Local government minister David Miliband’s much-anticipated June White Paper draws ever nearer, without many clear signals about what to expect. What form will Double D (double devolution) take? For the neighbourhoods’ agenda, there are some real challenges. Local government has been running area forums, ward sub-committees, local partnerships and, in Birmingham’s case, real devolution constituencies – for some time. If we are honest, most of this has not lived up to the rhetoric. So, is Mr Miliband a hopeless idealist? Mr Miliband is ahead of the public as whole, with people such as Mathew Taylor of Number 10, in believing that the public do have an emerging sense that to get what they want in terms of services, quality of life, and feeling comfortable with where they live – they need to get more involved. The challenges the ODPM faces are legion. Normal people do not want to be involved all the time, about everything. So the ODPM must avoid prescription. Making all authorities have mandatory forms of neighbourhood governance, or even worse, area-based control of contracts, would be great for consultants, the green ink brigade – and be a charade. The same usual suspects would end up running everything. There might, of course, be some cunning plan here to let them, so that the rest of the citizenry get so fed up, they finally feel forced to act, and this brings us to the ‘trigger powers’. What mechanisms will be used to trigger a review of a local service by a third party, or transfer control of some kind to a locality? These just seem tough to get right. And councillors, themselves, properly supported and resourced, could do much to give more vibrancy to local neighbourhoods’ relations with their councils. nBen Page is chair of Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute