Localism loses out in Queen's Speech
The government’s legislative programme promises some major changes affecting local authorities. Azadeh Khalilizadeh reports on the proposals and the reaction to them.
Local authorities can expect a significant change to their legal obligations after the Queen’s Speech placed community issues high on the legislative agenda.
Delivered on 18 November 2009, the proposed legislative programme is a symbolic call for change to central Whitehall departments, in order to create “sustained growth” and a “fair and prosperous economy for families and business”.
Should each of the 13 bills and two draft bills make their way through Parliament, there is potential to see major reforms across a wide range of sectors. But local authority bodies highlight a pressing concern that councils’ budget constraints may prevent these legislative dreams becoming a practical reality.
Key bills affecting local government include:
- Personal Care at Home Bill
- Children, Schools and Families Bill
- Crime and Security Bill
- Flood and Water Management Bill
Other bills affecting local government include:
- Equality Bill
- Child Poverty Bill
- Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill
Other bills include:
- Digital Economy Bill
- Bribery Bill
- Cluster Munitions Prohibitions Bill
- Financial Services Bill
- Fiscal Responsibility Bill
- Energy Bill
- Draft International Development Spending Bill
- Draft House of Lords Reform Bill
Personal Care at Home Bill
Described as the first step towards setting up a new National Care Service, this Bill seeks to enable free care to be provided at home for up to 280,000 people with complex medical conditions. A further 130,000 people will get the right to aid that will enable them to live in their homes for longer. The £670m predicted costs will largely be met in cuts from central Whitehall departments.
Although local authority and community groups have supported the Bill in principle, there is widespread concern over the funding rationale behind the legislative framework.
The Local Government Association (LGA) has questioned the government’s expectations of councils finding an additional £250 million every year from “efficiency savings”. According to the LGA, if the government cannot lift existing burdens, it is difficult to see how local government could meet the cost of “another new burden”. “There needs to be absolute clarity as to what is included in personal care and in what form it will be provided,” it added.
The Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) also expressed concern over the government’s suggestion that half the funding would come from the Department of Health and half from local government. “It would be counter-productive if councils had to find their half from social care budgets – this has to be properly funded, or those who are not eligible for non means-tested support may find themselves in a worse position,” the unit claimed.
Birmingham City Council for instance, has confirmed it did not know how much it would need to pay and is still waiting for the government to explain exactly who would be eligible for free care, The Birmingham Post has reported. Without knowing that, it could not calculate the cost.
Jane Ashcroft, chairman of the English Community Care Association, told ePolitix.com the proposals could lead to “an even greater drain on public resources without having a tangible impact on the quality of life of our older people”.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Lord Lipsey, a former member of the Royal Commission on Long-Term Care, described the free care guarantee as “irresponsible” and unaffordable, while Lord Warner, a former health minister, said the Bill was “totally misjudged”.
Su Sayer, chief executive of charity group United Response, welcomed plans to provide free personal care at home, but highlighted the importance of a wider need for reform. “It is important that we don't lose sight of the need to overhaul the entire system to give greater priority to prevention and early intervention for working age disabled adults as well as older people, and to enabling people to become active citizens,” she told ePolitix.com.
Children, Schools and Families Bill
The Bill seeks to demonstrate the government’s commitment to strengthening the quality of education for children and a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to anti-social behaviour.
The flagship part of the proposed legislation is the creation of a statutory “pupil and parent guarantee”. Pupil guarantees include promises to provide one-on-one English and maths tuition for those falling behind, personal tutors for secondary students, support for the gifted and talented and specialist help with health and social problems.
Parent guarantees include promises to provide clear information about pupils' performance, parent support advisers, annual surveys of parents' views, more powers of intervention in struggling schools and report cards to grade schools.
If parents and students are unhappy with a school’s delivery against the guarantee, they will have an ultimate right of appeal to the Local Government Ombudsman. This means parents can complain if they are not happy with the curriculum or even choice of school.
According to the LGiU, while giving new rights to children and their parents to receive good education is great in theory, local authorities could face a fresh wave of legal challenges.
