Democracy and Local Councils
Written by Geoff Collard Saturday, 27 February 2010
The recent debate in the City Council's planning committee about biofuels at Avonmouth highlights the problems that councils have in this country. Central government diktat is increasing inexorably. The Government at Westminster has far too much control over our lives, such as often to render impossible the ability of elected councillors to decide for themselves what is best for their local community. In these circumstances, the powers of local councils have become just a sham, a fig leaf for central government to claim it is committed to local democracy.
Take the planning application for biofuels at Avonmouth. Because of people power (and some committed councillors who were also opposed to it) the planning committee threw out the application. A victory - yes. But this was due to the courage of the councillors in standing up to the local government machine in the form of council officers in the planning department and the council lawyers who pressed the councillors hard to allow the application on the ridiculous ground that for them to refuse it would be illegal! If this is true, it makes the whole planning process pointless, and there is no local democracy, because provided developers stick to basic planning regulations (which are drafted strongly in their favour) councils would be in no position to refuse any planning development. And this is indeed what the council officers say. It takes a strong councillor to withstand this kind of pressure. Additionally, after the councillors did reject the application, one council officer complained to councillors that they had just cost the city council money because the developers would appeal and it would cost the city council to defend it! Yet further pressure on the councillors by their own officers.
This rejection was a victory, but it is likely to be short-lived because the second problem is that developers can (and always do) appeal against the refusal. This means that the application is referred to the Secretary of State (usually sent to the civil service Government Office of the North East [GONE!] on the Minister's behalf). Sometimes there is a public inquiry (and probably will be in this case due to the large public interest in it). The decision is then taken out of the council's hands and left to the lawyers and the Secretary of State, using the planning laws which inherently favour development. Then if the appeal is allowed (and it usually is) the development can go ahead and the local council is powerless.
This is how planning policy is in fact controlled by central, not local, government. So the problem is that the planning laws need to be changed so that local councils, responding to local people's wishes, have the ultimate power to decide planning policy in their area. Appeals from planning committees could still be allowed, but crucially such appeals should be to the whole council of the locality concerned - and not to central government.
As it stands, planning policy in this country is in effect dictated by the national plans of the central government. There are many more examples of this central government control in other policy areas also. It is time power was given back to local councils, and perhaps it is time for the Green Party to take a lead in this.