Colin Baker (New Forest): This word "localism" is all very fine but, I suspect none of you could tell me what it actually is! Is it a region; a county; a district / borough; a parish or what? How about having new "City Counties" (CC) with new enlarged "Parish" communities and forgetting the rest? Current county boundaries were out of date three decades back. Current Parish structure tends to be too small for anything serious to happen. City Counties could decide for themselves how many parishes they wanted and how big to make them. (For information on how the administrative geography of England currently works see here).
Travel to work areas (TTWA) and travel to play areas have changed somewhat in the last decades. In the absence of any better ideas, "travel to work areas" - basically concerned with economics - seem to me to be a good concept to base the new "Localism" on.
The old tribal boundaries have moved as cities have naturally developed into centres of socio-economic activity. So why not make new Counties based on these travel to work areas with a major settlement within each TTWA - a city or big town that could become a city - and some new cities in the various green deserts that masquerade as farms with inadequate woodlands (carbon capture devices) on them - see here (opens pdf).
This would have to be a bottom up revolution as we all know that Westminster and Whitehall will never sanction such a move; in fact, it would frighten the lives out of them. Particularly as all government departments and associated quangos would be managed coterminous with the new CCs and required to present budgets and operating plans to each City County for scrutiny ( if not approval at a later stage).
Mind you, with about nine hundred quangos spending £180 billion a year (that's about a third of all government spending), there will be a lot of paperwork coming Councils way; but, collectively CCs might launch a takeover bid for some of them and the money that goes with them. Or, collectively force national government to do away with a lot of them - and even reduce taxes!
Can you actually imagine if each City County had a detailed financial account of everything national government was doing on its patch - frightening! (National government makes local government look efficient, believe it or not). Unfortunately, this would expose how the government of the day directs money to its marginal constituencies to buy votes, but you can't win them all.
How to manage it all? There are 243 TTWAs on the new map, say about 180 of these are in England - the Scots and Welsh are pretty well set up with all unitary councils anyway. These could be fashioned into regions for EU treaty obligation etc: they are of little significance other than for getting grants and expensive lifestyles for MEPs. Say each City County has one elected MP to represent the people in the (English?) commons and one elected Lord or Senator - whatever you would like to call them - in the House of Lords, representing the County at "federal" government level. OK, I know this is the way the USA does it but it does actually work there. A US Congressman has a constituency of over half a million people, so they have big staff budgets: don't complain if ours need something similar.
Naturally, we would elect the City Council including a City Chief Executive Officer - Arnie is the elected CEO of the State of California, you don't have to be an expert to do the job, you employ expert Directors to do the clever stuff. As the City County would be totally unitary in present terms, own all its assets including public land; and, be more like a modern PLC, we would elect a Chief Constable; Chief Headteacher; Chief Doctor and similar as required, to do things the way the Council wanted them done. National government would look after national things like defence; security; and supra county affairs and budgets.
How to pay for it all? VAT has possibilities but a Land Value Tax would be my preference. There would have to be a revenue balancing mechanism across England for many years to come, probably based on County GDP / GVA or similar.
Where to start? Look through the data on http://www.statistics.gov.uk/geography/beginners_guide.asp and the above web sites. Also, look at the Bus routes in your hamlet, buses tend to go where the people want to go nowadays. The places they have naturally associated themselves with. The Sustainable Communities Act is a starter for this revolution and could be the catalyst for "localism" if local government plays its cards well. I think we desperately need a new beginning in England. What say you?
