Minister for Local Government
| Date of speech | 20 November 2008 |
|---|---|
| Location | Church House, London |
| Event summary | Local Government Chronicle LAA conference |
Transcript of the speech as delivered.
We meet today in a building which has seen more than its fair share of this City's history.
Its windows reflected the flames when Westminster burned during the Blitz. And its corridors echoed with talk of war and peace as it stood in for the Houses of Parliament during the Second World War.
Today we meet here in safer times, but nevertheless uncertain times.
The backdrop of a global economic shock, colours everything we do in central and local government.
I want to share with you my vision for how LAAs can help to see us through and beyond the difficulties ahead.
As a country, we are in a new period of unprecedented uncertainty and instability. Within a couple of months we've seen:
As politicians and public service managers, the challenges we all face in our jobs have been magnified through the lens of a global slowdown which means doing more with less money.
As individuals, we all feel the effects of having less money in our pockets, especially in the run-up to Christmas. And by the way, even in this era of 24/7 retail patterns that's only 35 shopping days left.
Faced with these circumstances, no government can prevent a downturn, but we can be confident that our economy can get through this tough period and we can work to help people through it.
That's why the Prime Minister and the Chancellor have said that we will do whatever it takes to ensure we keep the banking system safe for savers, to keep people in their jobs and homes, and to support business.
That 'whatever it takes' means actions at all levels.
Internationally, central banks across the world have cut interest rates. The G20 governments have backed the case for a fiscal and government spending boost and other countries are following the UK's lead in putting government capital in to banks.
Nationally we have recapitalised banks, taken Northern Rock and part of Bradford and Bingley into public ownership, amended competition rules to allow Lloyds TSB to take over HBOS and negotiated £4 billion borrowing for business support from the EiB.
Regionally, the RDAs are doing what they were set up to do in flexing their plans, leading rapid response teams where big redundancies are announced and setting up new schemes for business support and funding.
The new front line should now be local, with councils seen clearly to be leading the response where people are feeling the effects. This is where LAAs come in.
If we face a recession, I think it will be different from what has gone before. In the '70s and '80s GDP fell by more than employment. Now we are seeing signs that - like in the '90s - businesses are taking lessons from the past and are shedding jobs quicker than GDP is falling. That means that the downwards slope of the downturn is sharper, and the upturn is likely to be more gradual. As my 13-year-old son puts it, it'll be in the shape of the famous Nike 'swoosh'.
The areas and people most at risk may be different. The white collar workers in the South who felt relatively safe in the 90s are this time more exposed. Areas reliant on financial services and construction - or any single industry - are vulnerable.
This is a slowdown which will hit different areas in different ways to different degrees.
LAAs are part of the way we ensure different and appropriate local action. They are national government's recognition of local pressures and imperatives. They are a big collective national step in the direction of localism, as we saw in the way that government departments collaborated as one to negotiate priorities with you based on your different local situations.
A questions for us all are: Can LAAs be the framework for local responses to the current economic pressures? And can they be the framework for continued investment in priorities that will help prepare for the other side of the downturn?
Issues like improving education and culture, reducing crime, tackling teenage pregnancy, and childhood obesity don't disappear because of the current economic difficulties. They remain just as important as ever to the communities you serve now, and will pave the way for a strong recovery in the economic upturn.
However, LAAs are now widely focussed on improving local economies, in a way which they never were before.
The most popular national target - chosen by nearly 5 out of 6 areas - is on 16-18 year olds not in education, training or employment. Nearly nine in 10 have at least one worklessness target. And half want to increase the number of businesses in their area.
Over a quarter of all the local indicators selected in LAAs focus on the economy - far more than any other theme.
And LAAs are not just about the priorities.
The process of developing your LAA will stand you in good stead. Both the analysis you did of your local economies, to support your choice of indicators, and relationships you strengthened with your LSP partners will help in the current circumstances.
