Localism is the word of the moment. Column inches have been devoted to interpreting it, claiming to understand it, and predicting what it will mean. It looks likely that by November the Localism Bill, which is one of the largest and most far reaching pieces of legislation in recent years, will become Law, and then…..well, the floodgates will open. Local Councils will rush to pick up the powers and run with new and quite different interpretations of what it will mean.
The simple point to always hold in your mind is that the Government does not have a grand design, and that the purpose of Localism is to create such a patchwork quilt of interpretation.
I think it is fair to say Labour has struggled to find a meaningful response to the Localism Bill and more so the full Localism agenda. The Parliamentary Labour Party has rightly sniped away at some of the more ludicrous elements of the Bill which centralises power within the DCLG when the Bill professes to be about de-centralisation. However, Labour needs a coherent answer to this fundamental theme of the coalition Government.
Localism’s Achilles heel is that it is meaningless. What the Bill unleashes is a series of changes in housing policy and planning policy which will radically alter the world around us. But the meaning of Localism is lost in these far deeper and more disturbing changes.
The Bill will have huge impacts on social housing, it will redraw the scope of housing benefit and the delivery of affordable housing and it will lead to a tragedy in housing in general. If you remember ‘Cathy come home’ I think you can safely say that the impact of the changes to affordable housing will be that catastrophic. In essence the Tories have signalled the death of social housing.
Labour needs a repost to this and the answer for the party is in-fact not coming from the top but from the Labour controlled authorities in London and major metropolitan councils.
The unwritten story of the general election in 2010 was the huge success that Labour had in London in the local elections held on the same day. Winning control of 9 Councils it was a good night for the Labour Party in London.
These new Labour Councils have a had a year to begin to address the job of running a Council in the era of austerity and facing the huge cuts imposed by Central Government on Local Government.
Lambeth is setting the standard by championing the idea of a Cooperative Council. The idea of mutualism and cooperativism runs deep in the Labour Party, and these themes have been asserted in a lot of discussion about ‘Blue Labour’. The difference between the theorising of ‘Blue Labour’ and the reality of Labour politics in action is that Lambeth is actually delivering a model of a Co-operative Council.
The Co-operative Council draws inspiration from the values of fairness, accountability and responsibility. A Co-operative Council is about finding new ways in which people can participate in the decisions that affect their lives. The Co-operative Council is also not just about changing the council, it is about building more co-operative communities and realising that, for too long, councils have stood in the way rather than supported this development. A Co-operative Council seeks to do things with its community rather than do things to the community.
“This new approach to public service delivery aims to reshape the settlement between citizens and the state by handing more power to local people so that a real partnership of equals can emerge. I believe the huge level of interest in our ideas both locally and nationally is driven by a genuine desire to find new and better ways to deliver public services in the 21st century. Although we publish this report at a time of unprecedented Government cuts in funding for local services, ours is not a cuts-driven agenda. I believe that if we do not make this change then the future of public services will be much more uncertain.”
Cllr Steve Reed, Leader of Lambeth Council
Labour has a far more radical and far more meaningful repost to the Tory idea of Localism. The interesting point for local authorities up and down the rest of the country is that they will need to better understand what they are about, what they are there for. Localism will unwittingly create an accountability that will painfully expose those councils that suffer from weak leadership.
The planning process is then a part of this transformation and as Labour takes control of more authorities over the next few years of local elections, the change in the way Localism is actually implemented will hold greater meaning. The idea of a Co-operative Council is quite exciting because Localism will let this Labour idea grow and mature.
The national planning framework will set out the new principles of planning; but let’s not forget not a lot will actually change, LDF’s remain and so too the national targets for housing.
Lambeth, like other local authorities looking to deliver a Cooperative Council model, offer a solid direction of travel that grasps the opportunity Localism presents, but puts a Labour perspective on it.
The Treasury know that in most Tory authorities the idea of development and planning is dominated by a NIMBY agenda, and in a complete contradiction to the Localism Bill their proposals, now adopted by the DCLG and out for consultation, will allow developers to purchase employment land, change its use to residential without the need for planning permission and then submit an application in which the change of use is no longer a material reason for rejection. This will likely create a significant amount of windfall development that falls outside of local plans and therefore the Tory Councils can claim to have stuck to their local housing targets, and the Treasury can claim to be driving growth through greater house building. The irony of Localism will not see local people in greater control of development in their neighbourhoods; that will not be a reality of Localism.
So within that vacuum and sense of disappointment that will grow under the Localism Act the Labour Party can and should fill it with a better and far more meaningful answer based on Cooperativism and mutualism. The next few years will be some of the most interesting and uncertain as this whole new political landscape becomes a reality in practice.
Dr Paul Harvey, Curtin&Co, Labour Consultant
