Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Councils may lose cash if they snub petitions
The following from Regeneration & Renewal, 9 March 2009:
Councils that fail to take a proposed statutory duty to respond to residents' petitions about poorly-run public services seriously could have their government funding cut, a minister has said.
Sadiq Khan, cohesion minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government, said his department was prepared to use sanctions on councils if they ignored proposals in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill that call for councils to have a "duty to involve" residents by responding to their petitions.
He told delegates at the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres (Bassac) conference that the Government could reduce a council's budget if it did not respond to petitions.
Petitions are used by residents as a way to raise local concerns, such as complaints about badly run public services. The Government believes the proposed duty on councils to respond to petitions will help boost community empowerment.
Khan said the Government was trying to devolve as much power and budget as it can, but he said he wanted to use a carrot and stick approach to ensure councils stick to the proposed duty on petitions.
He said: "We don't want to make hypothetical threats, but we do want to change the culture of local authorities. Some councils already require councillors to respond to petitions and (therefore) empower citizens. It's about ensuring the bad councils start doing it as well.
"If they don't, there are a number of options: peer training, other councils being called in to help out and getting (local authority adviser) the Improvement and Development Agency and government office involved."
Khan said: "The idea of central government having to (use) punitive sanctions is a long way down the stream and we hope we never reach that point."
He said that public sector watchdog the Audit Commission, which inspects councils, should let the Government know if a local authority had failed to respond to a petition.
Bassac chief executive Ben Hughes agreed that petitions were a good idea, but said the Government had to work to get more citizens involved in local democracy to ensure that it was not just the same few local people who dominated.
Hughes said: "In its current incarnation, (the duty to involve) is going to be quite limited in its effect unless it's matched with a step change in participatory democracy. The duty assumes there's a pool of local people who are both available and have the skills to directly engage, (but) that's just not the case."
He said that most people in local areas were not yet equipped to participate in local democracy and this meant the Government's plans threatened to miss out "huge swathes of the community".
Councils that fail to take a proposed statutory duty to respond to residents' petitions about poorly-run public services seriously could have their government funding cut, a minister has said.
Sadiq Khan, cohesion minister at the Department for Communities and Local Government, said his department was prepared to use sanctions on councils if they ignored proposals in the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill that call for councils to have a "duty to involve" residents by responding to their petitions.
He told delegates at the British Association of Settlements and Social Action Centres (Bassac) conference that the Government could reduce a council's budget if it did not respond to petitions.
Petitions are used by residents as a way to raise local concerns, such as complaints about badly run public services. The Government believes the proposed duty on councils to respond to petitions will help boost community empowerment.
Khan said the Government was trying to devolve as much power and budget as it can, but he said he wanted to use a carrot and stick approach to ensure councils stick to the proposed duty on petitions.
He said: "We don't want to make hypothetical threats, but we do want to change the culture of local authorities. Some councils already require councillors to respond to petitions and (therefore) empower citizens. It's about ensuring the bad councils start doing it as well.
"If they don't, there are a number of options: peer training, other councils being called in to help out and getting (local authority adviser) the Improvement and Development Agency and government office involved."
Khan said: "The idea of central government having to (use) punitive sanctions is a long way down the stream and we hope we never reach that point."
He said that public sector watchdog the Audit Commission, which inspects councils, should let the Government know if a local authority had failed to respond to a petition.
Bassac chief executive Ben Hughes agreed that petitions were a good idea, but said the Government had to work to get more citizens involved in local democracy to ensure that it was not just the same few local people who dominated.
Hughes said: "In its current incarnation, (the duty to involve) is going to be quite limited in its effect unless it's matched with a step change in participatory democracy. The duty assumes there's a pool of local people who are both available and have the skills to directly engage, (but) that's just not the case."
He said that most people in local areas were not yet equipped to participate in local democracy and this meant the Government's plans threatened to miss out "huge swathes of the community".
Tags for Forum Posts: duty to respond
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Nearly thirty years ago John Gaventa wrote his classic study about Appalachia: "Power and Powerlessness". He described and analysed why many poor communities often fail to challenge inequality and oppressive power. Writing that:
"Power serves to create power. Powerlessness serves to re-enforce powerlessness. Power relationships, once-established, are self-sustaining".
A radical, Dr Gaventa was concerned to understand this state of affairs in order to change it.
Our Society is not 'broken' but still largely fixed in place between 'the haves', the 'haves less' and the 'have nothings'. I don't doubt that Hazel Blears and Sadiq Khan are completely genuine in their intention to achieve more opennness and democracy. But Mr Khan's comments make me wonder how far the policy has been thought through.
I was already worried in case it meant 'squeaky wheels' getting even 'more of the grease'. In other words, the policy seems to risk increasing the existing bias in favour of more vocal, richer parts of communities.
But if the DeeClug are really going to take money away from unresponsive local councils, isn't this - in effect - imposing a fine on all of us for having dozy councillors? And anyway, doesn't local democracy imply just a teensy bit of choice by the local people who we elect?
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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I'm inclined to agree - this ought to be an ultimate sanction. I wonder, though, if used with a deft touch it might focus minds at times when they need focussing.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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What I'd like to see is the facilities on HoL for someone to organise and publicise a petition easily. Too much work has been done by too few people in getting this kind of thing done in the past. Imagine if the hard slog part of the petition was a bit of typing and a few clicks. Sure you could go the extra mile and doorstep your neighbours but having the audience already there online to hear your plea and their signature on your petition being a few seconds work would make this whole democracy thing a lot better, IMHO.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter on
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Thanks for this Hugh.
One petition that Haringey Council is likely to snub (although it was not addressed to them directly) is the list, now closed, petitioning the Prime Minster to instruct Haringey Council not to sell Alexandra Palace to a property developer.
Haringey has been mismanaging our Charitable Trust since 1980 and has engaged in much deceit along the way. The government has yet to respond to the petition about the sale of Alexandra Palace which was signed by more than 2,400 people.
But regardless of the government response to the petition, Haringey is likely to ignore it. Ignoring government direction over Alexandra Palace has one huge, multi-million-pound precedent:
Haringey wilfully ignored the direction of the government Treasury Solicitor in 1996 which rejected most of Haringey's claim for an indemnification of "expenses" over AP, saying that most of the council's expenses were not incurred reasonably and properly for the benefit of our Charity. This is what Haringey has misleadingly held out to be the Alexandra Palace debt. The bogus debt is in truth their own out-of-control reckless spending, plus compound rolled-up interest.
Ignoring the wishes of residents is as normal as ignoring most of the recommendations of the Alexandra Palace Statutory Advisory Committee. Frequently, its recommendations are "noted" by the council which gives a flavour of the level of contempt.
It's important to remember that although the council's favoured property-developer partner pulled out last August, the council has never renounced their long-held policy of sale, which remains their "ultimate goal".
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Hugh: thanks for the reminder.
As a post script to my post above, I should update it by confirming that the council has since renounced its policy of sale of Alexandra Palace for property development. Alexandra Palace is of course not owned by the council, its own by us as beneficiaries of the Charitable Trust, living in North London.
The sale strategy had amounted to a self-imposed planning blight for about 15 years. The abandonment of the flog-it policy was partly a recognition that finding another development partner (after the fiasco with their developer-of-last-resort Firoka) was unlikely.
The change in policy is a small-but-necessary, welcome step forward.
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