“The pupil guarantee could be a "whingers charter" as parents repeatedly use it as a means of driving up their view of school standards, which may not do anything of the sort as the school becomes defensive to such complaints,” it said. This reiterated sentiments expressed in The Daily Telegraph. “Many of the issues relating to quality in education can only be assessed through ‘professional’ judgement and are not easily subjected to rigour of guarantees.”
The LGA similarly called for the pupil and parent guarantees to lead to true engagement with parents and pupils, rather than creating further bureaucracy for local authorities.
The association was also concerned about the proposed new powers for the Secretary of State to direct councils to issue improvement notices for failing schools. “Local authorities, working with their partners, are best placed to make these judgements and act accordingly depending on the circumstances within a particular area,” it argued. “We would like assurances that these powers will only be used as a last resort.”
Reservations were also expressed about the proposed powers for the Secretary of State to intervene in youth offending teams. According to the LGA, improvements to these teams would be better delivered through the planned strengthening of Children’s Trust arrangements – requiring all partners to step up their contributions.
“Local government’s track record as the fastest-improving part of the public sector demonstrates that improvements need to be sector-led,” the association added. “Top-down ‘blanket approaches’ cannot deliver the local knowledge that authorities and their partners can, and is unnecessary centralisation.”
Under the new legislation, councils will be legally required to gather parents' views on the school provision available in their area and to publish a local plan for improvement if a high proportion of parents express dissatisfaction. The Bill will also allow magistrates to take compliance with home/school agreements into account in cases where a parenting order is being considered.
But according to the LGiU, the “continual fiddling” with the framework of education has reached the point where it may reduce the ability of local authorities to plan, develop and improve services.
Crime and Security Bill
The Crime and Security Bill aims to set a fair set of rules for tackling anti-social behaviour and introduces new powers to deal with domestic violence. According to the LGiU, this is a “grab bag” bill, with assorted measures for police, prisons and local authorities. The unit has noted some measures are familiar from previous green papers, such as the reductions in bureaucracy for police stop and search.
The main concern for local authorities will be changes to the ASBO regime. Under the proposed legislation, families will be made to take responsibility for their children’s anti-social behaviour, with the introduction of mandatory assessments of parenting needs whenever a 10-15 year old is being considered for an ASBO. If a young person breaches their ASBO then parenting orders would be imposed.
Bill Pitt, director of consultancy ASB Action, told Inside Housing he thought the orders might encourage courts that had been reluctant to use ASBOs or injunctions in domestic violence cases to take action to protect victims.
But according to the LGiU, since inception, the use of ASBOs has been divisive, especially with respect to troubled young people, often with mental health needs, ADHD or learning disabilities. “Conversely, many communities have welcomed ASBOs as one of few tools available to deal with behaviour which significantly reduces the quality of life for others,” it said.
What is problematic with the new measure, the unit claimed, is that it reduces local flexibility to use parenting orders “intelligently”. “The use of parenting orders is already a tool available to local partnerships – the aim should be to improve parenting earlier on – not to wait until behaviour has become so problematic that an ASBO is the only resort,” the LGiU added.
The LGA has suggested prevention and early intervention are the right ways to address youth crime, including children engaged in anti-social behaviour. “Councils and local partners should be allowed to work together to determine the right course of action for their circumstances, and government must ensure these proposals fit in with wider preventative initiatives at a local level,” it suggested.
Flood and Water Management Bill
The Bill intends to provide better protection for people, home and businesses from the risk of extreme weather as a result of climate change, such as heavier rain and increased risk of drought. Local authorities would have responsibility for surface water flooding for the first time. The Bill also gives local people a stronger voice to help shape local flood risk management strategies.
The LGiU has welcomed the legislation, but is concerned about the “clear shortfall” in funding for local councils to implement the Bill, given their significant additional responsibilities. “There also needs to be more clarity on the powers for local authorities to bring together the multi-agency partnership as envisaged in the Bill,” it added.
The LGA has criticised the Bill’s proposal to force councils to set up an approval process for sustainable drainage systems for new developments, in order to help prevent surface run-off overloading the sewer system.
“We would strongly resist adding unnecessary bureaucracy to the planning processes by forcing county councils to set up an approval process for SUDS,” the LGA said. “Planning authorities are more than capable of making planning decisions without this added, unnecessary burden.”
