Local Democracy Notepad

There have been a few interesting developments in the last few days. Firstly, the post of Director of Digital Engagement has been filled by Andrew Stott.

Harry has a positive anecdote about him along with an observation that I’d agree with:

It [a £160k post] seemed like a strange move to make when creating two positions at £80k a piece would probably still attract very qualified people, and give you more time and knowledge for your money.

Dave Briggs, as ever, has a good comprehensive round-up of reactions to the appointment.

The second development (as Anthony has picked up in the previous post) is the as-yet unconfirmed report that the Community Empowerment Bill is to be spiked.

The Community Empowerment Bill always struck me as something of a curate’s egg. It was good, in the sense that it attempted to address one of the key problems with civic engagement – the widespread self-serving belief is large parts of local government that there is no duty to promote democracy at a local level – that this is simply the job of politicians.

Currently, local government officers can be given any number of excuses to avoid doing anything to encourage people to interact with them (or worse, with councillors) on policy issues, and the culmulative effect of the various bits of legislation has been to stengthen permanent officials against elected councillors.

All of that said, legislation is a very blunt instrument to do this. Had the bill gone through largely unamended (and we’ve always known really that this was never going to happen – this was the ultimate peice of ‘signaling legislation’ – designed to position the government politically rather than result in any outcome), anyone with local government experience knows what would have followed: Committees would have been convened – probably in each local authority – and clumsy bits of guidance would have been drawn up.

I have tender bits of my anatomy that I’d rather dangle in boiling oil than sit through that farce.

Oh – one other thing: The ‘duty to promote local democracy’ was probably the only good thing about that legislation unless I’ve forgotten something.

Later this month, in Belfast, the PICamp event I mentioned here earlier is going to pick up on Tim Davies ’50 obstacles’ initiative and look to see if anything can be done to take the idea forward. 

As we’ve seen with MPs expenses, legislation doesn’t work when you want to bring about constitutional reform; What you need is ‘gamechanging’ ideas. I think that the way MPs have been exposed in recent weeks has done a disproportionate amount of damage to democracy in the UK – but it shows that real change only happens when the people who need to change are looking down a gun-barrel.

I’m not sure that legislation or high-profile appointments will meet this need. They seem to be more about the need to be seen to do something.