New Council Leader Powers - going too far?

Following the publication of our Council Leader interview videos, local activist Mario Petrou has asked us to publish the following letter that appeared in the Hornsey Journal last week:

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The people of Thailand used their blood to prove to their government that they trust and hope in democracy.

Yet here, after a raft of liberty-limiting legislation, the government introduces the innocuous sounding local government and public involvement in Health Act 2007 to deal a death blow to local democracy (the backbone of our democracy) and no one blinks an eye. Why?

Are we really so disconnected from local democracy and so caught up in our own lives that we don't mind if all executive power is to be invested in the council leader for a four-year term after the local elections?

Or that an autocracy is going to replace any semblance of meritocracy that we were comforted to believe existed in the system? Such a concentration of power on one local person has probably not been seen since feudal times.

First the Government snatched power from Parliament and gave it to the executive, which is dominated by the PM and his coteries.

Now it's completing phase two of its plan to centralise power on council leaders (phase one was the Local Government Act 2000).

Next even more power is to be given to unelected bureaucrats.

I cannot imagine that when the inevitable cuts to services start to bite, those that have been especially chosen, for their ability to swing the axe hard and to sleep soundly, will do anything but swing harder and sleep even better in grateful appreciation. But we can do something about this as the government has shot itself in the foot and left a genuine, bona fide loophole in the legislation.

A local authority can simply agree to modify its constitution to limit the leader to, for example, one four-year term or, as a compromise, two non consecutive terms. It doesn't even need to consult!

If we set the limit of a council leader's power, it will send shockwaves through the corridors of power and raise the public's expectation for a more accountable and inclusive democracy, which is central to everything we are and do.

You're among the first to know - spread the word.

M. Petrou, St Ann's Road N15