According to the association, councils will not save money in the future if there areas are better protected, as councils do not have specific budgets for clearing up after floods and so cannot convert any current funds into future “savings”. “Councils need the funds to support these additional burdens,” it added.
Council bosses have also warned there is not enough cash. According to The Argus, council leaders in Sussex fear putting local authorities in charge of managing the risk of flooding will leave taxpayers with “massive bills”.
Gloucestershire County Council's cabinet member for community safety, Will Windsor-Clive, meanwhile told the Gloucester Citizen: “We need a proper overarching act, that sorts out exactly who is responsible for what and doesn't dump the burden of paying for flood defences on local councils.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has released a factsheet announcing its commitment to funding new burdens on local authorities resulting from the new Bill, and said it will monitor the situation as implementation proceeds.
Equality Bill
The Bill seeks to harmonise and in some cases extend existing discrimination law, addressing the impact of recent case law that is generally seen as having weakened discrimination protection.
Providing powers to extend age discrimination protection outside the workplace, the Bill prohibits ‘unjustifiable’ age discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services and the exercise of public functions, including adult social care. The Bill also introduces legislation requiring that employers review gender pay differences within their organisations and publish the results.
The new Bill imposes a new duty on local authorities to consider how their strategic decisions might help to reduce inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage. Local authorities should also be aware that the proposed legislation provides discrimination protection in the terms of membership and benefits for private clubs and associations and sets out protection against discrimination by association, for example in relation to a mother who cares for her disabled child. It also extends protection from discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment to school pupils.
In order to promote equality in public policy and decision-making, the Bill also creates a unified public sector duty, by extending existing provisions to the protected characteristics of sexual orientation, age and religion or belief.
Although the intentions behind the Bill have been welcomed, commentators have warned the practical implications could burden employers with costly red tape, which could be hugely damaging for the economy and society in general.
“The Equality Bill proposals on reporting gender pay differences should not clog up companies with added bureaucracy when they are trying to re-staff as we pull out of recession,” the chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, Kevin Green, told the Daily Mail.
The LGA has warned against imposing a “prescriptive model” and “onerous requirements” on councils with respect to pay transparency. Instead, the LGA has suggested councils should be able to respond to local priorities and publish equalities data as a matter of good practice, in a way that is appropriate to their area.
Child Poverty Bill
Carried over from the previous session, the Child Poverty Bill sets targets relating to the eradication of child poverty into law. Setting out a national and local accountability framework to deliver this goal, the Bill also sets out how new duties will apply to councils and local partners.
The LGA acknowledged that councils have a leading role to play in tackling child poverty. “Councils are particularly focused on the need to respond to the recession and the need to ensure the wellbeing of children,” the association said. However, it stressed that action on child poverty cannot be addressed unless public and third sector bodies and employers act together.
Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill
Introduced last year, the Bill seeks to allow the suspension, resignation, and expulsion of members of the House of Lords. It also introduces a raft of provisions relating to statutory management of the civil service, new parliamentary processes for the ratification of treaties and reducing the Lord Chancellor's role. The Bill also makes various provisions relating to judicial office holders, including the removal of the Prime Minister’s role in the process of appointing Supreme Court judges.
The LGiU has expressed concern that the government is missing an opportunity to demonstrate “real commitment” to localism and inject local government expertise into the legislative process, by giving councillors a strong role in the reformed second chamber. “This would help strengthen the Lords, add accountability through politicians who are elected by local communities, and create a localising force in Parliament,” the LGiU said.
Are the measures enough?
Despite the range of proposals highlighted in the Queen’s Speech, the LGiU has said the proposed legislative programme represents another “missed opportunity” to firmly embed localism into government policy. “The problem is that many of the solutions proposed in these Bills are costly to implement at a time when public sector funding must be constrained and they are more centralist than localist.”
According to the unit, these difficult times will require Whitehall to allow councils the maximum flexibility to deliver services at the best possible value for money. “Today’s announcements would benefit from the realisation in Whitehall that communities get better services if the government spent less time fiddling with the framework,” it concluded. “Councils are already making tough decisions on spending so we need to hear how these ambitious proposals sit against the legislative pledge to halve the deficit in 4 years.”
- Details
The government’s legislative programme promises some major changes affecting local authorities. Azadeh Khalilizadeh reports on the proposals and the reaction to them.
