Written by Geoffrey Bastin

 

Local government is a strange sort of organisation and concept. It has existed in its present state since the 1920s when local administration provided a means of dealing with the things that could only be dealt with locally. Perhaps you can remember the signs that said “by order of the Town Clerk or the Borough Engineer”.

Of course that was then, but now it’s become ever more complicated as central government devolves more of its responsibilities onto local authorities.

At that time we had well-to-do folk running the show (an expression that has always amused me) and even Aldermen who for some strange reason had to be dispensed with as an outdated entitlement. They were elders who had given years of service on meagre expenses and had the experience that was useful to newer members, but hey don’t let’s allow experience to dominate for that is such an old fashioned concept!

So we have ended up with local authorities that have expanded beyond all recognition, going from the old urban district councils to borough councils, and now to county councils and unitary authorities with all that top-heavy bureaucracy to boot.

The escalation really got going after the Second World War when recruitment led to the employees calling themselves officers following their time in military service.

Then in the glory days of the 1960s so many councils in the larger conurbations became the largest property companies in their areas and, as was the case in some London Boroughs, they ended up owning between 33 and 50 per cent of the housing stock. That housing stock grew from large rented sectors such as housing estates owned by large property companies – for instance, the Church Commission offloaded their housing stock in drastic need of improvement for which they didn’t have the resources. In addition the Planning and Land Act allowed local authorities to buy up loads of properties that came on the market, often without considering the existing tenancies or squatters or the cost of bringing the places up to a satisfactory standard.

At that time the Department of the Environment provided finance to local authorities for capital expenditure by way of 30 to 60-year loans that had to be repaid. The long term burden, therefore, fell on the general rate fund and no consideration was ever given at that time to recouping some expenditure by selling assets. Only acquisitions seemed to matter.

So what are local authorities if not just agents for central government?

Today they cannot borrow for house building or ownership even though a large proportion of their previous portfolio was sold off under “Right to Buy” in the 1980s. They still have a responsibility under the Homeless Persons Act to find accommodation when required but in most cases that simply means passing on the problem to a Housing Association.

Of course local responsibility does not rest there as we have learnt on many occasions recently when the elderly are without care, accommodation for illegal underage immigration is required, and provision for asylum seekers, much-needed refuse disposal and local roads are all calling for more resources. Thus the responsibilities of central government are neatly devolved – or should we say dumped – onto the local administrations.

We haven’t even touched on planning law and all that that entails, nor why refuse collection has to be such a problem when it costs so little in terms of the overall cost to our council taxes, but is such an important service.

And to demonstrate just how up-to-date our local representatives are with current trends, some councils have even found enough spare cash to initiate local audits of their statues in order to “reconfigure” our historical monuments. These, in almost every case, were funded by private contributions and had little or no deliberate connections with slavery or Empire. Recently a statue to local men who fell in the Boer War will have its explanation reconfigured so as not to miss an opportunity to mention what the Boer War did to the Dutch Boers, despite the atrocities also committed by the locals in that war. It completely misses the point that the statue is not giving an opinion about the war itself and is only a memorial to those that died having taken the King’s shilling.

Street and building names also fall under their responsibility. Hence the crazy decisions taken at times to either change a place name from Brockwell Park to Steve Beko Park or to give cheap ugly blocks of flats the names of people like Violet Szabo, the British SOE heroine who was executed in Germany in the last months of WW2, or a health centre after Ian Gow the Tory MP who had his legs blown off by the IRA 31 years ago.

But to emphasise the utter subservience of local government to central government we need look no further than Localism, when no such thing exists apart from the 2011 legislation that was very soon afterwards nullified by the National Planning Policy Framework. That framework is used, we are told, to ensure standards are adhered to nationally whilst also taking into account the wellbeing of rare field mice and spider habitats.

But what it doesn’t do is give very much if any control to local residents or planning committees to make decisions in the best interests of their own localities.

And whilst we are considering local responsibility let’s think about waste management and all this obsession with “recycling” when in fact it is just a sorting exercise.

As we produce tonnes of waste each day surely it would be better to deal with it on an industrial scale. In some areas this happens, but they are the exception. Separating items into categories is fine provided those items are then disposed of correctly and their journeys are traceable. No one can be certain which skip load goes where or if it ends up in yet another barge down the Thames or to some other means of disposal that is not publicised.

Of course if you have a few spare hours, a call to your local authority to enquire about what waste goes where could be enlightening – providing you have the patience to listen to all 17 options when you make the call. You may even find the answer is a load of rubbish.

 

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