The Labour Government sought to bore local government into submission. Local democracy was emasculated with thousands of mind-numbing directives spewing out of Whitehall. These are now being swept away. Councils, including Labour councils, are being given more room to make their own decisions. Labour councillors haven't sent Eric Pickles a thank you note. But they have, a bit late in the day, conceded that the Labour Government approach wasn't the best application of localist principles.
One Nation Localism is published by the LGA Labour Group and is the result of many interviews with Labour councillors. It says "the Labour Government saw local government as largely a delivery function of the centre’s priorities." Amusingly it laments that Labour's "centre-led localism", while naturally having the most "benign" of motives, had some "unintended consequences."
It goes on:
The relationship would be a partnership, but not necessarily of equals. Central government would define a tight operating framework and national standards, which would set out expectations for local authorities to manage. Over time there developed an increasing number of duties placed on local authorities; targets linked to departmental public service agreements; a plethora of different funding streams tied to the different initiatives local authorities delivered; and a complicated performance assessment framework supported by a burgeoning bureaucracy, so that the centre could monitor outcomes locally.
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