Local authorities can expect a significant change to their legal obligations after the Queen’s Speech placed community issues high on the legislative agenda.
Delivered on 18 November 2009, the proposed legislative programme is a symbolic call for change to central Whitehall departments, in order to create “sustained growth” and a “fair and prosperous economy for families and business”.
Should each of the 13 bills and two draft bills make their way through Parliament, there is potential to see major reforms across a wide range of sectors. But local authority bodies highlight a pressing concern that councils’ budget constraints may prevent these legislative dreams becoming a practical reality.
Key bills affecting local government include:
- Personal Care at Home Bill
- Children, Schools and Families Bill
- Crime and Security Bill
- Flood and Water Management Bill
Other bills affecting local government include:
- Equality Bill
- Child Poverty Bill
- Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill
Other bills include:
- Digital Economy Bill
- Bribery Bill
- Cluster Munitions Prohibitions Bill
- Financial Services Bill
- Fiscal Responsibility Bill
- Energy Bill
- Draft International Development Spending Bill
- Draft House of Lords Reform Bill
Personal Care at Home Bill
Described as the first step towards setting up a new National Care Service, this Bill seeks to enable free care to be provided at home for up to 280,000 people with complex medical conditions. A further 130,000 people will get the right to aid that will enable them to live in their homes for longer. The £670m predicted costs will largely be met in cuts from central Whitehall departments.
Although local authority and community groups have supported the Bill in principle, there is widespread concern over the funding rationale behind the legislative framework.
The Local Government Association (LGA) has questioned the government’s expectations of councils finding an additional £250 million every year from “efficiency savings”. According to the LGA, if the government cannot lift existing burdens, it is difficult to see how local government could meet the cost of “another new burden”. “There needs to be absolute clarity as to what is included in personal care and in what form it will be provided,” it added.
The Local Government Information Unit (LGiU) also expressed concern over the government’s suggestion that half the funding would come from the Department of Health and half from local government. “It would be counter-productive if councils had to find their half from social care budgets – this has to be properly funded, or those who are not eligible for non means-tested support may find themselves in a worse position,” the unit claimed.
Birmingham City Council for instance, has confirmed it did not know how much it would need to pay and is still waiting for the government to explain exactly who would be eligible for free care, The Birmingham Post has reported. Without knowing that, it could not calculate the cost.
Jane Ashcroft, chairman of the English Community Care Association, told ePolitix.com the proposals could lead to “an even greater drain on public resources without having a tangible impact on the quality of life of our older people”.
Speaking to the Daily Telegraph, Lord Lipsey, a former member of the Royal Commission on Long-Term Care, described the free care guarantee as “irresponsible” and unaffordable, while Lord Warner, a former health minister, said the Bill was “totally misjudged”.
Su Sayer, chief executive of charity group United Response, welcomed plans to provide free personal care at home, but highlighted the importance of a wider need for reform. “It is important that we don't lose sight of the need to overhaul the entire system to give greater priority to prevention and early intervention for working age disabled adults as well as older people, and to enabling people to become active citizens,” she told ePolitix.com.
Children, Schools and Families Bill
The Bill seeks to demonstrate the government’s commitment to strengthening the quality of education for children and a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach to anti-social behaviour.
The flagship part of the proposed legislation is the creation of a statutory “pupil and parent guarantee”. Pupil guarantees include promises to provide one-on-one English and maths tuition for those falling behind, personal tutors for secondary students, support for the gifted and talented and specialist help with health and social problems.
Parent guarantees include promises to provide clear information about pupils' performance, parent support advisers, annual surveys of parents' views, more powers of intervention in struggling schools and report cards to grade schools.
If parents and students are unhappy with a school’s delivery against the guarantee, they will have an ultimate right of appeal to the Local Government Ombudsman. This means parents can complain if they are not happy with the curriculum or even choice of school.
According to the LGiU, while giving new rights to children and their parents to receive good education is great in theory, local authorities could face a fresh wave of legal challenges.
“The pupil guarantee could be a "whingers charter" as parents repeatedly use it as a means of driving up their view of school standards, which may not do anything of the sort as the school becomes defensive to such complaints,” it said. This reiterated sentiments expressed in The Daily Telegraph. “Many of the issues relating to quality in education can only be assessed through ‘professional’ judgement and are not easily subjected to rigour of guarantees.”
