Let councils set their own locally appropriate priorities

Having cut funding for the new council tax support scheme while protecting pensioners from any change and simultaneously making it difficult to increase council tax, government effectively tied councils’ hands in reducing assistance to residents of working age.

This seemed to somewhat work against its professed desire to make sure that work always pays. So this week ministers, keen to ease the passage into work for the unemployed, have announced new funding for councils that limit council tax payments for those entering work.

The £100m funding pot goes some way to answering local government concerns that some of their most disadvantaged residents could be hit worst, potentially creating further needs elsewhere in the system.

But the fund is a sticking plaster solution. It is another sad example of guided localism - the message is clear: make a local decision provided it is one that government agrees with.

Meanwhile, the opposition was also indulging in some of Eric Pickles’ guided localism. Labour peers opposed a cross-party amendment calling for councils to have more flexibility in the design of council tax benefit schemes. Allowing councils to set the single person discount at any level or scrap it altogether, the amendment goes too far for some. So the party imposed a three-line whip against the amendment.

The clear implication is that councils can’t be trusted - given the option of cutting the discount altogether they might rush to do so without due consideration.

Some Labour council leaders decried the move. Others backed the intervention, saying that they would prefer an amendment allowing councils to cut the reduction from 25% to 20% but no further, as favoured by the LGA.

Rather than dictate to councils how to cover the 10% funding shortfall, government (and the opposition) should have the confidence to afford elected councils the flexibility to set their own locally appropriate priorities. Councils should be able to determine protection offered to pensioners and those finding their way into work alike. And they should be locally accountable for their decisions at the ballot box.

Instead, council tax benefit looks set to continue as a pawn in the national lobbying game - all the while undermining local accountability and democracy.  

Since the general election, commentators have often discussed how it is easy for parties to be localist in opposition but harder once in government. Increasingly it is difficult in opposition too, it seems.

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