The Government must go much further on public service reform

Cllr Philippa Roe, the Leader of Westminster City Council, says more local incentives and innovation is needed

The government has done much in recent years to drive forward public service reform across areas such as education, welfare and health. Good Conservative local government is also doing its bit as regular readers of these pages will know including my own council and its Tri-borough partners where we have driven through savings, streamlined processes, joined up services and introduced early intervention schemes so that we can deliver better, more efficient and more responsive services to the people we serve.

Local government is also influencing the national reform agenda. The Budget, for instance, highlighted evidence from the Whole Place community budget pilots that will help shape some of the key principles of the spending round - smarter ways of delivering better outcomes for less, putting local knowledge at the heart of Whitehall decision making; and far more emphasis on joint working across the local public sector.

This work at the local level is also being increasingly acknowledged by those in Whitehall. Greg Clark recently wrote here how central government could learn lessons from the reforming zeal of Conservative town halls.

Lewes is the Council of the Week

Local Government Minister Brandon Lewis with his series celebrating excellence in out Town Halls

This week's Champion Council is Lewes District Council. After coming under Conservative control at the beginning of last year, following 18 years of Liberal Democrat administration, the council has undergone a number of major changes to get the council working in a more efficient way for the benefit of residents.  By using innovative methods and working in partnership with external agencies, Lewes District Council are creating jobs and growth for local people.  Some examples of their recent projects are:

• Going out to the market for a partner to develop 48 sites through a promotional agreement aimed at providing housing and enhanced community benefit.  This includes plots of land that were costing money just to maintain. The combined current asset value of the property in question is £9.2 million; the potential realisable value is £150 million.
• Promoting prosperity and enterprise across the District, improving skills and providing a wide choice of local work. This includes launching an ambitious Apprenticeship and Enterprise Programme and securing £1.2 million government funding towards rejuvenation of the North Street Quarter in Lewes.
• Becoming one of 85 councils to secure funding from the Government to continue our weekly refuse collections as well as securing funding to offer a new food waste collection service in July this year.  The scheme will be introduced district wide by June this year, doubling recycling rates with very little disruption to residents.

• Although not an Education Authority, The council has forged links with local universities and colleges in the bid to bring a University Technical College to Newhaven.  E-ON has recently chosen Newhaven as the planned location for its operations and maintenance base for the nearby offshore wind farm. The move could create up to 85 jobs and see part of Newhaven Port being redeveloped through investment.

Conservatives are building a bright future for Croydon

Cllr Clare George-Hilley of Croydon Council on how her borough has moved on from rioting

The summer riots of 2011 devastated many parts of the UK, including Croydon, where images of the Reeves family store burning to the ground broadcast across the country. The riots left many families homeless and local businesses destroyed, but from this devastation came an unprecedented wave of community optimism. Hundreds of volunteers from the local community came out to clean up the streets, help businesses get back on track, and the Conservative-run Council provided loans and support to get Croydon back on track.

Since then, the Conservative group has strived to regenerate the town, improving its infrastructure and keeping Council tax low for hard working families. We’re delivering a state-of-the art leisure centre in Waddon, the ward that I represent, to create a genuine Olympic legacy and regenerating the area in and around East Croydon station that will market the town as a vibrant and confident place to live and work, with first class transport links to all major train stations in Central London and easy access to some of the finest retail services in the world.

The announcement of a £1 billion investment to transform Croydon’s town centre into a world leading retail hub partnership between Hammerson and Westfield is the latest in a long line of achievements since the riots. Croydon has already secured £23 million from Boris Johnson to improve the local area, critical funding to transform the area and create jobs.

The Government should cherry pick from the Heseltine Review

Winston Churchill said that:

For a nation to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.

That is not Lord Heseltine's view. He thinks there is some merit in the Government taking money from business in tax and then giving some back in subsidies. He favours  "intervening before breakfast" - this derives not only from his philosophical attachment to the corporate state but also his energy and vanity. He is just temperamentally unsuited as a politician to keep out of the way and allow individuals and businesses to exercise free choice in a market. Lord Heseltine itches to meddle.

None of this is news. Does this mean his report should be ignored? Not all of it. Certainly let's dispense with the gimmicky Blair era stuff about setting up a taskforce for this, a team for that, a board for the other. A National Growth Council to promote a National Growth Strategy. An Industry Council for every sector. A Strategic Relationship Management Model. Perhaps "Blair-era" is being kind - I half expected to see a return to George Brown's Five Year Plan.

Lord Heseltine gets excited about billions spent on the Regional Growth Fund or, via the EU, on the Common Strategic Framework. Fools' gold, of course. Growth is constrained by the crippling taxes required to pay for these subsidies.

Getting local growth moving

The All Party Parliamentary Group on Local Growth this week launched its first inquiry into the effectiveness of Local Enterprise Zones, recommending a much greater devolution of powers to kick start local economies Secretary to the Group, Giles Roca, explains the findings of the report.

In the autumn of 2010, local authorities and business leaders submitted initial proposals for LEPs, intended to replace the RDAs and, according to the Government’s Local Growth White Paper, to ‘bring together business and civic leaders to set the strategy, and take the decisions, that will allow their area to prosper’. Two years later, the national economic outlook remains tough and the need for bold initiatives to drive growth has returned to the top of the political agenda.

