The Living City Manifesto

Posted by Cllr Colin Barrow, Leader, Westminster City Council on March 17th, 2010


With the general election approaching, the UK’s political parties are certainly united in one area – their promises to restore more power to local people and local authorities.

This builds on a great quantity of much-heralded research, from the Lyons Inquiry to the Quirk Review, which set out great aspirations but led to very little in the way of real action. More recently, a great deal has been said by all parties about mutuals, powers of competence, and other eye-catching initiatives.

However, we’ve heard much less about the basics of local government – the important measures that really make a difference to people’s daily lives. I believe that this focus on the practical is what’s really missing from many of these discussions. Great strategic aspirations are important, but they need foundations: the smaller and less glamorous changes that together will make a real difference in residents’ daily lives.

The aim of the Living City Manifesto is to address this gap. It sets out five ‘bills’ that a new government could adopt quickly to demonstrate its commitment to empowering local government and local communities. We propose both fundamental changes and smaller, incremental improvements to the way in which government works with us to improve local quality of life.

Our proposals are based on the experience and knowledge that we have gained whilst delivering top quality services to the people of central London, under our corporate Living City programme. The Westminster Works programme, for example, has helped support more than 1000 of our residents back into work. The manifesto outlines how we can build on this example to give local authorities a much stronger role in delivering efficient and effective employment services to their communities.

Similarly, the experience that we have gained in managing one of the UK’s busiest road networks has led us to propose new approaches to managing the street through a dedicated Streetscape Bill.

I want this manifesto to lead to a closer and more co-operative relationship between central and local government. Local government needs to ensure that it doesn’t simply complain about restriction and control without offering any solutions – just as central government needs to recognise the successes of local councils with a real shift in control. We’re seeking the ability to control the services that we offer – and we’re willing to take responsibility for the results.

The coming decade, with declining public faith in government and growing pressure on finance, will place greater pressures on all levels of government. To meet the challenge we must work more closely together, sharing our distinctive strengths to deliver our common goals of empowered, responsible, successful communities.

The Living City Manifesto will be formally launched on 17th March 2010. For more information, please see www.westminster.gov.uk/livingcity or contact Liam Brooker, lbrooker1@westminster.gov.uk.


Explore More

Comments


All comments posted on this site are the views of the commentators and not necessarily those of NLGN. Comments are subject to moderation.