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Thank you to Andrew Lewer, Derbyshire County Councillor, for the following thought out response to our post on the new ‘Communities in Control’ white paper:

I would offer the following bullet point notes in turn to the ‘headline’ issues you put in your web-page on the ‘Communities In Control’ White Paper. I stress these are my personal views and not necessarily the settled policy positions of either DCC or DDDC:

New Rights to Demand Action – DCC already has a procedure whereby any petition signed by more than 10 households must be the subject of a properly written up paper presented by Officers to a Cabinet Committee meeting / DDDC will take a question from any member of the public to a Policy Committee and the Chairman (me in the case of Community and Environment) will answer it; research is provided by Officers and follow up with the member of the public in question, as necessary.

Increasing Accountability – This is an area where DCC could improve, though I would acknowledge geographical difficulties / DDDC’s Community Forums are attended by the Chief Executive in 80% of cases and by senior Directors if not, plus the Leader (Cllr Rose) and / or Deputy Leader and / or Policy Chairmen (Cllr Spencer and myself); all may be asked questions direct. 

Redress – DCC & DDDC do have some mechanisms in place for redress, both internally and via the Local Government Ombudsman; both Councils await further detail from the Government on this one.

Direct Say on Budgets – Devolving decision making ‘downwards’ is a theme of all three main parties at present, but Local Authorities notice a greater willingness on the part of Government to devolve the powers of other bodies down rather than their own.

Community Builders Fund – I expect most, if not all, of this to go in an urban direction and £70,000,000 divided between over 40,000,000 people may not go as far as it sounds like it would at first glance.

Local Assets – If a Council is close to its people and listening to them then it is doing what they want and therefore, in a real sense, local people are already managing these assets. People elect Councillors and greater freedom for Councillors to do what their voters want instead of what Government Departments and Quangos want would achieve this goal much more effectively.

Directly Elected Mayors – These could (I stress could!) be more effective in an urban setting. Also, the Government has not provided any mechanism for the people to say they do NOT want an Elected Mayor and to have a referendum to go back to a traditional Council model. We do not like the idea of a directly elected Prime Minister in this country, so why a directly elected local leader? Would MPs be very keen on a similar model of impotent non-decision making as the one they seem to be pointing to for Councillors?

Promoting Democracy – Fine sentiments, but again a top down prescription that may not reflect local circumstances.

Empowering Young People – DCC has set up District Forums for young people to run alongside the County-wide one, but there is concern that only certain County Cllrswill have the interaction with youth that is required to make the programme relevant; if it becomes a one party exercise then it will not work. On a more personal note I have just been to all of my Primary Schools (9 in the AshbourneDivision) to take Assembly and talk about Councillors and local government in general. I also get as involved with Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School (my old school) as possible, in Sixth Form Debates, Year 10 Local Democracy Days, and presentations to Year 9 Geography classes etc. / DDDC did recently host a Local Democracy Day at QEGSand the Council tries hard to work with local young people when it can, but at present it has financial capacity problems that make achieving this goal more difficult than it would like.

I hope the above comments are helpful.