Manifesto > Reform: Enhancing our democratic institutions (Introduction) | Open Europe | Better Government | Local Government | Human Rights and Civil Liberties

Reform: Enhancing our democratic institutions

Local government at one time really meant something.  They were a source of local pride and initiative.  Many of the great reforming changes in our society came about through local councils.  We want to restore pride in local government and voluntary service to one's community.

We propose the creation of a modern framework of local government whereby local authorities become responsible only for the administration of individual local services and the provision of national services, such as social welfare, will become the responsibility of specialist bodies working to sensible budgets.  Wherever possible we would seek to hand over more control to the individual users of services, such as giving parents more say in the education of their children.

Let councils concentrate on genuinely local services

There is a need to ensure that local taxation more closely approximates what the local authority actually spends, but without undermining core services or putting excessive burdens on local authorities in disadvantaged areas. Council tax makes up only 26% of local authority finance and councils get the bulk of their money from central government. These funds are normally ‘ring-fenced’ for particular services such as education and policing. We would ensure that core services are funded directly from central government to consistent standards.

In the case of education, funding would be based principally on vouchers directly in the hands of parents. This would drive up standards, give schools the freedom to manage their own affairs and to expand where necessary. Local authorities will be able to supplement this expenditure for their local schools but will not be in direct control.

Police and fire services would also be funded through direct payments. We believe that it is necessary for disadvantaged areas with high crime rates to get national support, since we all have an interest in preventing rising crime. Again, local authorities would be able to supplement the direct grants for additional projects and local patrol schemes.

Housing benefit is essentially an extension of the social security system and it is very wasteful to duplicate its administration in local authorities throughout the country. We would therefore transfer the administration of housing benefit to social security offices.

In addition, there is a critical need to provide more effective co-ordination in the field of social care. Under our proposals, local Social Services Departments (SSDs) would be better co-ordinated with health services and funded directly.

These proposals would mean that local councils could concentrate on local services such as planning, housing, leisure facilities, refuse collection, traffic management and local transport. They would still be represented on the authorities overseeing education, policing and so on, and would be able to top up core provision from local funds. Council budgets would be much smaller but a far higher percentage of their budget would be raised locally, helping to produce much more efficient, accountable and transparent local government.

Make council tax lower…

Under our proposals council tax would be substantially reduced through the transfer of core services to central financing. Further reductions in council tax would be made by streamlining local government. In addition to these measures, we would cap local authority spending and council tax levels pending an audit and staffing review. This audit would enable us to streamline local government machinery and introduce tighter oversight of local government pay and conditions of service. It would also allow action to be taken against local authorities which fail to meet strict spending criteria.

… and fairer

This policy also moves a substantial part of local taxation away from the controversial council tax to direct taxation on earnings, which is of course based on the ability to pay. Council tax itself would also be subject to reform. There is an imbalance at present due to wide variations in house prices across the country. This means that many top end houses often end up in the same rate band. We would tackle this in two ways: first, we would add two additional bands at the top end of the council tax scale; and second, we would set the value of the bands regionally by reference to house prices in that region.

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