By Michael Burton Sir Michael Lyons used his interim report this week to urge Whitehall to get off local government’s back, but added town halls must improve their performance to earn greater freedoms. Arguing that the current system failed to ‘make full use of the benefits local government can bring’ he said: ‘Grants, targets and performance management have created an unhealthy situation where local councils are too-often focused on the wishes of ministers, rather than their own citizens’ needs.’ Sir Michael said there was an obsession with ‘postcode lotteries’ and it was ‘simplistic’ to define fairness in public services as imposing a uniform standard, adding more autonomy and local variation would bring more value for money, better delivery of a smaller set of national priorities, and greater public trust. The former Birmingham City Council chief executive also said councils should take responsibility for ‘place shaping’, or influencing issues outside their own service areas to benefit communities economically and socially, such as transport and skills. And he said there should be a statutory duty on other local agencies to co-operate with councils. He also called for powers for councils to experiment with different political structures, such as single member wards or directly-elected cabinets. Despite avoiding specific proposals ahead of his final December report he used the launch, at London’s Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre to express his opposition to local government reorganisation, described capping as ‘idiosyncratic’, and double-devolution as a ‘non-starter’, if local government powers remained unchanged. l National prosperity, local choice and civic engagement. May 2006. Lyons Inquiry. See feature p10-11. m.burton@hgluk.com