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Shifting power to local people
LOTS of people are really feeling the squeeze at the moment and newspapers, magazines and Sunday supplements now regularly feature articles containing money-saving tips and advice on 'beating the credit crunch'.
Over recent months many people, whatever their circumstances, have been changing their spending habits or have at least started to think about what they are spending their money on.
The County Times has also recently contained lots of information on council tax increases and politicians and readers have all been debating what kind of rise is acceptable and also where that tax revenue should be spent.
Recognising that local residents want to know more about town hall spending and that they want councillors to have more of a say than central government as to where their money is spent, Conservatives recently published a major policy document called 'Control Shift'.
It contains a number of detailed proposals as to how we'd shift power to local people and make councils more accountable to them.
For example, we'd abolish all regional planning and housing powers exercised by regional government and return power and discretion back to local communities.
We'd also create bottom-up incentives for house building, simply by allowing councils to benefit from the increase in council tax revenues from new homes. We'd introduce an additional incentive for councils to promote local economic growth, by allowing them to keep the uplift in business rate revenues from businesses growing in size.
To add to that, we'd also give them discretionary powers to levy business rate discounts, allowing them to help local shops and services, such as rural pubs or post offices.
We'd make greater use of direct democracy, including allowing local people to veto high council tax rises, or instigating a council-wide referendum on local issues if called for by a petition signed by five per cent of residents.
We would require all councils to publish detailed information online about their expenditure – including the pay and perks of senior staff.
If implemented, these proposals really would mark a dramatic change in local government – they would put residents and councils back in the driving seat and significantly reduce interference from Whitehall.
As usual, I'd like to hear from readers – what do you think about these proposals? Are there any other measures that you would like to see introduced?
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Weather for Horsham
Thursday 09 February 2012
Today
Cloudy
Temperature: -1 C to 3 C
Wind Speed: 6 mph
Wind direction: North east
Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: -7 C to 2 C
Wind Speed: 9 mph
Wind direction: East
