Category Archives: Local government

Mark Pack

Sutton leader Sean Brennan retiring as leader next month

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th April 2012 - 8:55 am

Sutton Liberal Democrats have one of most impressive records of success anywhere in the UK – not only at winning and keeping control of Sutton Council (25th anniversary celebrated last year), not only at winning Parliamentary elections (two MPs in the borough, both Liberal Democrat) but also at pioneering many excellent environmental policies. Oh, and darn fine organisers of raffles too.

For the last decade Sean Brennan has been Leader of the Council, but this week he has announced that he will be standing down:

Coun Brennan, a former teacher first elected as a Sutton ward councillor in 1986

…

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Andrew Stunell MP

Andrew Stunell MP writes… Launching the Liberal Democrats’ local election campaign

By Andrew Stunell MP | Tue 3rd April 2012 - 4:18 pm

Local Election Day is now exactly a month away for most of Metropolitan England as well as across the whole of Scotland and Wales. Nick Clegg was in my own area of Stockport earlier today to officially launch the Liberal Democrat local election campaign, visiting a local business and speaking with councillors, business owners and local people.

I’ve no doubt that many of you have been out on the doorstep over the last few months, talking to people and showing them what we are achieving both nationally and locally.

You will already have your big messages in place. Number one has got …

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Mark Pack

I don’t want you to read 160 tips for local councillors and campaigners

By Mark Pack | Thu 8th March 2012 - 10:25 am

ALDC has just published a new collection I’ve edited: Top Tips for Local Campaigners, packed with 160 tips.

Here is how my introduction starts:

I don’t want you to read this book.

That may seem an odd request for an editor to make at the start of a book. But if you just sit down, read it, think a quick thought afterwards about what you made of it and then leave it at that, the book will have been a failure.

This is not a book to sit and

…

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Mark Pack

Local council by-elections: the recovery continues, again

By Mark Pack | Wed 7th March 2012 - 10:55 am

Two months on, it’s time to update my post about the trends in local government by-elections.

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 …

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Annette Brooke MP

The Local Government Slot: Fighting for a Better Deal for Park Home Owners

By Annette Brooke MP | Thu 1st March 2012 - 3:23 pm

We have recently seen a lot of activity in Parliament on the issue of park homes and the problems park home owners are facing across the country.

To some extent 2011 saw familiar frustrations and delays that have, unfortunately, often characterised attempts to solve park homes problems in the past.

However 2011 also saw headway being made. The tireless efforts of campaigners and activists have built real momentum and an appetite for change amongst my colleagues in Parliament. I firmly believe this is filtering through and that the Government will be drawn to action soon.

Events such as the Park Homes Justice Campaign’s demonstration in October have been hugely successful in raising awareness. As part of this campaign Downing Street was presented with new evidence showing that as many as 23,473 homes from across the UK could be living under the regime of an unscrupulous park owner. The fantastic work of this campaign, and of its organiser Sonia McColl, has had a real impact over these last months. Also of real importance has been the large number of letters written to MPs. I can only encourage this – the more letters that are written, the more MPs will push for change and the more chance we have of succeeding.

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Richard Kemp

The Local Government slot: winning with localism

By Richard Kemp | Tue 28th February 2012 - 2:52 pm

It’s very possible to get a bit glum at the moment isn’t it? All the talk is about cuts and the health service reforms with our opponents blithely ignoring the facts that they were a principal cause of the deficits and that they would have had to deal with the growing problems of the NHS.

So when I am down a bit I think of the many good things that have been done by this government and work out how I can take full advantage of them both politically and for my community.

Chief amongst these is the continued drive for localism. …

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Chris White

Opinion: time to talk about things that don’t matter

By Chris White | Tue 14th February 2012 - 2:53 pm

Now, before I start, let me be clear: I am not an atheist and in fact find atheism’s certainties as puzzling as those of fundamentalists – the latter are certain that God exists and the former that he does not. Quite how, after centuries of Enlightenment philosophy, there are adherents to either point of view is beyond me.

Anyway: I go to Church, have doubts, fall far short of my ideals. Sorry.

Last week there was a High Court judgment against Bideford Town Council. In a nutshell it said that prayers should not form part of a council meeting.

I belong to two …

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Chris White

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

By Chris White | Fri 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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Mark Pack

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

By Mark Pack | Wed 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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Mark Pack

How do you get people to trust councils?

By Mark Pack | Fri 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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Sean Davey

Vested interests on Cameron’s doorstep

By Sean Davey | Wed 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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Chris White

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

By Chris White | Sun 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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Mark Pack

Local council by-elections: the recovery continues

By Mark Pack | Fri 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 – taken in two month averages.

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Paula Keaveney

Liverpool’s listening exercise and the Green Agenda

By Paula Keaveney | Tue 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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Mark Pack

Free casework software coming for ALDC members

By Mark Pack | Mon 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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Mark Pack

Bromley Council pulls a controversial novelty with a lollipop lady petition

By Mark Pack | Wed 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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Andrew Stunell MP

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

By Andrew Stunell MP | Tue 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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Mike Tuffrey

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

By Mike Tuffrey | Fri 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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The Voice

Top Cornwall Conservative councillor defects to Lib Dems

By The Voice | Sat 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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Mark Pack

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

By Mark Pack | Fri 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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Mark Pack

Hundreds of tales of heartbreak and two numbers

By Mark Pack | Tue 17th May 2011 - 8:53 am

The story of May’s election results is not one that can simply be told with numbers. There are too many tales of personal effort and loss for statistics to do justice to the crushing disappointment suffered by many who had worked hard for so long in hundreds of communities across the country.

