Lyons looks at localism
“The danger is of some things being presented as localism when they are in fact the latest guise of centralism,” according to Sir Michael Lyons, author of the influential 2007 report Place-shaping: a shared ambition for the future of local government.
Writing in the Local Government Chronicle (LGC), he continues, “I don’t say that particularly about this government; it went for the previous government too.”
In his article ‘How to spot real devolution’, Sir Michael offers a ten-point checklist “against which we might begin to see whether a government’s intentions sum up to a radical agenda for devolution or like governments before them, more of the same.”
His questions include
- “Is there evidence of a strong vision of a reshaped United Kingdom with an open appraisal of what’s best done across the whole UK; what is best left to the nations; …and what matters should be left entirely for local communities, or indeed individuals and families to decide for themselves?”
- “Do the various actions of government demonstrate a care for the detailed consequences of decisions on local communities…?”
- “Do [government’s] actions… place too much emphasis on inward investment and ‘open’ competition for limited new funds which will always result in the waste of some public money for the long tail of losers?”
Sir Michael states that he offers these questions “not as a fully thought through critique of this government’s efforts or indeed the last government, but rather in the belief that England… needs a new understanding of what we can expect from national government and what should be solely a matter for local communities.”
- LGC article (requires log-in)
6 January 2011
