David Evans: Labour’s attack on local democracy

Cllr David Evans is councillor on East Hampshire District Council.

Labour is waging a multi-fronted war on local democracy (and free speech, the rule of law, and so on – but that’s another story). They seem to want to punish councils and emasculate local government. The sector is experiencing a tsunami of massively disruptive and barely thought-through change. One has to work hard to decode what their statements say in order to find out where they are really leading.

In Angela Rayner’s Ministerial foreword to the Consultation Local authority funding reform Dec 2024 she said:

“We will also reduce the myriad funding pots to give councils more flexibility to focus on priority outcomes agreed with government.”

Translation: Either Central Government will tell Councils what to spend the money on or they will vet what the Council plans to do. Whichever it is, it is clear that from now on, Council priorities will be set by this Labour Government irrespective of what Councillors and their electors believe are the local priorities. Then, down in paragraph 4.1.6 “the government proposes a measure of Council Tax income based on multiplying the number of liable dwellings in each local authority (i.e. their ‘Tax Base’) by an assumed ‘Level’ of Council Tax charged.” And “This will avoid perverse incentives and ensure that government doesn’t reward places that have been able to keep council tax levels low due to having stronger Tax Bases.” Translation: Keeping spending under control and developing efficiencies to improve productivity in order to minimise Council Tax rises is perverse behaviour and Councils that succeed in providing great services at modest levels of Council Tax will be punished by having their funding reduced and transferred to profligate tax & spend (dare I say Labour?) Councils.

Then take Planning. It’s a key function of Local Authorities to decide on how, what, and where development should take place. I and others, here and here have written on Conservative Home about our dreadful planning system and the need to replace the 1947 Town and Country Planning Act system with some sort of zoning system as in the ‘Planning for the Future’ White paper.

Labour clearly recognises that the 1947-based discretionary system which, in their own words, creates “chronic uncertainty, unacceptable delays and unnecessary waste of time and resources” has been failing for decades, but instead of replacing it with a better, simpler, and quicker system that empowers people to decide what and where development should take place long before developers get involved, they propose to “bypass planning committees entirely”; introduce a “national scheme of delegation”; – and that “local planning officers will also have an enhanced decision-making role to implement agreed planning policy.” Local Government is to be air-brushed out of planning and taken over by Central Government and their quangos.

One detects a push to redirect the industry from providing market + “affordable and social” housing towards building council houses. In the Compulsory Purchase Reforms para 15 “We propose that CPOs made under section 125 of the Local Government Act 1972 on behalf of town and community councils should have the ability for directions to be included to remove hope value where the underlying schemes are facilitating affordable or social housing.” It seems rather unlikely, to say the least, that Town and Parish Councils are capable of building Council housing estates but once the “CPO without hope value” principle is established, one can see it being extended to Tier 1 and 2 Councils.

It looks suspiciously like what the Attlee Socialist Government’s 1947 Act enabled Councils to do – which was to buy agricultural land at its current value, then sign a planning permission – thereby giving themselves a huge windfall land value profit at the expense of the landowner. That is little more than Socialist expropriation of wealth. From the graph on page 6 of this report we can see that house building for private ownership was in terminal decline until that Government was replaced. Incidentally, Thatcher’s discounted sale of Council houses, which was hugely popular, could be seen as simply returning wealth that had been, essentially, misappropriated by Councils, to the people.

As for the “need” for more Social Housing, although there is clearly a demand for Social (that is to say subsidized) Housing, is it true that the real need is as great as those on the Left argue? If we look at the availability of Social Housing in the UK from the OECD Affordable Housing Database we find that the UK has twice as much Social Housing as the EU average or the OECD countries. Maybe the proportion of UK households that reside in flats (21.7) compared to the European average of (47.5%) is a factor, flats being both cheaper and less costly to heat making them more affordable for young couples on lower incomes.

Finally we have Devolution and Local Government Reform. There has been a “Consultation” on Devolution here in Hampshire asking only 7 questions “Do you agree or Disagree with xxx” but Ministers have already said it will go ahead, of course, as will eliminating the County Council and collecting the remaining 11 District and Borough Councils and 3 existing Unitaries into maybe 4 huge Unitaries. It will include a raft of Socialist ideas such as the power to establish publicly owned bus companies to “work alongside” private bus companies. These publicly owned bus companies would inevitably be subsidized by taxpayers, which could quickly lead to the demise of private companies as they would not be able to compete.

As Professor Colin Copus has opined, what will result will no longer be fit to be called “Local” government.

The direction of travel? This statement sets it out: “The [Labour] Mayors of the West Midlands and East Midlands have both signed an historic agreement to work closer together for the better of both the regions, delivering benefits for businesses and communities, while reinforcing the Midlands’ role in the UK’s economic landscape”. Standard Socialism at work. Heaven forbid that Nottingham should compete with Rugby to attract businesses in order to improve their local economy – just not the Socialist way. If there is anything they hate more than capitalism it is competition! Are they on a path towards joining up and becoming just one Midlands Combined Authority? Using the strange “logic” of this Government – bigger is better so even bigger is even better – I wouldn’t bet against it!

Conclusion: It’s there in Angela Rayner’s statement: “We will also reduce the myriad funding pots to give councils more flexibility to focus on priority outcomes agreed with government.” Straightforward Socialist central control. Councils will just be an arm of Government with zero independence tasked with implementing the policies of the Labour Government with, of course, the Marxist Trades Unions incubus on their shoulder, directing things.