The LGA similarly called for the pupil and parent guarantees to lead to true engagement with parents and pupils, rather than creating further bureaucracy for local authorities.
The association was also concerned about the proposed new powers for the Secretary of State to direct councils to issue improvement notices for failing schools. “Local authorities, working with their partners, are best placed to make these judgements and act accordingly depending on the circumstances within a particular area,” it argued. “We would like assurances that these powers will only be used as a last resort.”
Reservations were also expressed about the proposed powers for the Secretary of State to intervene in youth offending teams. According to the LGA, improvements to these teams would be better delivered through the planned strengthening of Children’s Trust arrangements – requiring all partners to step up their contributions.
“Local government’s track record as the fastest-improving part of the public sector demonstrates that improvements need to be sector-led,” the association added. “Top-down ‘blanket approaches’ cannot deliver the local knowledge that authorities and their partners can, and is unnecessary centralisation.”
Under the new legislation, councils will be legally required to gather parents' views on the school provision available in their area and to publish a local plan for improvement if a high proportion of parents express dissatisfaction. The Bill will also allow magistrates to take compliance with home/school agreements into account in cases where a parenting order is being considered.
But according to the LGiU, the “continual fiddling” with the framework of education has reached the point where it may reduce the ability of local authorities to plan, develop and improve services.
Crime and Security Bill
The Crime and Security Bill aims to set a fair set of rules for tackling anti-social behaviour and introduces new powers to deal with domestic violence. According to the LGiU, this is a “grab bag” bill, with assorted measures for police, prisons and local authorities. The unit has noted some measures are familiar from previous green papers, such as the reductions in bureaucracy for police stop and search.
The main concern for local authorities will be changes to the ASBO regime. Under the proposed legislation, families will be made to take responsibility for their children’s anti-social behaviour, with the introduction of mandatory assessments of parenting needs whenever a 10-15 year old is being considered for an ASBO. If a young person breaches their ASBO then parenting orders would be imposed.
Bill Pitt, director of consultancy ASB Action, told Inside Housing he thought the orders might encourage courts that had been reluctant to use ASBOs or injunctions in domestic violence cases to take action to protect victims.
But according to the LGiU, since inception, the use of ASBOs has been divisive, especially with respect to troubled young people, often with mental health needs, ADHD or learning disabilities. “Conversely, many communities have welcomed ASBOs as one of few tools available to deal with behaviour which significantly reduces the quality of life for others,” it said.
What is problematic with the new measure, the unit claimed, is that it reduces local flexibility to use parenting orders “intelligently”. “The use of parenting orders is already a tool available to local partnerships – the aim should be to improve parenting earlier on – not to wait until behaviour has become so problematic that an ASBO is the only resort,” the LGiU added.
The LGA has suggested prevention and early intervention are the right ways to address youth crime, including children engaged in anti-social behaviour. “Councils and local partners should be allowed to work together to determine the right course of action for their circumstances, and government must ensure these proposals fit in with wider preventative initiatives at a local level,” it suggested.
Flood and Water Management Bill
The Bill intends to provide better protection for people, home and businesses from the risk of extreme weather as a result of climate change, such as heavier rain and increased risk of drought. Local authorities would have responsibility for surface water flooding for the first time. The Bill also gives local people a stronger voice to help shape local flood risk management strategies.
The LGiU has welcomed the legislation, but is concerned about the “clear shortfall” in funding for local councils to implement the Bill, given their significant additional responsibilities. “There also needs to be more clarity on the powers for local authorities to bring together the multi-agency partnership as envisaged in the Bill,” it added.
The LGA has criticised the Bill’s proposal to force councils to set up an approval process for sustainable drainage systems for new developments, in order to help prevent surface run-off overloading the sewer system.
“We would strongly resist adding unnecessary bureaucracy to the planning processes by forcing county councils to set up an approval process for SUDS,” the LGA said. “Planning authorities are more than capable of making planning decisions without this added, unnecessary burden.”
According to the association, councils will not save money in the future if there areas are better protected, as councils do not have specific budgets for clearing up after floods and so cannot convert any current funds into future “savings”. “Councils need the funds to support these additional burdens,” it added.
