Category Archives: Local government

Chris White writes: The next local elections after May this year will be in November.

By Chris White | Published 3rd February 2012 - 4:35 pm

It is likely that a number of our cities will, by Government diktat, be holding referendums in May as to whether to move to a mayoral system. Some of these will give the go-ahead and Liverpool is anyway likely to jump straight to a mayoral system by use of a council resolution. The mayoral contests will be on the same day as those for Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs).

There are still some who, in relation to PCCs, are fondly imagining that Liberal Democrat candidates won’t be needed. This is despite the fact that it abundantly clear that the Conservative and …

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Haringey Liberal Democrats show two ways to make use of new legal powers

By Mark Pack | Published 1st February 2012 - 11:50 am

I am currently putting together a new book for ALDC which has at its heart ways that councillors and local campaigners can make use of the new legal powers heading their way under the Localism Act and other devolving legislation. Many of the powers are very effective for getting local issues sorted and local communities improved, but will sit on the shelf achieving nothing if active campaigners do not pick them up and put them to use.

It is good to see that Haringey Liberal Democrats are already well ahead of me putting into practice two of the ideas which the book will include.

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How do you get people to trust councils?

By Mark Pack | Published 27th January 2012 - 10:25 am

With increasing numbers of people’s minds turning towards May’s elections, now is a good time to dust off and update a post from 2008 about how people view their council…

Improving trust in local government is important, and can’t be done just by focusing on improving services: that’s the verdict of State of trust: How to build better relationships between councils and the public, a piece of research from the think-tank Demos and IDeA (the local government Improvement & Development Agency), published in 2008.

The report sees trust as underpinning a wide range of objectives:

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Vested interests on Cameron’s doorstep

By Sean Davey | Published 18th January 2012 - 8:55 am

Private Eye has welcomed a newcomer to its Rotten Boroughs column in its past 26 issues: Cotswold District Council.

Here in the idyllic Cotswold constituency, neighbouring  David Cameron’s Witney, there has been massive fraud, resulting, so far, in the prosecution and  sentencing of former Cotswold Water Park Society CEO Dennis Grant, who embezzled £700,000 of the charity’s funds. Now an independent, external police force has been brought in by the County Council to investigate further allegations.

One of the key campaigners leading the way in exposing these dealings is Liberal Democrat Councillor Esmond Jenkins. Elected to represent the Water Park ward …

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Opinion: Ever greater centralisation is not the answer for failing schools

By Chris White | Published 1st January 2012 - 9:50 am

“Troubleshooters are needed to spot failing academy schools around the country and sack incompetent headteachers, the new chief education inspector has said.” So reported the Daily Telegraph on 28 December. The article continued:

Sir Michael Wilshaw said ministers must set up regional early warning systems because by the time his Ofsted inspectors discover an institution is in trouble, it is too late.

As more and more secondary schools gain independence from town halls and become academies, it will also be difficult for the Department of Education to focus on improving individual schools.

Sir Michael said that to maintain standards, dozens of local commissioners

…

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Local council by-elections: the recovery continues

By Mark Pack | Published 30th December 2011 - 8:50 am

Week by week local by-election results can fluctuate greatly as the luck of the draw over which seats are up adds to the variations in local circumstances to produce a large spread of results. However, aggregated over longer periods the pattern of local by-elections does say something about the state of the parties, which is why I’ve been looking at the trend in Liberal Democrat performances since May 2011.

This following graphs show the change in the Liberal Democrat vote share in by-elections, measured since the seat was previously contested and – to even out for those factors – take in two month averages.

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Liverpool’s listening exercise and the Green Agenda

By Paula Keaveney | Published 25th October 2011 - 10:25 am

Liverpool Liberal Democrats have just kicked off the next stage in our work toward regaining power in Liverpool.

We don’t run the council, in fact we are some way off running the council. But we know that the ruling Labour administration has no real vision, and as part of our way back towards running the City we wanted to develop and articulate one.

So we have published a document and started a “listening exercise”. Headlines include our aspirations for Liverpool to be the Green Capital of Europe and for us to take real advantage of the opportunities in the Localism Bill. You can find the …

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Free casework software coming for ALDC members

By Mark Pack | Published 24th October 2011 - 8:53 am

A great new benefit is on the way for members of ALDC, the Liberal Democrat body for councillors and campaigners – access to the CONNECT database’s casework system.

Starting early in 2012, all ALDC members will get access to CONNECT’s casework facilities for free (or rather, for no extra charge beyond their ALDC membership subscription). It is a logical extension of ALDC’s similar free provision of its MyCouncillor blogging system and will make a good system available to thousands of councillors.

