Local Matters

OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.

Richard Berry (London, Knowledge Politics): Stuart Weir began this series with a piece lamenting the over-centralisation of the British state, and an anonymous poster responding to this made the argument that local government itself is acquiescent with this situation. I believe the analysis of why local authorities do not make more vociferous demands for autonomy has to take into account the party origins of most local politicians.

OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.

Amelia Cookson (London, Local Government Information Unit): Though it goes against every grain of my being, I think that it might be true: things really are getting better. Well, maybe not with the economy. And the climate might be a write-off. But for the first time in a long time, local government is on the up.

OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.

This is an anonymous post from someone working within local government.

As a local government practitioner, I would like to say that Stuart Weir's argument (which began this series) is right in an ideal world. But the centralising tendencies of central government are only one part of the problem. The other is the lack of real 'demand' from the majority of people in local government for autonomy; the relative lack of capability or vision of councillors to make their place different; the dominance of councils who want to be left alone to be incompetent. Some of this is not surprising, since very few people with real ambitions or vision have stood to be a councillor for so long. It's interesting when you do find one of those, in a big city or in a local area, to see what a difference they can make. Plus it is only recently that young bright people have come into local government - and then usually via a 'profession', e.g., regeneration, where you can work for many different agencies, rather than those making a career as a local authority officer. This is a real issue, as it takes time to attract the capabilities into the sector to take advantage of the much greater potential for localism that does exist.

OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.

Dominic Potter (London, Involve): There is currently a re-ordering of some of the relationships that are central to how we all live our everyday lives. In Stuart Weir's interesting piece on this site, the focus was on the relationship between central and local government. What we at Involve find really intriguing is the relationship between local government and citizens.

OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.

Rupert Read (Norwich, The Green Party): Right now, I'm spending a lot of my time on the stump. In a week's time, we'll know the results of this year's local elections; a good time to reflect, then, on the prospects for local government in Britain.

OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.

George Jones (London, LSE): Public Partnerships are the Government's fashionable mechanism for delivering local public services. They come in various shapes and sizes: between local authorities and other public bodies, with the private sector and with the voluntary or independent sector. And they have proliferated. Researchers in 2002 found at least 5,500 local partnerships, spending £4.3 billion a year, with 75,000 partnership board members. There must be far more today.

OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.

Mike Small (Fife, Bella Caledonia): We are obsessed by food. We should be - because we have a serious problem. As Raj Patel points out in his new book "Stuffed and Starved" unless you are a corporate food executive, the food system isn't working for you.

OurKingdom is running a short series of posts looking at various aspects of localism and local government - you can read the series in full here.

Anthony Brand (London, New Local Government Network): Stuart Weir's first piece in this series rightly argued that a local government ruled through central dictat will not drive interest in local democracy. Nor will it produce the innovative, personalised services that 21^st Century citizens deserve.

This is the guest editorial of the current issue of Ethos on local government. Ethos is a journal of the Serco group. It's also part of a short series of posts OurKingdom is running looking at various aspects of local government - you can read the series in full here.

This is the first in a short series of posts OurKingdom will be running in April looking at various aspects of local government.

Stuart Weir (Cambridge, Democratic Audit): Four months ago, on December 12 2007, a major constitutional bargain was struck which attracted no attention then and has largely been ignored since. I refer to the concordat on central-local government that the government signed with the Local Government Association (LGA) and that was trailed in the Governance of Britain green paper. But government departments and ministers have not lost their enthusiasm for interfering in local government affairs and, so far as I know, the LGA and local authorities scarcely ever raise its presence in their defence.