The new powers conferred on communities by the Localism Bill are not restricted only to geographical communities but will also apply to virtual communities or causes, the minister in charge of the Bill said yesterday.

Addressing the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Civil Society, Greg Clark, minister for decentralisation, said the Bill aimed to effect a radical shift of power from central government to local government and then to communities.  

This would reduce the general sense that “everything is initiated from the top” and build people’s confidence that they can shape their communities and their lives, he said.

The ‘community right to challenge’ contained in the Bill will allow civil society groups to put forward alternative proposals for running any public service, and the local authority will be obliged to give it due consideration. Crucially, this will apply to causal communities as well as geographical ones.

In response to a question about the definition of ‘community’ under the Bill, Clark (pictured) said: “There are real opportunities, especially for organisations in the sector whose mission is to serve virtual communities. For example, people with disabilities, where the community is spread across a wide area, the organisation could make a very good case to provide services to members of that community even though they cross physical boundaries.”

Clark said the Bill was the government’s response to years of campaigning by civil society groups and in time would come to be regarded as the start of the reversal of the creeping accumulation of power by central government. “We have reached the point of diminishing returns,” he said. “The increasing centralisation has been eclipsed by a different view, that the man in Whitehall cannot possibly know best.”

‘Stop stopping people doing things’

He added that “if you really want to galvanise bottom-up power, you have got to stop stopping people doing things”.  The Bill would facilitate this new approach by allowing greater local control over tax and spending policies; diversifying supply of public services; opening government up to greater public scrutiny; cutting red tape; giving communities more power to run their neighbourhoods, and strengthening accountability to local people rather than to ministers.

Clark deftly fended off a comment that it will not be easy to encourage local authority officials to shift from a position of control to one of trust, as the Bill anticipates, by stating that most local government officials entered their role with the intent to make things better, and would be liberated by the Bill.

“We believe it will give them an opportunity to recover what attracted them to a role in local government in the first place, to revive their vocation,” he said. “How dispiriting it has been for them to be viewed as agents of central government, doing things that are prescribed centrally. I’ve been impressed by the numbers of local authority employees that have been coming to us saying ‘this is great, can we get on with it please’.”

Clark also defended the reserve power handed to the Secretary of State in the Bill, by saying the transfer of power facilitated by the Bill was so radical that a reserve power was necessary as a backup in case local decisions are made that are “completely bizarre and outlandish”. This was preferable to publishing an exhaustive list of permissive powers, he said.

Blackman: Bill 'too late' for some voluntary groups

Conservative MP Bob Blackman made the point that between now and the Bill getting Royal Assent, many civil society groups could go to the wall thanks to funding cuts and so the ‘community right to challenge’ would come too late for them.  

But Clark said the Bill had to progress in the usual way, though he pointed out that at least the government had introduced the Bill early in the life of the Parliament.

He added: “It would be completely wrong if any local authority tried to get under the wire to treat the voluntary sector in a way that it wouldn’t be allowed to under the Bill. They should not be allowed to get away with that.

“Also it would be very short-sighted of them to do so. Most progressive authorities recognise the opportunities to do things differently, so to have a Jurassic approach to dealing with the sector will be exposed by this Bill.”