Tonight Croydon Council's Cabinet is considering an officers' report proposing three pilots involving community engagement to devolve decision making to local communities.
While devolving decision making out of the Town Hall is crucial and something I have supported for over 40 years, the paper has a number of drawbacks.
I have therefore sent my comments on the paper to all Councillors and asked them to have Scrutiny Committee call it in for public examination and debate.
This is what I have written.
1. The report Devolution to local communities is a very welcome initiative towards
residents and their organisations being more involved in decision making that affects
their areas.
2. Because it has several major drawbacks it is to be hoped that it will
be called in by the Scrutiny Committee and that the Committee will invite people to submit their views in writing
or orally at a special meeting just devoted to this paper. The delay involved
is not crucial and could result in an improved and strengthened approach.
3. Localism
Act 2011. The inclusion of the paragraph ‘The Localism Act … democratic’ is
misleading and should be deleted. The Act is not a serious contribution to
decentralisation. It is almost Orwellian. The Neighbourhood Planning provision
is a costly exercise for local community organisations. The Neighbourhood Forum
provision is meaningless unless local authorities agree to discuss establishing
them with local organisations. Reforms to the planning system have taken
decision making away from Councils and therefore reduced the ability of local
communities to influence the decisions. These include the rules relating to
LDCs, GPDOs, the right of developers to turn office buildings to residential
without planning permission, and the lack of the right of appeal by community
groups to planning decisions they disagree with which the Government opposes.
4. It is recommended that all Councillors
read the discussion on the Act in:
· the National Coalition for
Independent Act and Trades Union Congress publication Localism: threat or opportunity? Perspectives on the Localism Act for
union and community organisers and activists https://www.tuc.org.uk/sites/default/files/tucfiles/localism_guide_2012.pdf
·
The
report Two years on, what has the
Localism Act achieved? of the views of Jules Pipe, the Mayor of Hackney and Chair of London Councils in 1913.
5. Top-Down.
The report is the views of senior officers, who traditionally have a top-down
perspective, and who do not like criticism of their proposals. There are no
views incorporated as to the views of those who have been involved in e.g.
Thornton Heath as to the success or otherwise of the engagement initiatives
there, and what lessons can be learnt to strengthen the next steps there and
inform the approach in the pilot areas.
6. Key
Decision. The report says that it is not a key decision. This is
debateable. By not having a pre-Scrutiny review the views of those in the
community involved in different forms of engagement cannot be taken into
account to assess whether the proposed approach is acceptable with or without
changes. For example, an important set of experiences will have been submitted
into the parks consultation. These need to be examined and reflected upon
before final decisions on the approach are approved.
7. The
Local Plan. The consultation on the
Local Plan resulted in the submission of a considerable number of views
from residents and other locally based organisations on how they wanted their
areas protected in the future. They sought to influence decision making on
their local areas. Many of their suggestions were rejected by the officers on suspect
grounds which has only fuelled hostility to the Council, increasing the belief
that it is not interested in taking seriously local views.
8. Public
Health Issues. The report does not sufficiently take into account the
issues raised in the Public Health Report 2016 in relation to the incidence of
social isolation and loneliness, what they are in each of pilot area and what
the implications are for engagement in those areas. A major flaw in the Public
Health Report is that while it recognises that ethnicity is a contributing
factor, there is no data provided.
9. Digital
Divide. It does not acknowledge the digital divide and what I will call the
‘digital deficit’ (that is the number of people who while digitally connected
are not in linked into the digital messages from the Council and others). There
is another aspect of the divide which is rarely talked about: the problems
those for whom English is a second language have in reading information in
English.
10. Print
Communication. It does not acknowledge the need to find ways of engaging
with people through traditionally printed means. The growing reliance on
digital communication is reducing the ability of people to know about how and
what to engage in. One way may be to ensure that the annual Ward budgets have a
requirement to fund regular information leaflets into residents letter boxes.
The English reading problems of those for whom it is a second language also
apply here.
11. Disillusionment
and cynicism. It does not
acknowledge that a challenge that will
be faced in each priority area is the attitude of residents who are
disillusioned and cynical about the way they have seen what they believe has
been the riding rough shod over the collectively expressed wishes of local
residents in the past. Why should they believe that the Council will change and
that was is being proposed is not just tokenism? Two examples in a non-pilot
area are:
· the imposition of the BMX Track in
Norbury Park against large scale local opposition which has damaged the
potential for working on other improvements to the Park between residents and
the Council.
