Hail Localism! But beware the unintended consequences

It is now clear that the government’s radical reform agenda, is disrupting our old certainties.  In the localism bill, we see an intention to unleash local government and empower local neighbourhoods, residents and community and voluntary groups to play a greater role in services and managing assets.

I recently gave evidence to the localism bill committee.  My angle was that we should be disrupting the existing complex system and settlement between the centre and the local.  This will achieve serendipity, a windfall of new relations, more community ownership, and an unleashing of social capital.  However, I also warned of the importance of the centre and the potential of negative or even perverse outcomes.

In particular, an unfettered disruption may create more spatial differences, which will leave some localities under-served and some people and communities vulnerable.  The question here is not if these negative consequences of localism will occur- they will.  It’s whether they are outweighed by the positive windfalls and secondly whether the bill offers adequate protection to the very negative consequences, when they do occur.

On the first point, there is optimism from the government benches, who believe that there will be a flow of positives.  Some of this, is a reflection of experiences from their own constituencies, where they see active communities who are time rich, stress free and willing to take up the right to challenge, the right to buy, and get involved in planning their neighbourhood.  However, this is not the case in many other communities where worries over money or of making ends meet are the driving concern.  In these communities the negative consequences may outweigh the positives.

We could well end up with a localism, which rather than empowering, will just disempower and marginalise as services become fewer, variable and the slack is not taking up by an enthused big society but by big business or big voluntary sector detached from bespoke local concerns.  This scenario is very probable.

Localism must appreciate that England and its individual localities are made up of huge social and economic differences and cultures, such as variations in volunteering etc.

The government has a heady optimism over how time rich, stress free or interested people and communities are. This may be blinding them to these negative (and perhaps), unacceptable variations.

Secondly what types of safeguards is the bill interested in, as regards lessening some negative or perverse local effects?  Greg Clark, the minister of state, Department for Communities and Local Government in his summing up of our evidence, ably pointed out the dangers of a pure localism. He is right.  Pure localism, gives no safeguards to any negative consequences, bar the local ballot box.  However, Greg Clark, was not prescriptive about what these central safeguards should be, other than, his emphasis on ‘minority communities’.

The bill needs to offer some future protection, vested in the central state and the powers of the Secretary of state and parliament.  We need clarity about what areas these should cover and what differences would be unacceptable.  Minority communities for sure, but for me also some safeguards which ensure that localism does not perversely create even more social and economic inequality within locations and across England as a whole. This goes to the heart of this debate about negative consequences.

The Localism Bill, needs to reflect England as it is now and its deep economic and social inequalities and cultural variations.  Therefore, the bill must give due protection to those poorer and more deprived communities or just culturally different communities.

The Localism bill, in its desire to give power away is laudable and correct.  However, localism in action cannot make inequality any worse and the bill must create safeguards. Decentralising power is pointless unless we get better outcomes.  We must beware the potential negative consequences.