A county on the verge of change

Kent has the foundations in place for a radical devolution of power that will make a reality of the Big Society

By Paul Carter

An iron law of British politics has been broken. No longer does the retreat from localism begin on the doorstep of 10 Downing Street.

In its first heady days of power, David Cameron’s Conservative/LibDem coalition has committed itself to a “radical devolution of power” of the like unseen for generations. The Big Society will be built and, in Kent, I believe it can rest on very firm foundations.

Delivering devolution is not going to be easy and it’s not just central government that’s going to have to change. Local government must also prepare itself for new responsibilities and accountability. It must examine its own operations and partnerships, testing whether services are always exercised at the very best levels, while strengthening and enabling local communities and voluntary groups to build community capacity.

The pace of change from the centre is already escalating. Going is much of the funding for regional government, going are quangos such as Becta and gone are regional spatial strategies telling local councils how many houses they should build. Within the new politics, it’s now time for local government to prove both its readiness to take on new, devolved powers and its own willingness to devolve and empower local people, driving out further costs and achieving the very best value for money. With devolution comes responsibility and tough decisions particularly in this era of austerity and the demands to deliver more for less.

Earlier this year, I published Bold Steps for Radical Reform, which called for just such a change, setting out radical devolution to local communities and local government at every level. By accelerating a major “control shift”, it showed how real devolution and empowerment could deliver substantial savings to the public purse while driving up standards of service for local people.

Fundamental to achieving this would be a new and transformed relationship between central and local government. Respecting current statutory duties, and the co-terminus operation with other public agencies, I proposed devolution of regional and national powers to the family of local government in 46 suggested sub-national areas based on city and shire county boundaries.

By organising itself around this spatial level, I am convinced local government can give Ministers the confidence that it has both the structural capacity to take on a range of devolved functions and the scale to drive through significant efficiencies and cost savings.

Following hard on the heels of Bold Steps, our Kent Total Place submission to the Treasury – part of the national pilot – then built the case for greater local decision-making and accountability for the total public spending within Kent.

Offering an approach to deliver better public services across a whole area at less cost, our submission identified a massive £8.25 billion being spent across the county by the public sector. Much of this rains down directly on our residents and businesses from national departments, quangos and agencies with little local co-ordination or accountability. Indeed, early findings from the Total Place Treasury pilots suggested that councils and councillors were directly responsible for only 5 per cent of the totality of local public services - or, put another way, just £350 of the £7,000 spent for every person in the country on these services.

Total Place re-enforces the argument in Bold Steps to Radical Reform for a new and direct relationship with the Treasury to cut through the departmental silos in Whitehall and ultimately place greater local decision-making and accountability firmly within the locality. Bold Steps proposed a renewed central-local relationship moving back to the original intention at the core of the first Local Public Service Agreements  - bi-lateral contracts between central and local government based on a small number of agreed outcomes.  Area-based funding to local authority-led local partnerships through new pooling arrangements would then be a natural progression.

But in Kent, we have we not waited for new powers or funding to be devolved before we prepare ourselves to exercise them. Working together as the family of local government in the county, with all Kent’s Borough and District leaders, we are developing a radical new model of working between our councils to demonstrate that local government in the county is united and has its act firmly in order to deliver the new Government’s ambitions for decentralisation and government at a local level. Our Kent model will involve radical changes in the way we work together as leaders, increasing democratic decision-making over local public spending within the county and enhancing the sovereignty and accountability of our individual councils. We will take strategic decisions and deliver local public services at the level best able to respond to the needs and aspirations of local people and save taxpayers money. 

In addition, we have embarked on new devolutionary journey within the County Council in the way that we operate. Recognising the importance of district boundaries and commissioning according to local need and demand, we have cut the number of local children’s trusts down to just 12 - one per district - while our Highways Service is being revolutionised by local contracting again on district boundaries. The blizzard of winter criticism we received about potholes has melted away with flexible local highways gangs responding swiftly to local need and potholes filled to the very highest standards. Increasingly we will see local commissioning and decision-making as the standard.

Equally, we are aware of the economic diversity within the county and the need to localise and target our approach, working closely with the local District, local partners and the local community. Our Total Place submission developed a proposal to transform and regenerate two wards of Thanet, in East Kent, that are the two most deprived areas in the South East of England. Almost 40 per cent of the working age population are on benefits, sub-standard privately rented accommodation is rife, crime rates are over three times the Kent average and life expectancy in Margate Central is a full 17 years shorter than the best elsewhere in the county.

The cost of social benefits in the two wards totals a massive £48 million per year. Helping people into work and independence through targeted local support to bring welfare expenditure down just to the Kent average would release £37 million annually. By making Margate a Special Intervention Area as we propose, transformational change is planned to drive up the quality of local housing, to stimulate the local economy and to tackle worklessness - pooling resources to get all 16-24 year olds into employment and/or training, partly through the development of an effective local apprenticeship programme with local employers.

In delivering localism, our relationship with civil society - the local communities, charities and voluntary groups that weave the social fabric of an area - is fundamental. For Kent County Council, a healthy civil society is not only critical in delivering many of our core services, such as social care, it is the key to helping people to do more for themselves within their communities and enhancing local wellbeing. We are the first to acknowledge our role in helping to build community capital to support local people to do this.

Over a number of years, our Kent Volunteers programme and awards have boosted volunteering in the county, while our Kent Member Grants scheme was used as a case study of streamlined local grant giving to support local projects in Decentralisation Minister Greg Clark’s Voluntary Action in the 21st Century Green Paper. We continue to work closely with Nick Hurd, the new Charities Minister, to inform and develop policy to support civil society.

We also recognise the massive potential of social enterprise within the county. In nurturing and growing the sector, we are mapping social enterprise in Kent and its contribution to the local economy, while working with the sector to understand more about social return on investment. Early figures indicate the turnover of all social enterprise activity in Kent and Medway could be as much as £1.2 billion and the number of employees total over 50,000.

While the sector is already considerable in Kent, we believe it still has tremendous potential to expand, not only in health and social care, but in equally vital areas such as in tackling worklessness. We are looking at innovative solutions, funding voluntary bodies such as “SkillForce” to support young people successfully into work and training; creating new job opportunity, building community cohesion and tackling programmes of work that are much needed and overdue, that otherwise would not happen.

Devolution will be at the heart of the Big Society in Kent, with local government at all levels both empowered, and empowering, their local communities. Big government will have an ever-decreasing role to play as local people - in their communities or through their democratically-elected local representatives - take increasing control of their own affairs.

An empowered society is both a healthy society and a Big Society and, in Kent, the foundations for its growth have been firmly cemented.

29 May 2010

Paul Carter. Leader, Kent County Council