PM backs demands for ‘localist’ agenda

Prime minister Gordon Brown this week recognised local government’s ‘legitimate demand’ for devolved policies, and promised to ‘put more power in the hands of local communities and our great cities’.

In a speech in London on 2 February, carefully designed to warm the hearts of localists, Mr Brown focused heavily on his plans for community-based public services in the run-up to, and possibly beyond, the general election.

He acknowledged that local government ‘has had too many streams of funding’ in the past – and gave the strongest indication yet that he would undertake a comprehensive roll-out of the CLG’s fledgling Total Place regime, which will pool budgets for key public services and devolve decision-making over how to spend the cash to local officials.

‘Our Total Place reforms are potentially transformative in the better use of resources. They will allow local government and its partners to reach across all funding coming into an area and enable better choices to be made at local level,’ he said.

Referring to the first city-region programmes in Manchester and Leeds, Mr Brown said central and local government was delivering a ‘quiet but profound revolution’ in how England was governed. He praised the cities’ work on delivering new jobs, skills, housing, transport and ‘green’ policies without ‘being dictated to from Whitehall’.

He attacked Conservative Party plans to scrap the regional development agencies, and warned that while a Labour Government would devolve powers to localities, he would insist on the retention of minimum service standards to avoid ‘postcode lotteries’

Courtesy of LocalGov.co.uk