If ministers were being honest what would a Localism Bill really look like? Mark Fletcher imagines what its preamble might say.

For too long, central government has believed that the way to improve people's lives is to continually pass new legislation, and at such a pace that the ink is barely dry on one Act before another is pushed under the noses of officials in town halls up and down the country.

We have presumed, wrongly we now recognise, that people want to control their own services and we have assumed that everyone thinks and acts as the middle classes do. We have seen local communities through the lens of garden parties and village fetes and presumed that everyone who has time on their hands wants to set up a fund-raising committee to improve the lot of the less fortunate.

We have ignored a glaring reality: the less fortunate are too busy working double shifts in poorly paid work to have time to fret about such things. Some people who live in challenging circumstances do, of course, volunteer. But we will not presume to judge everyone by this benchmark. Volunteering is a behaviour, not a social trend. And it would be no more relevant to introduce a 'Latte Index' because we know that nice people drink good coffee.

We have been blinded by the idea of subsidiarity; the best decisions probably are taken as close as possible to the people they affect but sometimes they just want to get on with their lives. And rather than giving power back to people, we have now recognised that those who do vote, do so because they want other people to sort out problems on their behalf. That’s what democracy is about after all.

We have also assumed that local government needs more powers. In reality, it just needs more money and since that particular well is now dry, we have determined that we won’t dress up the bleeding obvious with new Acts, new mayors and new fangled solutions.

But we believe that there are some things we can do in Government to make life better in local communities. So we will be introducing legislation to guarantee a number of rights for citizens.

Citizens have a right to understand what people are saying to them. We have talked for a long time about the need for 'Plain English' but with precious little sign of it. We will pass legislation to ensure that all communication from local government must pass the 'Seven Year Old Test' – that is, it must be capable of being understood by a seven year old child. It follows that acronyms, complex terms, allusions, literary references, arcane vocabulary and obscure legal terms should no longer be used.

It follows that public notices should no longer be published in odd places, in very small print and in legalese. We will make planning much more open. But we recognise that little is more likely to elicit anger, hate and fear than the realisation that one’s home is no longer one's castle but a small part in a massive ugly housing development.

Citizens, we recognise, have a right not to have policies forced down their throats. We have tried many ways to introduce elected mayors. People clearly don’t want them, just as they don’t want to set up their own schools (apart from those who score high on the Latte Index).

Rather than introducing new taxes, we will ensure that citizens have a right to a refund where policies fail to deliver on promises, where services fail and where performance continually disappoints. We know that if we give councils the power to raise more money, they will do so. We know that you know that provided new taxes do not stir people out of apathy, people will go along with change that makes their lives worse. We simply cannot rely upon local newspapers, which are already struggling, mounting a campaign against new taxes.

Finally,we will ensure that Government adopts a 'Jam Today Imperative'in all of its dealings with local communities. For too long, we have promised better lives, better health care, better education, better social care long before we have even taken stock of current challenges. Had we done so,we would have known how impossible councils’ current workloads are. We will not make any promises unless we are one hundred per cent certain of delivery. It follows therefore that there will be no further promises this year.

We are not where we would want to have been. The money has gone. Services will follow.We will not make a bad situation much, much worse.We promise not to make local government a scapegoat.You will hear no more from us on chief executives' salaries or how they compare to the Prime Minister's remuneration (which adds up to a whole lot more that £173,000, anyway).

Mark Fletcher is founder of the communications consultancy reputation.