I know that authorities up and down the country are already using their LAA and LSP to help foster resilience to the downturn. In Barnsley they are joining up the Council services that people need if they are made redundant. In York they're holding an event in December to offer advice from a range of organisations like Citizens' Advice and credit unions to people. In Bath the LSP is working together on a Recession Resilience Strategy to plan for economic shocks in the short and medium term. Many LAA ambitions will, of course, become more challenging - such as housing, or employment. But some may get a bit easier - such as tackling congestion or reducing carbon emissions.
The review and refresh between now and March will give us the opportunity to examine the impact of economic circumstances on LAA delivery individually with you. It will not be a wholesale renegotiation. It will largely focus on unfinished business and tying up loose ends. But it will also provide an opportunity to consider evidence where circumstances have genuinely changed. For example, in some areas economic and housing targets may need to be refined. In other areas, the data may suggest that jobs are holding up well.
And the review and refresh will be an opportunity too to discuss how delivery is going. Working jointly with partners to ensure LAA priorities have strong plans for delivery. Communicating priorities in clear language that will mean something to local citizens. Trying out genuinely new ways of working.
I believe we can now say that over the last eighteen months LAAs have moved from the margins to the mainstream. In local places they are now at the heart of the ways in which councils develop strategy, set priorities and plan delivery. In Whitehall, departments now see LAAs as the key route to local delivery of their priorities.
So we have in sight the vision of a single performance framework for local governance. This means a framework where strategy, targets, scrutiny, innovation and inspection are focussed on individual places rather than institutions.
But if the vision is in sight, there is still a long path ahead of us as we move into delivery.
On that journey, I would like to see us stick to three key principles:
First, aim high. LAAs are the foundations on which we can build much wider Government work to deliver excellent services to all people in all areas. We have high aspirations and I want them to remain high, so that we all have to stretch to reach them.
Second, don't take further progress for granted. We should be wary of staring so hard at the road ahead that we stumble over loose ends. We still have work to do on CAA and RIEPs to get them to a level which gives confidence to both central and local government. And that work must be against the backdrop of a stable LAA framework.
Third, build on our success. Already we have learned some lessons which we can apply to our future work. Like setting clear objectives and involving all parties in designing the framework.
Having set out those principles for future travel, how are LAAs likely to look in the next few years?
Well, I spoke earlier about LAAs being a sound foundation. The question is: what could we build on those foundations? This is a shared endeavour and I want this to be the beginning of a wider debate with you about the future of LAAs.
Those of you who have heard me speak before will know that I am passionate about politics and want more people to get involved. LAAs provide a way in. People might not get involved in big national policy discussions, but they might well get involved in how their Council Tax is spent, staying safe on their street, helping their neighbours to find a job and how their area is set to change in coming years. Indeed three in four people say they want to be more involved in such decisions.
To deliver the kind of services those people want, we need to work better behind the scenes. Through the LAA negotiations I know that much better working relationships have been forged at local level, and between local and national government. If we go the extra mile or two, what can be achieved by those relationships? In the next five years, I would like to see several things:
I would also like to see easier and more friendly access for users. Single points for people to access all local services. Websites where they can look at their local school results and how to arrange for their old fridge to be taken away on the same site. One office on their high street where they only need to queue once to talk about getting back in to work and finding a new home.
And, of course, I want LAAs to be the engines of economic and social change, not just institutional reform. The current round of LAAs has a much stronger focus on the economy - how useful and resilient they are in the current circumstances will be an important test of how far we've come. But beyond this, in five years time we should expect LAAs and MAAs to be at the heart of how people understand the economic and social concerns that affect them and - more importantly - how action is taken to tackle them.
People care about the street they live on, the area around them, their journey to work. We need to think like that too, in everything we do.
Taking that message into the corridors of Parliament and Whitehall departments too is the job for me, and all Ministers and staff at DLCG.
We at the centre need to listen harder to what you tell us is important to your area. We need to be clearer about the tension between common standards and local differences. And we need to close the gaps between our departmental delivery structures so that people on the ground can't see the joins.
We have come a long way over the last eighteen months.
As we continue on our journey, the terrain has changed, especially the economy, but our potential destination is clear. The review and refresh of LAAs over the next few months gives us the opportunity to show how we could get there.
Thank you.
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