It’s timely, therefore, that the APPG on Local Growth this week published its first report considering the effectiveness to date of LEPs, and in doing so responded to Eric Pickles’ invitation in April 2012 to those driving growth on the ground to tell him “what you need to make progress”.  Eric was kind enough to come along and address the launch event calling the report "an excellent piece of work" and saying that he would be happy to implement most of the recommendations.

The inquiry, held over three months, heard from over 80 individuals and organisations including business leaders, LEPs, councils, skills bodies, government departments and senior civil servants. Despite the range of participants, and the diversity of LEP structures, resources and levels of progress, a clear consensus emerged that accelerating growth will depend on a genuine devolution of power and streamlining activities in Whitehall in support of these efforts.

Planning rules eased on new homes above shops

"Rent a flat above a shop," sang Jarvis Cocker (whose mother Christine Connolly lost by one vote as a Conservative council candidate in Bassetlaw.)

A sensible change in planning rules should mean that more have the chance to follow Jarvis's advice. Whether it will mean more will be like Common People is another matter. When I rented a flat in St John's Wood High Street is was pretty expensive and was above a smart French restaurant.

Under new permitted development rights, from October 1st, up to two flats will be allowed to be created in office or storage space. Before it was just one without gaining planning permission. This is not about spending money building new homes - but allowing existing building to be put to more effective use.

The Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said:

City Deals reward enterprise not dependency

By Greg Clark MP, the Minister for Cities, and Cllr Matthew Colledge the Leader of Trafford Borough Council

Today sees the announcement of a series of groundbreaking deals between the Government and the eight largest English cities outside London – Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Sheffield, Newcastle, Nottingham, Bristol and Birmingham. It’s in the spirit of these agreements that the two of us – a central government minister and the Conservative leader of a Greater Manchester local authority – have to come together to explain the significance of the City Deals programme.

The historical rise of our great cities was characterised by bold municipal leadership – a proud tradition of independent, innovative and, above all, local decision-making. By contrast, the 20th century decline of our cities was a marked by a creeping tide of control by Westminster and Whitehall. The intrusion of a top-down bureaucracy was bad for the whole country, but especially bad for our cities – complex communities whose problems and opportunities can only be properly understood by the people who actually live there.

In more recent times, the architects of the centralised state came to understand that they had failed to build Jerusalem, which is why politicians started to talk about decentralisation. Unfortunately, that is mostly what it was – talk. When it came to the reality of relaxing its grip, the previous government spectacularly missed the point and dictated the terms of decentralisation, imposing so many conditions that the only way that communities could participate was by agreeing to what ministers would have made them do anyway.

Norfolk County Council plans to buy RAF Coltishall

In 2006 RAF Coltishall closed. The Ministry of Justice took it over and now use part of the site for a sex offenders prison. But the rest of the site has been left empty. It is really quite scandalous the way the state so frequently holds on to land and buildings for years on end, doing nothing with them. It is 600 acres altogether.

The Ministry of Justice has now said it would like to accept a bid from Norfolk County Council for it. The council won't say how much they are offering. Bruce Giddy of the Hans House Group of Companies had offered £4.1 million, for a scheme which would have included a solar farm and converting the historic buildings into a heritage centre.

But if the MOJ prefer the council's bid, presumably the council are offering more. I am rather sceptical about it. The council already has a debt of £530 million, costing its downtrodden Council Taxpayers £34 million a year in interest. Why does it want to be splash out, beating the private sector in a bidding war for a redundant RAF station? It says the price that has been broadly agreed provides "excellent all round value for money."  However, the final price remains confidential, reflecting that there is still some haggling going on.

Bring in Local Investment Zones to boost growth

Cllr Philippa Roe, the leader of Westminster City Council, argues that the introduction of Local Investment Zones would allow all Conservative councils to play a role in creating the conditions for thriving local businesses while contributing to the Coalition’s growth plans.

The Local Government Finance Bill has its Second Reading in the House of Lords today and while it sounds like something that only the geekiest of local politicians should be interested in, it is one of the most important pieces of legislation that parliamentarians will scrutinise in this Parliament.

The Bill was hailed as the legislation that would ‘free councils from dependence upon central Government’. Local government finance is notoriously difficult to reform and so the Coalition must be applauded for tackling this thorny subject but experience tells us that major reform is a once in a generation opportunity. Getting it wrong could be costly.

Unfortunately, the Bill as it stands, due to the recalcitrance of the civil service, is unlikely to support the Government’s localism and growth agendas in any meaningful way, and may even set back the drive for growth.

These issues were first publicised in the Centre for Cities’ excellent publication Urban Outliers. The report made clear that reducing what local government can do to promote growth down to its simple planning functions, as the Bill does presently, will severely disadvantage those of us who serve in urban authorities where room for new floorspace is severely restricted.

Portas Pilots named

 

The DCLG have announced the following 12 "Portas Pilots." Each will get a £100,000 towards their schemes to revive the high street.