· the decision to approve the planning
application for 18 Pollards Hill West.
There are
many other examples across the Borough.
12. Lack
of Monitoring and Decision Making Structure. There is no discussion about having a
mechanism for local residents and their organisations to be involved with Ward
Councillors in monitoring and holding officers to account in the way in which
projects are implemented in the pilot areas. Whether these are called
Neighbourhood, Ward or Area Committees, Forums or Advisory bodies, does not
matter. Despite having a lot of detail about Neighbourhood Forums on its
website (https://www.croydon.gov.uk/planningandregeneration/framework/neighbourhood/neighbourhoodforums)
the Council does not seem to have taken any steps to ensure that any have been
established. The absence of such bodies ensures that the detailed decisions
will be taken by officers using the top-down approach (see above) rejecting
those ideas they do not personally agree with. It will reinforce the existing
cynicism that most consultations and engagement are not genuine exercises –
just tick-box tokenism.
13. Resolving
Differences in Neighbourhoods. There are many different perspectives in
every neighbourhood. Older owner occupiers may welcome the rise in house prices
in the hope they can sell, buy cheaper elsewhere, and have money towards their
old age. Their neighbours may be concerned that they are selling to buy to let
landlords or developers who want to convert the houses, with the increased
number of people and competition for parking and increase in noise that results.
14. Although Croydon has the veneer of being a
multi-cultural area there are deep resentments about newcomers on nationality
and religious grounds. There are deep divisions between religions and within
them about sexual orientation. The increase in hate crime in the Borough shows
how challenging the process of acceptance of change and interacting positively
is. Such tensions need to be mediated, and one method is through a formal
structure supported by other forms of community engagement.
15. Volunteering.
Meaningful engagement involves the twin encouragement to people be citizen
activists and/or volunteers. The two roles are very different, but complement
each other. It has to be recognised that most residents’ lives, especially in
areas experience socio-economic stress have least time, energy and money to be
able to be either. Volunteers need organisation and managerial support
especially if they are ‘working’ in public service venues.
16. Limit
of Council Influence. There is a lack of recognition that most changes in a
local area are driven by forces completely outside the control of residents and
the Council. The particular drivers in recent years and look likely to continue
are:
- · Developers wanting to carry out schemes which are not wanted by residents.
- · Developers proposing schemes which do not fit with Council policies, e.g. bedroom sizes, safeguarding family sized houses, but which the Planners and the Planning Committee feel they cannot oppose because of the pressures from Government and the Mayor of London to deliver a target of new homes regardless of whether they meet Borough policies and needs.
- · The loss of employment sites, making it more difficult to generate job creation, resulting in more people having to go out of Borough to work.
- · The rise in house prices (at least 10% in the last year) as people in Inner London look to move to Croydon because it is still marginally cheaper.
- · The activities of buy-to-let landlords increasing the occupancy of previously owner-occupied houses thereby creating more competition for parking, more noise, litter and fly-tipping problems.
- · The increasing rent levels in the private sector which make renting more expensive and also drive up the level of rents in ‘affordable’ housing because of the 80% formula link.
- · Commercial property landlords putting up shop rents and driving existing businesses out.
- · National planning rules that have prevented the Council from stopping the spread of betting shops and the conversion of empty office blocks to residential, and from stopping unwanted schemes which are allowed under the General Planning Development Order.
- · The inadequacy of bus services in some areas, and the incompetence of the train operators to run a reliable service.
- · Anti-social behaviour such as fly-tipping,
- · Anti-social behaviour such as speeding cars in back streets, which cannot be solved by 20mph zones because of the lack of enforcement, cyclists riding through red lights and without lights at night, creating risks to pedestrians and to themselves from motorists.
- · The sale everywhere of alcohol leading to an increase in drinking on the street, litter and alcoholism.
17. Council
Actions. None of this is helped by:
- · the Government funding cuts to what the Council can do
- · the depletion in the number of planning staff when the number of applications has been increasing
- · the depletion in the number of enforcement officers meaning that issues like the illegal smoking inside the premises of shisha cafes (e.g. the Havanas in Norbury’s London Rd) remain unresolved.
- The last point feeds into the cynicism about the Council’s ability to act to protect local communities.
