Communities secretary reveals move to make councils ‘85 per cent self-sufficient’

Local government secretary, Eric Pickles, this week called for a new phase in the coalition’s relationship with local government – urging councils to move beyond a difficult past year of cuts to focus on improving ‘the quality of services’.

In an exclusive interview with The MJ prior to the LGA conference in Birmingham, Mr Pickles was full of praise for the sector which, he claimed, had ‘confounded its critics’ over the past 12 months.

The coalition, he said, ‘had work to do with local government’ when it came to power, because the severity of the public debt left little option but to push local authorities, which account for one-quarter of all public expenditure, to the forefront of Treasury plans to slash spending.

Councils which failed to recognise these financial problems, he said, had been ‘living in a La La Land, in which the secretary of state could somehow rustle up lots of dosh’.

He acknowledged many councils had experienced a challenging year, but added: ‘I’m immensely grateful to local government for delivering – it has delivered in a way which has confounded many critics of its ability to manage.

‘I think it is [now] in a stronger position.’

‘Of course, at the same time, we were devolving powers and hopefully, we’re about to go on to devolve financial controls to local authorities. It’s time to move on to a period where we can now genuinely, from a position of partnership, work to improve the quality of services.’

After a tumultuous first six months, characterised by tit-for-tat rows with the sector over bin collections and senior pay, ministers and senior council figures have enjoyed a more progressive relationship.

The Localism Bill, now progressing through the House of Lords, he said, would be the catalyst for genuine community empowerment – but he added that only effective local government finance reform would seal Britain’s switch away from a heavily-centralised public services culture.

Mr Pickles dismissed critics – including the DCLG select committee – who have suggested problems with the Government’s decentralisation programme stem from the coalition’s failure to define ‘localism’.

‘I think that’s the kind of approach that is utterly wrong. It’s some kind of cocktail party approach to say, “Let’s have a definition”. Once you start to put together a definition of localism you strangle it in its cradle.’

Mr Pickles extended the same analysis to critics who argued that too many of his localist reforms – such as plans to allow neighbourhoods or charities to take over failing services – bypassed councils.

‘The purpose of localism is to extend powers as deep into a community as you can. Clearly, you’ve got to make local government very powerful, but it shouldn’t stop there,’ he said.

His support for genuine localism, Mr Pickles said, meant he was sanguine about aborted plans to force councils into weekly bin collections – although the secretary of state said it remained the coalition’s policy to promote weekly collections – something to be outlined in a forthcoming incentives scheme.

Hinting at the content of the local government finance review to be published next month – and likely to include the localisation of business rates and tax increment finance borrowing regimes to promote growth – he said the coalition’s suggested system would make local authorities ‘85% self-sufficient’. But he rejected as ‘sheer nonsense’ claims that allowing localities to retain more locally-raised revenues would see ministers abandon areas which did not produce significant public revenues.

‘We, of course, want to produce a system where nobody loses – and this [forthcoming] system favours places such as Liverpool, Manchester and Sheffield. The core cities.

‘We’ve got to end this ridiculous spiral to the bottom – proud cities should not have to go on their knees with a begging bowl to get money,’ he explained.

Those cities, he said, should also seek to support the Government’s plan for directly-elected mayors. While the coalition had abandoned plans to force ‘shadow mayors’ on to cities before the public voted on the post, Mr Pickles remained steadfast in his support for powerful, elected city figureheads.