Believe it or not we have a three tier system of government in which decisions are made by our elected representatives to handle our local, county/metropolitan and national interests.
‘Local government is responsible for a range of vital services for people and businesses in defined areas. Among them are well known functions such as social care, schools, housing and planning and waste collection, but also lesser known ones such as licensing, business support, registrar services and pest control.’ That’s what the Local Government Association says and they should know.
Increasingly though, local councils have become no more than administrators. We should reclassify them as civil servants and have them attached to an appropriate ministry. Think of the money we’d save on councillor expenses and administration.
My thinking on this is simple. Many of the activities are out-sourced (like waste collection in my area) or don’t need a local representative to manage (like pest control). And things like planning, well what’s the point any more. The building regulations are the building regulations, no room for discussion there. Where one might hope for some control over your local area is the way in which it is developed. But apparently not.
A friend, along with neighbours, opposed a local planning application for just one property. They gained the support of the local councillors who rejected the application. There was an appeal which was rejected locally, but then went to the Inspectorate where it was approved. And then there is the case of a major development in London being rejected by the local authority and by the planning inspectors but rubber stamped by the Minister. (You may have read about the furore.) So what is the point of having a local authority to make decisions if you intend to have such strict rules that there is no room for manoeuvre (education, maybe) or someone in Government over riding them.
And with regard to Covid, local authorities are rightly annoyed, to put it politely, that they are the last ones to know when, why and how their town is being put into lockdown. It’s on the news before the local authority is told.
Did anybody ask the councils between London and Birmingham if they wanted HS2? Doesn’t matter, they would have been ignored. If more people are working from home then surely less will need to make the journey between London and Birmingham. Does it merit the expense to save 20 minutes on the train? And need we remind ourselves that is for through trains. Trains that stop to pick up passengers will not see the same advantage. Has anyone considered how the estimated cost of £106bn might be better spent in the current circumstances? Could some of that money not be diverted to the North where their needs are greater, or maybe that will be seen as diverting money from the already cash rich south.
There is no doubt that we need to strike a balance between national interest and local interest, central government should not and cannot hug all the power to itself.
When a small group seems to have unlimited power we are looking at an autocracy. We condemned communism because of state control, it was an autocracy. Hitler’s little gang was an autocracy that became a dictatorship. I’m not suggesting that there is a cabal in power aiming to overthrow our democracy, but as more and more power seems to be concentrated in fewer hands in Downing Street, not all of them elected, then we must not be complacent.