Nor do statistics do justice to the brilliant resilience in a precious few places – those with amazing gains such as in the Cotswolds and those largely unsung heroes in areas such as Eastleigh and Three Rivers who have got on with running councils and winning elections year after …

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Mark Pack

Learning the lessons from last week #4: The party’s local government base matters

By Mark Pack | Thu 12th May 2011 - 7:21 am

Broadly speaking, the party’s local government base is now back to where it was in 1993. As I put it:

For those who joined the Liberal Democrats in the last 18 months, and may not yet even have been in school in 1993, that may well seem a long time away and a big step back; for those who have seen the party’s ups and downs in the ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and ’00s, 1993 looks rather better – and nothing like as bad as the dog days of having a party leader on trial for conspiracy to murder (late 1970s) or

…

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Stephen Tall

Mike Tuffrey the choice of members for Lib Dem London mayoral candidate: LDV survey

By Stephen Tall | Sat 7th May 2011 - 11:08 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Over 500 party members have responded, and we’re currently publishing the full results.

Tuffrey set to beat Opik for London mayoral nomination

LDV asked: It’s thought that there are two names who may stand for the London mayoralty as the Lib Dem candidate in 2012: Lembit Opik and Mike Tuffrey. Who do you think you are most likely to vote for?

    10% – Lembit Opik
    56% – Mike Tuffrey
    18% – I do not

…

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Stephen Tall

Ouch! Lib Dems suffer first anti-government backlash in 80 years

By Stephen Tall | Fri 6th May 2011 - 8:50 am

The words ‘Good morning’ may seem overly ironic if you’re a Lib dem waking up this morning to the news of the party’s pretty awful 2011 election results. Here’s a quick round-up for those who’ve avoided the media so far today…

Scotland: a huge night for the SNP, with the Lib Dems and Labour both suffering a rout at the hands of the nationalists. With 59 of 73 results declared, the Lib Dems have just four seats, a loss of seven. It sounds like the party will end up with six MSPs, down from 16.

Wales: a good night for Labour, who …

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The Voice

The LDV election results open thread

By The Voice | Thu 5th May 2011 - 10:20 pm

Here are the starting positions (as Stephen’s already described):

Scotland: the party is defending 16 seats (11 constituency MSPs, and five regional list MSPs), which was a drop of one compared to 2003. There are 129 contested seats for the Scottish Parliament.

Wales: the party is defending six seats (3 constituency AMs, and three regional list AMs), which was the same as in 2003. There are 60 contested seats for the Welsh assembly.

In the English local elections:

1,876 of the 3,948 Liberal Democrat councillors (48%) have been defending their seats today in –

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Stephen Tall

What will happen in today’s elections? Your thoughts, please…

By Stephen Tall | Thu 5th May 2011 - 7:15 pm

Today, in case you hadn’t noticed, is election day. There are national elections in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, and local elections for 279 councils across England. And of course there’s the referendum to determine the voting system used for elections to Westminster.

Four years ago, in 2007, the Liberal Democrats were a party of opposition. Today, we’re in a Coalition government. Let’s recap the starting positions…

Scotland: the party is defending 16 seats (11 constituency MSPs, and five regional list MSPs), which was a drop of one compared to 2003. There are 129 contested seats for the Scottish parliament.

Wales: the party …

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Also posted in Scotland and Wales | 12 Comments
Stephen Tall

I may not know much about semi-naked fetish art-work, but I know what I like in a local councillor

By Stephen Tall | Fri 22nd April 2011 - 4:27 pm

‘Lib Dem candidate posts semi-naked fetish photos online’ shouts the local newspaper headline. I suspect it will be one of the more clicked-through articles.

There’s a kind of doomed inevitability to this story, which we’ve seen over the years with candidates from all parties… New person stands for council, with all the right qualifications — community-spirited, motivated, wanting to succeed — except one: they’re not safe.

They have an ‘alternative’ background. You may not find them propping up a saloon bar, or biding their time quietly waiting to become mayor, or ‘turning native’ the moment they’re elected… or any …

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Chris White

Chris White writes: “We can be like Belgium!”

By Chris White | Fri 15th April 2011 - 12:06 pm

‘Will you be supporting the Liberal Democrat Candidate?’ I asked.

‘No.’

‘Any particular reason?’ I continued, hoping to get a clue as to his particular allegiance.

‘You sold out. I despise the Conservatives.’

‘What choice did we have? We had to have a Government.’

‘Why?’ he retorted. ‘Belgium doesn’t and they do all right.’

Belgium? Is this the best Labour can come up with?

I could have given him a tedious lecture about a country which has no fewer than seven parliaments (not including the European Parliament) and the nuances between the parliament of Wallonia and the parliament dealing with the francophone linguistic community. But I was …

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Rob Blackie

Opinion: How are councils making savings?

By Rob Blackie | Tue 12th April 2011 - 11:57 am

Getting a picture on what’s happening across the country on council spending is difficult. We all hear stories, whether it’s the a plan to close a library or a conversation I had a few weeks ago with a friend who works in Brighton, who told me that the council had avoided almost all frontline cuts to services through efficiency savings.

Last week some surprising figures have appeared in an overlooked survey by the Financial Times. They show that at least half of the spending cuts that councils are making will have no impact at all on frontline services.

The Financial …

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Daisy Benson

Opinion: The Campaign for Reading

By Daisy Benson | Thu 7th April 2011 - 5:55 pm

In Reading, with council elections taking place most years we are used to campaigning all year round.

But this year is different.

For the first time we are defending our record in power at local (and national) level.

We are no longer in our comfort zone but it is exciting to be able to deliver for residents on the really key issues such as housing and social mobility where Labour failed.

And as Andrew Stunell MP, Minister for Local Government observed when he came to visit us last week it is a record of …

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