(2) Local government

(2) Local government

1. What role does local government perform?

   • Coordination of a wide range of public services e.g
     • School
     • Social services
     • Roads and public transport
     • Environment
     • Local amenities

2. The benefits of local democracy inclued

   • Widened opportunities for popular particular, in giving many more citizens a chance of standing for or holding public office
   • Allowed authorities to take account of local needs and interests
   • Ensured a dispersal of power, as local government could act as a check on central government

3. How had their role changed over time

   • Before 1980 local councils had a fair amount of power, during the 80's spending reduced, lead to clashes

4. Decline of local democracy

   • Defects of local democracy
     • Thatcher government set out alternative local-central relations little resistance because of moribund state of local democracy
     • Local democracy is defective in a number of ways
       • Electoral turnout is 30-40%
       • Local elections dominated by national issues, seen as oppion polls
       • FPTP - many councils one permently dominated by single party
       • Council tend to be unrepresentative of their local population ( 39% retired)
   • Loss of financial control
     • Major changes have taken place over funding by central government
       • The poll tax was introduced as an attempted to increase support for more low spend partys. Causted a back lash as unfair to low income people
         • Council tax introduced in 1993 as a more fair but progressive may of collecting tax
     • There are now three main sources of local finance
       • Central grants provide roughtly half of all local revenue
       • "uniform business rate" provide roughly a quarter of local revenue
       • Council tax provides just over one fifth of revenue. Only source of direct funding
   • The rise of "enabling" concils
     • Local government was important largley because it provided a wide range of public services
     • Since 1980's local authoritys forced to put services in private hand
     • This turned the councils from being "providers" into being "enables"
       • Refuse collection, schools meald and park maintenance have commonly been handed over to private business
       • Housing assication have taken over most of the UK's public housing stoke
     • The role of local authorities has been reduced to setting standards and negotiating contracts for services that other deliver

5. Local government renewed

   • The Greater London Authority
     • The creation of the Greater London Authority, comprising a directly-elected London mayor and a 25-member Greater London Assembly, therefore marked a significant revival of local democracy
     • However, the GLA is a much weaker body than the GLC of old
       • It has strategic, but not operational, responsibilities for transport, fire and emergency services, and economic development and planing, and enjoys little financial independence from central government
   • Source of experimentation and innovation
     • The idea of elected mayors, established by the GLA , is widely seen as an important way of reviving local democracy
       • Elected mayors both rise the profile of local government and encourage the adoption of bolder and more popular policy initiatives
       • An example of this is London's experiment in road pricing through the "congestion charge", intro in 2003, which is increasingly being looked to as a model by other cities in the UK
     • Other political innovations include the use of the postal voting and of electronic voting
       • Since 2000, local authorities have also acquired new roles in economic development and regeneration, encouraging them to develop strategies to attract inward investment and to improve the local infrastructure
   • Multilevel governance
     • Local government has been able to counter stronger central control by developing links with other levels of government, notably devolved bodies and EU institutions
     • In the devolved bodies, local authorities now come within the responsibility of there assemblies
       • This led to the intro of the STV voting system for Scottish local
     • Links between local government and the EU have also become more prominent
       • The EU has been come an additional source of funding, mainly though the European Regional Development Fund and the Social Fund
       • Virtually every local council in the UK also has a lobbying presence in Brussels
         • GLA has "London House" in Brussels
         • Smaller local authorities often achieve representation within the EU through the Local Government International Bureau