Localism Bill ‘will cost town halls £5m in red tape’

All of the region’s local authority leaders have given their support to a campaign by the Local Government Association (LGA) voicing concerns about the legislation going through Parliament.

They claim it will cost Yorkshire more than £5m in additional bureaucracy, money that would have been spent on public services. But the Government has hit back, claiming the LGA’s figures are “grossly exaggerated” and the Bill will changed the way the country operates.

Roger Stone, chairman of Local Government Yorkshire and Humber and leader of Rotherham Council, said: “Local authorities across Yorkshire and Humber are already doing the things that the Localism Bill aims to achieve.

“Council leaders have already concluded that the Bill’s simply not needed and we’re concerned that, when this new legislation is forced through by the Government, we’ll have to use our valuable and limited resources to administer and report on what we’re already doing, rather than get the job done.”

The leaders welcomed the findings of the influential Parliamentary Select Committee, chaired by Sheffield MP Clive Betts, which has stated that the Government’s localism agenda as a whole is incoherent and lacks clarity.

Research by the LGA has claimed in order to meet the extra costs of the bureaucracy contained within the Bill, each council may need to spend about £250,000 per year – equating to around £5.5m across Yorkshire. The LGA estimate that £250,000 would pay for 16 local care workers and with millions of pounds being cut from local authority budgets, council leaders said there could be serious implication for local communities.

Peter Box, vice chairman of Local Government Yorkshire and Humber and leader of Wakefield Council said: “We should be answerable to our communities, not to people based miles away in Whitehall with no grasp of what’s really needed in our local areas. We agree with the LGA that much of what the Government is claiming to be ‘localism’ is actually the direct opposite – with Ministers in London controlling what communities can or can’t do.”

More than £1bn of cuts across the region’s councils are expected by 2015.