire-fight current problems. the ability to discuss and plan sensibly for a realistic future should come into the overall plan.
Easy, huh? My best wishes. We need to address this, otherwise there is no point in Party Groupings in Local Government.

[Cllr Adam Tugwell]

I'm all for the idea that the next Conservative Government will right the many wrongs that Labour have inflicted upon local authorities up and down the Country. However and on the face of it, this approach sounds rather quixotic and a just a tad Lib Dem or even New Labour in the way it comes accross.

The only real way that the jobs of our Local Councillors can be improved is if they are given the ability to make decisions and ALL decisions locally.

Sadly, the difficulties that Conservative Councillors actually have in trying to provide a 'low tax, good value authority' are not communicated easily to the general public as there is nothing glamourous for the media in making stories about the fact that on one hand, Central Government dictates the ceiling of Council Tax and on the other tells us that we have to find more money to meet the targets they have imposed or that we must pay massive amounts of public money into pension funds for Council employees.

Of course, this is just one area of the massive task that lies ahead if real change is to be implemented by this Party and another area was highlighted well by Zac Goldsmith's issues with Sainsburys, i.e. Planning.

Many of you reading this site will have been well aware of the flooding issues that we had as a Borough in Tewkesbury last Summer. Planning has been at the forefront of local opinion as a cause of the problems, but little is actually said about it only being the role of a Borough or District Planning Authority to administer the rules brought from London, rather than being the focus of local knowledge and real decision making that it should be.

What worries me is that by attempting to create a 'one size fits all' approach to Conservative Local Government, this Party will actually travel away from the very local approach that is needed in addressing day to day, bread and butter issues at this level.

The Parliamentary Party and its approach to policy is now beginning to work well and must be applauded. However, treating our Disticts and Boroughs as if they are all the same is no different to Labour saying that every child is the same and must have a level playing field in terms of education.

The reality is that good, successful and low-cost Local Government will only come about by equipping those who know best (Conservative Councillors of course...) with the tools to do the job, not by providing them with a raft of guidelines which would look at home in the New Labour 'how to create unecessary problems' manual which has been a best seller for the past decade...

[westie]

Define the minimum services that a local council must provide. Rubbish collection , libraries, social services etc and mandate that those services must be covered as a first priority countrywide no matter what the "leaning" of the local council is. Audit those costs and define the local council tax upon the core cost rather than what the local politicians might want to do... If the local council wants more funds for non-core services then it must get a mandate from the local people for additional revenue. Each party to publish a revenue requirement before local elections.

[Andrew Ian Dodge]

Cull all non-essential (very strictly defined) services back to the basics. Reward tax-payers with the lower council tax and then ask them to vote for some of the "add-ons".

[Deborah]

Jane Gould (11.16am) is right that language is fundamental. The absence of Plain English wastes huge amounts of time and paper. It allows officers and politicians to use smoke and mirrors to confuse members and the public, and through sheer tedium puts off many good people from getting involved in local politics.
First stop - short, clear and to the point reports.

[Arthur Barker]

The main improvements to the funding of local services are 1)to rid the system of council tax based on the value of the housing and replace it on the individual resident's ability to pay - either as a part of national taxation or a form of local income tax and 2) to get rid of all national targets for local services and make these local; these targets being publicised locally so that if, for example, employees are rewarded for penalising litterers then the rules for these targets should be displayed prominently and if not so displayed penalties should become invalid.

[Jim Holder]

Good stuff Stephen.

Having experienced both a Committees led and a Cabinet led authority I have yet to find anything at all in favour of the latter system and a lot to say against it.

To ensure that Councillors, not Officers, run the Council, a committee structure is a far more formidable obstacle to over zealous Officers than a Cabinet.

[Editor]

Re David Sammels,

Any one wanting to email comments to the Innovations Unit should submit them to AGriffiths@conservatives.com.

Thanks.

[Ken Stevens]

1) Remove the requirement for a councillor to be debarred from pursuing a topic on the basis of which he/she was elected. Or at very least make it a debarment permissible on any relevant occasion only by majority vote of other elected people and not by council officials.

2) no local government (..or quango, etc,) officer may be paid more than the Prime Minister.

