Unsung act that could herald true devolution

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It is hard to think what common factor could have brought together the Association of Chief Police Officers, the Soil Association, the Muslim Council of Britain and the Women's Institute.

These disparate bodies, along with 52 other voluntary, campaign and professional organisations, have joined forces to press councils to use the Sustainable Communities Act 2007, which took a major step towards implementation this week when communities secretary Hazel Blears invited councils to submit bids for new powers.

This unusual law allows councils to make a case to do pretty well anything that can loosely be defined as aiding the sustainability of their areas.

New powers could be acquired, or activities taken over from central government and its multitude of quangos. For example, this gives any council the chance to get a quango off its patch, offer rate rebates to businesses that exceed recycling targets or protect local pubs from demolition.

The act began life as a private members' bill from Conservative MP Nick Hurd, but secured government support to get through Parliament.

Councils can of course make any request to government they choose. Where this act makes a difference is in setting up a process for these bids' formulation, submission, consideration and decision.

Ideas will originate locally and must be agreed between councils and local panels. The act leaves the exact composition of these panels open, and does not specify how many there should be.

Councils could use existing neighbourhood or consultative bodies, set up different panels for different issues or form a new one to deal with all ideas that emerge.

The hope is that such latitude will enable councils to prevent panels being captured by unrepresentative groups.

Agreed ideas will then go to the Local Government Association, which will act as 'selector' — a role defined by the act — filtering and consolidating requests and deciding which will, next July, go the Department for Communities & Local Government.

Ministers will then accept, modify or reject bids, and must explain their reasons for their decisions.

Hence the 57 organisations, marshalled by the pressure group Unlock Democracy, hoping to persuade local authorities to opt into the act's provisions.

Councils could choose not to, and the prospect of every group with a grievance bending their ears might make some councillors wary.

But the act's supporters argue the opportunities it offers to councils are potentially as great as those from the wellbeing power, ending decades in which they have banged their heads against the wall of Whitehall centralisation.

Indeed, when the bill was enacted last year, the then local government minister Phil Woolas went as far as to liken its potential to the private members' bills that ended capital punishment and permitted abortion.

Unlock Democracy, which worked with Mr Hurd on the bill's development, said it would enable councils to get powers to reverse the decline of local services, deal with fuel poverty and protect the environment among much else.

Director Peter Facey said: "There has never been a more important time to reverse the process of democratic disengagement that has been seen over the past few decades."

The act's true value may lie in the ability of councils to pilot powers and activities that the rest of local government would then take up. For example, Norfolk CC wants to gain increased powers over coastal protection, at present held by the Environment Agency (LGC, 9 October).

Suppose it made a success of that, and other councils followed? At what point would the Environment Agency lose its critical mass of expertise and economies of scale and have to abandon that work entirely to councils?

Anna Turley, deputy director of the New Local Government Network (NLGN), predicts the successful proposals will lead to greater devolution, since it would be hard for the government to argue that one council should be given a power and a comparable one should not.

While powers granted under the act will not be legal precedents for similar devolution to other councils, they could be political ones.

"It is likely to trigger arguments that what applies to one council should apply to others," Ms Turley said, citing in particular the possibility of one council taking over powers from a quango, and the quango gradually being supplanted by councils elsewhere.

"This could be a driving force to improve quango performance," she added. "They would know they could have their powers removed unless they performed well and worked with councils."

An NLGN report on the act urges councils to drop their perennial suspicion of government intentions and embrace the act's possibilities. It says: "There are mixed feelings as to how serious Whitehall might be about agreeing to radical proposals.

"These feelings, combined with the understandable degree of 'initiative-itis' that pervades the sector, is serving to dampen local enthusiasm. This should not be allowed to happen."

It notes an idea backed by several local authorities would be hard for the government to reject, and the process of investigating new powers might in itself uncover ways to take radical steps under existing ones.

All manner of pressure groups will seek councils' support under the act, but one of the best organised is, perhaps surprisingly, the Campaign for Real Ale (Camra), a body best know for opposition to the pervasive spread of keg lager.

Camra's concern is with the role of pubs as the hearts, or potential hearts, of their communities. It is opposed to loss-leader drinks promotions by supermarkets, to street drinking and to the loss of pubs through conversion.

Research and information manager Iain Loe said: "We have 95,000 members in 200 branches, so we can organise a lot of support.

"Well-run pubs serve as focal points for communities in which people can drink safely and responsibly, instead of on the streets."

Among the measures councils can expect Camra to promote are a higher small business rate relief limit for pubs, a legal right for every publican to offer beer from at least one local brewer and a planning use class for pubs which would mean permission was needed for their demolition or conversion.

The act could be the tool to secure councils powers of which they have only dreamed.

But it is not all one-way. Parish and town councils could use the act to secure powers held by upper-tier councils.

"If an area's parishes all wanted a power, the principal council would have to come up with very good reasons why it would not put that forward or it could face judicial review," said Unlock Democracy spokesman James Graham. "This is a much sterner test than any consultation, a council could not just say 'we're not doing that, we don't like it'."

No one knows what the act might lead to — a flowering of devolution, a flowering of civil service creativity to prevent changes or obstruction of the DCLG by other departments. As one county leader put it: "The obvious concern is around how ministers approach this. It could be fantastic, or it could be a complete damp squib."