The picture is getting clearer

As MPs break up for the summer after the most febrile political 10-week period in at least a decade, is there a picture emerging of the coalition government’s attitude towards local authorities?
Until a couple of weeks ago, I would have said it was confused. But, just as we were trying to make sense of [communities secretary] Eric Pickles’ provocative comments to the LGA conference – and in The MJ – about chief executive non jobs and [housing minister] Grant Shapps’ broadside against councillors’ expenses, up popped the health White Paper.
To those sceptics who believed the Department of Health would never yield an inch to local government, the White Paper was an eye-opener, promising new responsibilities. This was confirmed when Mr Pickles joined health secretary, Andrew Lansley, in an official launch last week, just to emphasise the joint role.
This week, Mr Pickles followed it with a speech to the LGA which, apart from his inadvertent leak about super-mayors in the forthcoming localism Bill, was stuffed with olive branches.
Referring to place-based budgeting, he said he ‘loved the idea’ but not the name, and criticised Total Place for not going far enough. He ended his address with: ‘I absolutely trust local government to deliver.’
Simultaneously, across Parliament Square, a few hundred metres away, decentralisation minister, Greg Clark, was also saying nice things about local government to a think-tank seminar. Indeed, when he was asked by one sceptic in the audience whether or not local government was ‘a large part of the problem’ in blocking community enterprise, he denied it, saying there was ‘a metropolitan snobbery about the idea that local government was resistant to change.’ Actually, he said, it had performed much better than Whitehall.
Both ministers made it plain that councils don’t need to wait to be told what to do by Whitehall or, as Mr Pickles exhorted; ‘Over the summer, just get on and do it.’ Do what is another question.
Many councils might well say, ‘make cuts’ or ‘batten down the hatches’ or ‘lay off staff.’ But at least the ministers have made their message clearer: The ball is in local government’s court. Use it.
Michael Burton, Editor, The MJ