One of the nice touches of …

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Bromley Council pulls a controversial novelty with a lollipop lady petition

By Mark Pack | Published 12th October 2011 - 1:50 pm

Tsk, tsk, Bromley Conservatives.

There is a council by-election campaign underway in Shortlands ward, Bromley where the excellent Anuja Prashar is the Liberal Democrat candidate. (So excellent, I’ll forgive her for organising a raffle once that broke all my Lib Dem raffle rules.) She has been campaigning against council plans to axe the lollipop ladies at two local schools and, as part of that, presented a petition signed by 283 residents to the council.

And then things started being done differently…

For the first time, Bromley Council decided to respond personally and directly to all the signatories on a petition, posting out …

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“Toffs legislating for toffs” – how Cotswold Conservatives fear they are viewed

By Mark Pack | Published 6th October 2011 - 8:43 pm

The Cotswolds were the scene for some of the best Liberal Democrat and worst Conservative local election results in May, with the Tories losing 10 seats. A local newspaper has got hold of an internal Conservative post-mortem:

The document reveals concerns within Cotswold Conservatives that the organisation is seen by voters as: “toffs legislating for toffs.”…

Concerns were also raised about the impact of the cabinet’s links to Cotswold Media, which is run by cabinet leader Cllr Lynden Stowe (Campden-Vale ward) and also employs Cllrs David Fowles (Hampton ward) and Susan Jepson (Campden-Vale ward).

You can read the full story about the …

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Kensington & Chelsea spends £4,100 on sending paperwork to councillor’s holiday home

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd October 2011 - 9:18 pm

Out campaigning in the Norland ward by-election this evening (including an, er…, interesting delivery round), I caught up on one of the many ways that Kensington & Chelsea Council has been rather profligate with money when it comes to looking after senior council staff or Conservative councillors.

It turns out that Kensington & Chelsea has been spending thousands of pounds on couriering council paperwork to a Conservative Councillor Daniel Moylan’s holiday home … in Thailand. The council’s argument is that this is a necessary action as he has to keep up with the paperwork and it includes large maps which …

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Andrew Stunell MP writes: Re-localisation of business rates will give councils real financial freedom

By Andrew Stunell MP | Published 19th July 2011 - 2:21 pm

Yesterday’s announcement of our plan to re-localise business rates is one of the most significant reforms announced by the Coalition so far. Ok, not as newsworthy as the phone hacking scandal, but it’s big news for local democracy nonetheless. It marks another fundamental shift from central control to local responsibility.

Under the current local government funding system, Whitehall dishes out grant allocations to councils each year based on an incomprehensible formula that is far too complex and lacking in transparency. Most of this money is funded by the business rates, collected locally, but funnelled centrally, and then reallocated. Councils are left at the whim of the formula-setter in Whitehall, and there is no incentive to promote business growth either. All you get are the extra HGVs, but none of the rates income! All this is about to change.

So what are the main things that Liberal Democrats need to know?

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Opinion: The postcode lottery – why freedom to be different is a good thing

By Mike Tuffrey AM | Published 24th June 2011 - 10:23 am

Few things are more likely to generate a round of applause at a public meeting than condemning the so-called postcode lottery. And of course random unfairness in the quality of a service – the ‘lottery’ aspect – is a bad thing, especially if people are paying the same but getting worse outcomes.

But what about difference – where one part of the country or one neighbourhood does things differently compared to another? What if it’s not a lottery but a choice?

And if people have freedom to do things differently and better, can we accept the risk they’ll not succeed and things …

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Top Cornwall Conservative councillor defects to Lib Dems

By The Voice | Published 18th June 2011 - 4:25 pm

Jeremy Rowe’s blog has the news:

Jan Powell, the widely respected Chair of Cornwall Council’s Health Committee, has joined the Liberal Democrat Group at County Hall. This has been as a result of the continuing disintegration of the Tory-led administration at the Council and also the work the Lib Dems have been doing locally and nationally to protect the NHS from Andrew Lansley’s controversial ‘reforms’.

Jeremy reproduces Jan’s letter explaining her decision, which concludes:

There has to be openness and transparency in everything we do and consultation must mean exactly that. Over the last 12 months there has been a marked contrast

…

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Legal action may bar council leader from office – and raise questions about the Electoral Commission’s lack of action

By Mark Pack | Published 3rd June 2011 - 11:55 am

North West Leicestershire District Council leader Conservative Richard Blunt is facing High Court action from a defeated opponent over whether or not he was actually qualified to stand.

Blunt appears to have qualified to stand under the provision that he owned property in the area. However the wording of the law is unclear, talking about “occupying as owner” with the possible implication that therefore you also have to actually be living or otherwise have use of the property. In Blunt’s case, though, the property was rented out to others – leading the defeated independent candidate Colin Roberts to argue that …

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