High-handed Pickles is undermining local democracy

CAN I draw your readers’ attention to a dinner (at £35 per head) due to take place tomorrow in Bradford, where the guest speaker will be Eric Pickles, Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government?

Over the years I have formed a very poor opinion of Mr Pickles, and was tempted to shell out £35 for the privilege of attending the dinner and giving the Secretary of State a good challenging heckle. On second thoughts I decided to write to your paper, thereby both reaching a wider audience and saving my cash.

Demographic and other changes mean that the demands on local councils to provide services have increased. More people are surviving into a more dependent old age. Councils need to raise their game in child protection and this necessarily involves more resources. Sufficiency of housing is a third issue and I could easily multiply these examples. However, the response of Mr Pickles since moving into government has been to rush to the front of the Ministerial queue to offer up funding cuts.

An appalling system of local government funding has seen councils become increasingly dependent on hand-outs from Whitehall and over these Mr Pickles has direct control.

Bradford Council has had its from government grant reduced in two tranches of £100m and £115m. Birmingham City Council, if Government plans go ahead, stands to lose £800m by 2018 – or 60 per cent of its controllable budget. Birmingham has already shed 7,000 jobs and will need to shed a further 6,000. What does this do for services to the elderly, child protection and housing?

But it is not just the starving of local government of resources where the Secretary of State stands charged. There is his high-handedness in dealing with others and his insistence on controlling from the centre.

His rhetoric of “localism” thinly cloaks a Whitehall authoritarianism. The Local Government Association is an all-party organisation that puts the case for local government.

It is a body with which Eric Pickles should be in constant, constructive dialogue. However, the four party leaders of the LGA are allowed one joint meeting of 30 minutes once a year with the Secretary of State.

From Whitehall, Mr Pickles has taken to dictating whether councils can allow people to park on kerbs or can film in council chambers. Councils are 
quite capable of deciding 
these – and many like issues – locally. It is interference of the worst sort – and undermines local democracy.