Council bosses have also warned there is not enough cash. According to The Argus, council leaders in Sussex fear putting local authorities in charge of managing the risk of flooding will leave taxpayers with “massive bills”.
Gloucestershire County Council's cabinet member for community safety, Will Windsor-Clive, meanwhile told the Gloucester Citizen: “We need a proper overarching act, that sorts out exactly who is responsible for what and doesn't dump the burden of paying for flood defences on local councils.”
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs has released a factsheet announcing its commitment to funding new burdens on local authorities resulting from the new Bill, and said it will monitor the situation as implementation proceeds.
Equality Bill
The Bill seeks to harmonise and in some cases extend existing discrimination law, addressing the impact of recent case law that is generally seen as having weakened discrimination protection.
Providing powers to extend age discrimination protection outside the workplace, the Bill prohibits ‘unjustifiable’ age discrimination in the provision of goods, facilities and services and the exercise of public functions, including adult social care. The Bill also introduces legislation requiring that employers review gender pay differences within their organisations and publish the results.
The new Bill imposes a new duty on local authorities to consider how their strategic decisions might help to reduce inequalities associated with socio-economic disadvantage. Local authorities should also be aware that the proposed legislation provides discrimination protection in the terms of membership and benefits for private clubs and associations and sets out protection against discrimination by association, for example in relation to a mother who cares for her disabled child. It also extends protection from discrimination on the grounds of gender reassignment to school pupils.
In order to promote equality in public policy and decision-making, the Bill also creates a unified public sector duty, by extending existing provisions to the protected characteristics of sexual orientation, age and religion or belief.
Although the intentions behind the Bill have been welcomed, commentators have warned the practical implications could burden employers with costly red tape, which could be hugely damaging for the economy and society in general.
“The Equality Bill proposals on reporting gender pay differences should not clog up companies with added bureaucracy when they are trying to re-staff as we pull out of recession,” the chief executive of the Recruitment and Employment Confederation, Kevin Green, told the Daily Mail.
The LGA has warned against imposing a “prescriptive model” and “onerous requirements” on councils with respect to pay transparency. Instead, the LGA has suggested councils should be able to respond to local priorities and publish equalities data as a matter of good practice, in a way that is appropriate to their area.
Child Poverty Bill
Carried over from the previous session, the Child Poverty Bill sets targets relating to the eradication of child poverty into law. Setting out a national and local accountability framework to deliver this goal, the Bill also sets out how new duties will apply to councils and local partners.
The LGA acknowledged that councils have a leading role to play in tackling child poverty. “Councils are particularly focused on the need to respond to the recession and the need to ensure the wellbeing of children,” the association said. However, it stressed that action on child poverty cannot be addressed unless public and third sector bodies and employers act together.
Constitutional Reform and Governance Bill
Introduced last year, the Bill seeks to allow the suspension, resignation, and expulsion of members of the House of Lords. It also introduces a raft of provisions relating to statutory management of the civil service, new parliamentary processes for the ratification of treaties and reducing the Lord Chancellor's role. The Bill also makes various provisions relating to judicial office holders, including the removal of the Prime Minister’s role in the process of appointing Supreme Court judges.
The LGiU has expressed concern that the government is missing an opportunity to demonstrate “real commitment” to localism and inject local government expertise into the legislative process, by giving councillors a strong role in the reformed second chamber. “This would help strengthen the Lords, add accountability through politicians who are elected by local communities, and create a localising force in Parliament,” the LGiU said.
Are the measures enough?
Despite the range of proposals highlighted in the Queen’s Speech, the LGiU has said the proposed legislative programme represents another “missed opportunity” to firmly embed localism into government policy. “The problem is that many of the solutions proposed in these Bills are costly to implement at a time when public sector funding must be constrained and they are more centralist than localist.”
According to the unit, these difficult times will require Whitehall to allow councils the maximum flexibility to deliver services at the best possible value for money. “Today’s announcements would benefit from the realisation in Whitehall that communities get better services if the government spent less time fiddling with the framework,” it concluded. “Councils are already making tough decisions on spending so we need to hear how these ambitious proposals sit against the legislative pledge to halve the deficit in 4 years.”
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