'Lambeth will be first coop council'

Thursday, February 18, 2010

As discussed in this week's Public Servant e-newsletter, in the run up to May's general election the two main political parties appear to be battling it over not how different they are but how similar their policies and proposals are – after the Conservative party championed the 'easyCouncil' approach in Barnett, Labour has claimed that Lambeth will become the UK's first 'John Lewis council', with residents getting council tax rebates if they help to run services.

At the same time, service users and local residents could be allowed to vote on whether to run primary schools, Sure Start centres, youth clubs and other facilities into citizen-led 'mutuals'. Residents could also have greater control of housing estates through co-operatives and so-called 'micro-mutuals' could enable people to make use of personalised budgets for care service users.

At present, the employee-owned company Greenwich Leisure runs Lambeth's leisure centres and the area has more housing estates run by residents than any other borough in the capital.

Council leader Steve Reed said: "We are all looking at a reduction of 20 per cent of funding from central government, and no council can afford to keep on doing what it's been doing. But while Barnet have come up with a plan to pare back what services they offer, we don't want to. Instead we're looking at a different settlement that will move the boundaries of who does what, getting users involved in putting together the services they want. Mutual and co-operative values will be our compass. We'll give the voters a clear choice – cuts if you vote Tory but with us, not only fewer cuts, but also positive side-effects around community cohesion."

Cabinet Office minister Tessa Jowell said: "Modern mutualism speaks directly to what local people want from their local councils. The mutual movement is one that will be grassroots-led, not Whitehall-imposed – which is why the leadership that the people of Lambeth are proposing to show is so important."

Trials of a new way of involving local people in public spending decisions are said to have been so successful that the government's rural watchdog the Commission for Rural Communities (CRC) now wants more rural local authorities to adopt what is termed 'participatory budgeting' through the Participatory Budgeting Unit.

CRC executive director Crispin Moor said: "Participatory budgeting offers rural people their own say in local community investments. We now have practical examples of people deciding local priorities and allocating resources across a wide range of services including community safety schemes, health awareness campaigns, parish footpaths and much more. This approach can bring communities together, help people understand the complexities of public budget-setting and deliver public services which better meet local needs."

• Barnet's 'easyCouncil' has announced that it is looking to part privatise its planning service by selling the department to managers and staff or setting up a joint venture with the private sector.