In a Pickle

You may have noticed there's been an election. Unfortunately, the jury's still out on exactly what that means, and indeed exactly who's now in charge. Nonetheless, we bravely attempt to work out what Eric Pickles' appointment as communities and local government minister may mean for the sector in the coming months.

The appointment of Eric Pickles as new communities and local government minister may raise a few eyebrows in the sector, not least given his commitment when leader of Bradford Council to “wipe out municipal socialism forever.”

No small ambition for a man who has seemingly recovered admirably from a youth during which he claims to have been “massively inclined towards communism”. One quick invasion of Czechoslovakia later, and 1968 found Pickles joining the Conservative Party. His protest was seemingly not the quickest route to power. Vaclav Havel, for example, became increasingly politically active following the Prague Spring, and 25 years later he was president of the newly formed Czech Republic, having bravely resisted years of Soviet occupation to finally achieve independence. Pickles, meanwhile, has taken a further 17 years to attain a significant ministerial role, having bravely resisted years of an increasingly limping Labour Party to achieve a minority government propped up by the LibDems. Whether his own administration will follow Havel’s into a second term remains to be seen.

Still, his rise has been steady, having served a term early in his career as chairman of his local Young Conservatives and latterly risen to the heights of party chairman. Clearly Pickles has experience of local government, having spent three years as council leader in Bradford from 1988-1991, and is a long standing champion of reducing regional bureaucracy. He is also a long standing advocate of funding councils to build affordable housing – his efforts while in Bradford were held up as a national exemplar by the Tory administration of the day, and this is seemingly one area that the Town and Country Planning Association feels can benefit from Pickles’ input. Interim Chief Executive Kate Henderson said: “Eric Pickles has sound experience as former Shadow Communities Secretary and prior to that as Shadow Minister for Local Government. There is now a genuine opportunity to focus on the real priorities for the country - pressing climate change and housing need - these issues must take centre stage in CLG’s work.”

It will be interesting to see how his efforts in the field fare facing the slew of imminent cuts that authorities are nervously anticipating.

Pickles was appointed shadow CLG minister in 2007, and in 2008 he announced plans for a future Conservative administration to purge ‘town hall fat cats’. According to contemporary reports in The Times, under the plans "dozens of council chiefs who earn more than cabinet ministers would lose their jobs as clusters of councils merged their frontline services and backroom operations to provide better value for money." Interestingly, according to figures published in the Times report, of the eight highest paid chief executives at the time, six were running Conservative councils.

Panicking chief executives aside, the proposals could see a dramatic change to the way services are delivered locally, and if not managed properly an equally dramatic change to the quality of service received. Regional Development Associations are also to be scrapped as the Tories take the knives to what they see as unelected, unaccountable and expensive quangoes, to be replace by as yet fairly non-specific regional partnerships between business, local government and regeneration/development experts, along with regional plans like the East of England Plan.

In reality though, with the scale of cuts promised, even by the less cut-hungry LibDem partners in the coalition government, ‘guesswork’ would be at best an optimistic appraisal of attempts to predict the likely effect of Pickles and his new colleagues on the sector. The coalition has already promised "radical devolution of power and greater financial autonomy to local government and community groups,” and stated that “this will include a full review of local government finance.”
Beyond that, only time will tell.

Key Tory local government-related manifesto pledges at a glance (of course, all this is now subject to LibDem approval/alteration/dismissal):

1. replace … police authorities with a directly-elected individual who will set policing priorities for local communities… responsible for setting the budget and the strategy for local police forces
2. pilot…Prison and Rehabilitation Trusts so that just one organisation is responsible for helping to stop a criminal re-offending
3. apply… transparency principles to local government, with the threshold for publication of spending items and contracts set at £500, and for the publication of salaries the same as at the national level
4. give councillors the power to vote on large salary packages for unelected council officials.
5. A ‘community right to buy’ scheme will give local people the power to protect any community assets that are threatened with closure.
6. give people a ‘right to bid’ to run any community service instead of the state
7. give parents the power to save local schools threatened by closure, allowing communities the chance to take over and run good small schools;
8. GPs to be put in charge of commissioning local health services.
9. give local councils a ‘general power of competence’, so that they have explicit authority to do what is necessary to improve their communities;
10. end ring-fencing so that funding can be spent on local priorities;
11. freeze council tax for two years, in partnership with local councils.
12. scrap Labour’s plans for an expensive and intrusive council tax revaluation (NB: Labour’s manifesto rules out revaluation)
13. scrap the hundreds of process targets Labour have imposed on councils;
14. end the bureaucratic inspection regime that stops councils focusing on residents’ main concerns
15. scrapping Labour’s uncompleted plans to impose unwieldy and expensive unitary councils and to force the regionalisation of the fire service
16. end the ‘predetermination rules’ that prevent councillors speaking up about issues that they have campaigned on
17. encourage greater use of ward budgets for councillors
18. launch an annual Big Society Day to celebrate the work of neighbourhood groups and encourage more people to take part in social action
19. implement fully the Sustainable Communities Act, and reintroduce the Sustainable communities Act (Amendment) Bill as government legislation, to give people greater information on, and control over, what is being spent by each government agency in their area.
20. give councils and businesses the power to form their own business-led local enterprise partnerships instead of RDAs.
21. allow councils to keep above-average increases in business rate revenue so that communities which go for growth can reap the benefits and give councils new powers to introduce further discounts on business rates
22. introduce an immediate freeze of, and inquiry into, the Government’s punitive programme of back-dating business rates on ports.
23. we will give the citizens in each of England’s twelve largest cities the chance of having an elected mayor.
24. We will abolish the Government Office for London as part of our plan to devolve more power downwards to the London Boroughs and the Mayor of London.
25. introduce a new ‘open source’ planning system. This will mean that people in each neighbourhood will be able to specify what kind of development they want to see in their area. These neighbourhood plans will be consolidated into a local plan.
26. We will abolish the entire bureaucratic and undemocratic tier of regional planning, including the Regional Spatial Strategies and building targets.
27. Developers will have to pay a tariff to the local authority to compensate the community for loss of amenity and costs of additional infrastructure.
28. Significant local projects, like new housing estates, will have to be designed through a collaborative process that has involved the neighbourhood.
29. abolish the power of planning inspectors to rewrite local plans;
30. amend the ‘Use Classes Order’ so that people can use buildings for any purpose allowed in the local plan;
31. limit appeals against local planning decisions to cases that involve abuse of process or failure to apply the local plan
32. encourage county councils and unitary authorities to compile infrastructure plans
33. give local planning authorities and other public authorities a duty to co-operate with one another
34. allow neighbourhoods to stop the practice of ‘garden grabbing’
35. create new local housing trusts to allow communities to grant planning permission for new housing within villages and towns