3)adopt a new and strikingly original principle: "Local government of the people by the people for the people" ;-)

2) Adopt a novel new concept:

[Ken Stevens]

Ignore last 2). Omitted to delete on editing!

[NigelC]

There is an underlying problem. Some associations struggle to find candidates for local councils and in safe Conservative districts anyone wearing a blue rosette will be elected irrespective of their fundamental beliefs. This could do the party damage in the long run

How can we ensure local Conservative councils implement national Conservative policy, once decided, where pratically possible?

[RichardJ]

I've thought of another one - no speed bumps without the permission of the residents of the road!

My aunt's road had a load of speed bumps installed and she was never consulted.

[Justin Hinchcliffe]

Congratulations, Stephen. Haringey, my borough, currently has no Conservative councillors, so taking control of the council in 2010 is a very long shot indeed!

But if we were to take control of this authority, we would hope to:

1. Aim to half the number of council offices and staff. Our Wood Green offices could certainly compete with Whitehall!

2. Conduct a financial audit. How much money does the council get from central government and the local taxpayer? How much does it spend on KEY services, e.g. education and social services? How much money does it spend on various groups which are often run along ethnic lines? And is the council missing out on money from various government agencies and the European Commission?

3.Cheaply sell off or give away dis-used shops/space in deprived areas to kick-start regeneration.

4. Hold private landlords and housing association to account when they allow their tenants to litter/dump and behave in an anti-social fashion.

5. Review all traffic calming measures - and requests to introduce them in some areas.

6. Tighten up and adhere to planning rules. All satellite dishes in conservation areas to be taken down under Article 4. Take action against council tenants who do not keeps their gardens cleans/cut the hedges Pull down ugly buildings and have minimum attractiveness requirements for new builds.

7. Flood the borough with new trees and shrubs. And water them!

8. Extend recycling to include plastics and give flat-owners adequate opportunities to be green.

9. Find and encourage local people with a track record of success and community involvement to become local school governors. This could include local businessmen, GPs and other professionals.

10. Work with and support local voluntary/not-for-profit organisations to support us in the provision of social services.

11. Pay for private security guards to police some schools, esp. after 'chucking out' time to ensure kids to not loiter around and are able to safely return home.

12. Scap Haringey People, a propaganda rag, as Boris did with the Londoner.

[Paul Marks]

To achieve your aims (all of which seem to me to be good ones) we must remove central government regulations.

As long as local government is caught in a net of these (often E.U. inspired) regulations, what we can do is very limited.

Also the funding regime must be reformed.

It is said that local people can not fund all of local government spending from local tax - but this misses the point that central government grant does not get funded by magic. Central taxation falls on the same people that local taxation does.

It is true that some areas of the country are poorer than others - but the central government grant system is not just about handing out money to very poor areas. It is a nightmare of complexity and abuse.

And it is no accident that Labour party run councils tend to get more central government grant - regardless of the degree of poverty in the area concerned.

[Gordon James]

When producing your draft budget for the year start with a zero budget and ensure that there is a qualified argument for every item that is added.
Do away with the policy that all budget items will increase by a specified percentage.
I know that it means a great deal of time and effort but money will be saved in the long run.

[prziloczek]

Rubbish is a big issue - and quite needlessly.
Cambridge is a Conservative County and here we have three large bins - all animal proof and easily emptied too.
Blue and Green are emptied one week: Brown the other. So, yes, we have a two week collection.
Brown: compostable/Blue: newspaper and recyclables/Green: other. We also have a nearby bottle bank, so we have a bin for bottles too.
Our local tip is open most of the time for bigger objects. And, of course, we have the Fenland Roads which have dykes full of refrigerators. These, too, are dredged on demand within the week usually.
Do you know what? It works!

[prziloczek]

Rubbish is a big issue - and quite needlessly.
Cambridge is a Conservative County and here we have three large bins - all animal proof and easily emptied too.
Blue and Green are emptied one week: Brown the other. So, yes, we have a two week collection.
Brown: compostable/Blue: newspaper and recyclables/Green: other. We also have a nearby bottle bank, so we have a bin for bottles too.
Our local tip is open most of the time for bigger objects. And, of course, we have the Fenland Roads which have dykes full of refrigerators. These, too, are dredged on demand within the week usually.
Do you know what? It works!

