Local democracy

During the course of last weekend, I spoke to various Councillors in South Staffordshire.

Having stood myself as a council candidate in London, it’s always interesting to speak to local representatives around the country and understand how they approach their role. Most of the Councillors I spoke to held a combination of roles at the Parish, District and County council levels. This gave them a strong understanding of how specific issues intersected with the spectrum of decision-making structures across the county and district.

A good example centres on the local priority of securing affordable housing. South Staffs has been delegated a target of building approx 3,500 homes in the regional spatial strategy, of which the District Council has already completed around half its quota. Of the remainder, the Council has adopted a twofold strategy: firstly, allocating housing build across the villages that span South Staffs District, in a way that the incremental addition of new homes creates least pressure on existing communities and services; and secondly insisting that for developments greater than 5 homes, at least 30% should be composed of affordable housing.

The role of local Cllrs in this process has been to guage the potential impact that such development could have on their respective localities and to survey local feeling on these issues, whether through the medium of local area forums or ad-hoc community meetings.

The Cllrs themselves come from various backgrounds, some trained in the private sector as engineers, others from the public sector, having worked in the police service. Either way, the common bond they share is a concept of local stewardship, providing care and leadership for the area in which they have lived and worked, often for many years.

Local Cllrs often get a hard press, which makes it important to highlight those places where local government is working well. South Staffordshire District Council has been consistently marked highly in assessments by the Audit Commission and has received awards relating to its development of innovative practice. All of which supports the case that provided responsibility is matched with accountability, there is an imperative in delegating more service and funding flexibilities to local levels of government.