Public opinion: Your blogs

Curing ‘bloated’ Britain requires precision surgery

It is now clear, that there is no lack of aspiration, desire and enthusiasm for reform and making UK local government better.

There is a real zeal being displayed, and I think parts of what the government is saying and doing, is extraordinary, ambitious and an opportunity.

David Cameron asserting that ‘there is such a thing as a society, it’s just not the same as the state’ reflects an emerging political philosophy in which notions such as Big Society represent an engagement with ideas around reshaping the social contract between the state, community and individual.

Furthermore Eric Pickles declaring ‘we do not need to be less ambitious, or less radical, just because we have less money’ is equally as refreshing as it is stark.

Nevertheless, the government is trying to juggle a number of very different agendas (especially Big Society, decentralisation, localism), while at the same time implementing an unprecedented set of cuts, in an era of huge environmental and economic change.

A skillful operation is in process and it clearly requires adept hands and precision tools. Using the metaphor of the UK as an obese and unwell patient, a major operation is taking place, in which the UK patient is being treated to a weightwatchers diet, while at the same time having a gastric band operation and being surgically rebuilt into a lithe and springy long distance runner.

Also the lights keep flickering in the operating theatre. If they pull this surgery off, it will be no mean feat.

Part of the delicacy in the operation is that the all of these agendas are being underpinned by cuts. To implement the change requires control and a shift in power. However, at present the scale of the cuts has meant there is no time to create a shift in control, or create new localist power bases.

Take the removal of that so called ill and ‘bloated quango’ – the RDA. Inward investment, sector leadership and business support appear to be moving back to the centre. As cuts start to hit, any remaining regional function or power has nowhere to go but back to the mother ship in Whitehall. Or, for example, the local enterprise partnerships (LEPs) – the lithe and youthful organ replacement – local areas have to submit ‘bids’. It would appear that the centre decides on LEP status.

This is a funny kind of localism. In both these examples, where is the radical decentralising process which moves the functions and powers to the local?

At the recent CLES summit, it was mentioned by a number of delegates and speakers that localism is the principle, decentralisation was the process and that the Big Society was the outcome.

I think this makes sense, however, before we can move securely on, the coalition government itself, needs to get its own house in order in terms of the principles of localism. You can’t just repeat it a lot and think it will happen!

A radical localism, means we must get central government departments and the whitehall civil service, to buy into localism and then adopt new decentralising processes and systems.

All of this needs a bit more skill and precision. If we do not find this soon, the operation will fail and untold damage could be done to the UK patient.