[HF]

Stephen, a very welcome move.

There really does need to be a local council think tank, maybe through the CCA, in which policy matters are discussed and a conclusion reached.

Unfortunately on matters like the waste collections, some of our Councils have caved in to their council staff and introduced a range of unConservative changes just because they lacked the time and resource to look at the alternatives.

Plymouth Council is but the latest in a sad line of councils where councillors have lost control of the staff.

Unfortunately the folk at the CCA seem to lack the cojones to actually take a lead and make things happen.

[surreyconservative]

A welcome move. I would like to see specific recommendations for ensuring officer accountability. Too many of our councils seem to operate as officer fiefdoms with ineffective political control. I hope CCHQ ensures widespread distribution to all Associations post September.

[Matt Wright]

All good points. We need to get a coherent move now to make all Conservative led councils really world class and inspiring. We aslo ned to explain to the public what councilors do an what officers should do and why Govt policy is crippling how efective councils could really be. The Innovations Unit if properly run could be ground breaking in encouraging and sharing best practice. The balance has to be right though. The stuff from taxpayers Alliance today was silly to say the least. The public want councils to tackle litter robustly. The TPA spokesman, Mark Wallace, was lamentable on the radio. A pity becaue the TPA are normaly good.

[Stephen R Hillier]

A huge subject and some spot on contributions above. A couple of quick bullets before I start my main topic;
* Committees not cabinet
* Value for money
* Less is more - this is not just a money-saving or reducing bureaucracy measure, but I think councils should do more to promote local communities (down to street level) to help themselves. This is true control at a local level, it keeps costs down, and fosters great community spirit. Maybe the council provides equipment to borrow (but doubtless the wretched H & Safety / Liability issues will raise their head).

However, on a much broader note, WHO SAYS THE GENERAL PUBLIC WANT GREATER LOCAL DEMOCRACY?! Sorry for "shouting" but we seem to plunge headlong down the road opened by this mantra of local government and I have yet to hear of a member of the local community who was not involved in politics, feel particularly strongly about local democracy at all.

Firstly, they find it frustrating that there is no single party they can blame because the buck gets passed around. If councils were run by civil servants under direct control of the government, everyone would know exactly who to blame. It may even row back some of the gerrymandering practises of labour with regards to the theft of funding from "the Shires"? Surely it is not beyond our wit to come up with some proposals that enable the electorate to express their preferences to the local council, and some sort of elected oversight committee to ensure the council are being open and honest in the information they provide to the electorate. Think of the money saved on cllr costs and officer time!

Secondly, as another of your correspondents has pointed out, the quality of cllrs can be truly woeful. We all know that parties struggle to find candidates for all wards, and that paper candidates find themselves embarrassingly elected due to an unpredicted national swing or something. This does nothing to engender respect and confidence in local democracy.

I know it appears to be heresy, but PLEASE can we just sit back and think a little about this. If I am right it would certainly be a bold message!

PS I was a district cllr for 8 years so yes I do know what I am talking about.

[Lindsay Jenkins]

The key ‘reform’ of local government is to roll back the centralising actions of the Labour government. Some of that has been control for the Labour’s benefit (and their cronies), and some the EU’s agenda.

So cabinet government should go – it casts most elected councillors into the outer darkness. That is what it was meant to do. And thus democracy becomes a joke.

Codes of conduct should be completely overhauled and probably scrapped. The farce of councillors not being able to debate or vote on anything on which they may have a stated view, let alone elected because of that view is outrageous. The money wasted and heartache caused by lengthy investigations into ridiculous charges is dire. Control freakery gone mad.

Elected mayors across the country should be reviewed. The intent was to provide a gauleiter to control everything. While most of us here applaud what Boris is doing, the power of the London Mayor and in particular his powers of patronage are huge and worrying. We did indeed worry like mad when that mayor was Livingstone.

And the powers of the London Assembly are laughable. It is of course the European Parliament in London. There are version of this across the country.

While Stephen Greenhalgh no doubt has very practical issues in mind, saving money, reducing tax, providing excellent services (hurrah) we should all be aware that the revolution – not yet complete- in local government is intended to divide this country into 12 EU regions - some are laughably called nations.

