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Rewiring public services
Rewiring Public Services is an ambitious campaign which provides much-needed solutions to how we can deliver public services within an ever-tightening fiscal environment.
Our objective is to lobby for a radical transformation of the way local government works and its relationship with Whitehall.
Following several months of discussions with our members in early 2013, we have drawn up a list of key propositions that we want to see adopted in full or in part within party manifestos and implemented by whoever forms the next Government in 2015.
Rewiring Public Services has been discussed and debated in the media and in Parliament. It's time to have the debate or discussion in the most important place of all, your council. We've put together a proposed motion and some other materials to help you get the conversation going.
Our ten key propositions
1. Give people a meaningful vote on local tax and spending issues: a local treasury in every place.
2. Cut red tape: bring local services and decisions together in one place.
3. Reduce bureaucracy and Whitehall silos: merge six government departments and create an England Office.
4. Share money fairly across the UK: replace the Barnett formula with a new needs-based funding model.
5. Take financial distribution out of ministers' hands: replace it with agreement across English local government.
6. Strengthen local say: reduce ministers' powers to intervene in local decisions.
7. End flawed, tick box inspections by bureaucrats: create local service user champions.
8. Boost investment in infrastructure: create a thriving market in municipal bonds.
9. A multi-year funding settlement tied to the life of a Parliament.
10. Protect local democracy: give the local government settlement formal constitutional protection.
- See more at: http://www.local.gov.uk/campaigns#sthash.yWNMEcTw.dpuf
Council Resolution - Rewiring Public Services
Council,
noting
- that England is now widely recognised to be the country with the most centralised system of government in Europe
- that devolution has brought decisions about tax and spending, and the quality of public services, closer to voters in Scotland and Wales, while English voters have not gained comparably greater influence over decision-making that affects their taxes and services; and
considers
- that the likely scale of change in how public services are funded and provided makes it democratically unsustainable for those changes to be decided within the existing over-centralised model;
- that services need to be reformed and integrated across local agencies to enable them to prevent problems rather than picking up the pieces;
- that voters should be given back a meaningful say on a wider range of tax and spending decisions, through place-based budgetary arrangements, the abolition of the discredited Barnett formula and the reinstatement of fair financial distribution agreed among English councils, the re-creation of a municipal bond market, and the certainty of multi-year funding settlements for the life of a Parliament;
- that central government should enable that local decision-making by joining up and reducing in size Whitehall departments in order to facilitate local place-based budgets, by reducing Ministers’ powers to intervene in local decisions, and replacing bureaucratic tick-box inspection regimes with local service users champions; and
- that such a new more mature settlement between central and local government should be put beyond future revision by giving formal constitutional protection to local democracy; and
resolves
- to support the Local Government Association’s Rewiring Public Services campaign, which embodies these objectives;
- to ask [the borough/city/county/district’s] Member[s] of Parliament to support the Rewiring Public Services campaign to improve local voters’ influence over services, tax and spending; and
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