Regional administration already controls large swathes of what used to be very local affairs. It is insidious. All that should go.

And all of it should be part of Stephen’s review – no half measures!

Labour has renewed the phasing in of unitaries. Local government units become bigger and much less local – the EU’s sub regions. 9 more will start work next year despite a near universal thumbs down from voters. All that has to be disentangled too.

Stephen Hillier bemoans the lack of local interest - there is plenty of local interest when 'local' is threatened with the ax. Voter turn out and debate was high in those areas threatened recently with unitaries and who were allowed a vote at all.

Perhaps the most sensitive area is policing. Labour has already had one shot at halving 43 constabularies en route to the 12 to get the EU regions. A second assault is underway - the government to appoint Chief Constables.

An incoming Conservative government should revisit our history of policing and roll back to pre Sheahy. I wouldn’t go down the elected sheriff road -with considerable experience of the US I have grave doubts – but decades ago we had much more balanced Police Authorities which are now deliberately politicised.

Sorry for length – will stop very short! But what a relief that Stephen Greenhalgh is the man to address these key issues.

[Alastair Forsyth]

I am surprised no mention at all has been made of unitary authorities.
Suffolk was the only area in the country where Conservatives lost out in the last local government elections.
This was because Conservative councillors in Ipswich Borough Council argued publicly with a Conservative County Council over the size and scope of unitary authorities.
The government is disposed to endorse the case for a separate (Labour inclined?) Ipswich unitary authority, arrogating to itself some of the the surrounding county, to make it financially viable. The rest of the county would then be divided up into one or two more unitary authorities based on Bury St Edmunds and possibly Lowestoft.
The Boundary Committee will produce its draft recommendations for Government in early July.
The County Council favours a single unitary authority for all Suffolk.
This must be the right Conservative answer, and the right answer for the country
Voters understand and identify with Suffolk.
The present structure - county council, borough councils and district councils -has on the whole served well, but is too confusing. Voters do not know who is responsible for what, and who to blame or praise.
Conservatives would normally consider smaller to be better, but a balance has to be struck between small local units, such as Ipswich and Bury, and larger units such as the county of Suffolk, with the power and competence to defend local interests and stand up to Government.
Truly to bring local government alive local government units must have greater powers to decide how the monies they need are raised and spent. This demands units of a certain minimum size - larger than Ipswich smaller than the Eastern Region
Finally, the split up of the existing county and the creation of new units - each with their own education and health care responsibilities - will be enormously time consuming and costly; while a single Suffolk authority should reduce the number of councillors by about two thirds.
I strongly support Stephen Greenhalgh's work to create a clear and distinctive Conservative local government policy, something that does not exist (witness the Suffolk county council/Ipswich borough council brawl, which the party lamentably failed to mediate). It is not before time. It needs to be bold. It need not be "one size fits all". And it should not ignore the issues which we in Suffolk currently face

[Lindsay Jenkins]

Alastair Forsyth - In the posting above yours I did indeed refer to unitaries and near universal voter antipathy to them.

The present round of unitaries in Suffolk as elsewhere continues what Edward Heath started –the EU’s sub regions.

Has a referendum has been held in Suffolk to ask all voters (not councillors bickering over the spoils) whether they want district and borough councils abolished in favour of larger units?

Somerset did so – half of the electoral roll turned out and gave a big thumbs down.

That is what a Conservative government should be supporting.

[Cllr Lyndon Elias]

Placing an embargo on redeveloping disused railway land is popular with my constituents. If people are denied the choice of travel mode, congestion charging will spread; paying to enter a town, paying to park plus paying a resident's parking fee.

Downing Street has no intention of re-opening lines. (See its website.) Bad news for those who must use roads for their business.

[Met Patterson]

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[Matthew Barker]

Make Sport facilities more focussed on working with local competitive clubs and lessons in a competitive sport. often it is lessons and hiring to local clubs which is most profitable . If the focus is strongly put on this , many young people would become healthier , more competitive and ambitious, AND in many cases the facilities could start making a profit, which could be used to cut council tax.

make Council tax cuts across all band, but focus on the lower bands , to help the poorest in the community the most. This makes the moral case for lower taxation more credible.