New Localism in Practice
New localism has been most strongly advocated by the New Local Government Network think tank. Advocates in the Labour government have included Alan Milburn, the former health secretary, and Hazel Blears.
Nick Raynsford, the local government minister from 2001–2005, used his tenure to launch a process called Local:Vision, which aimed at creating a 10-year strategy for local government policy and took a distinctively new localist perspective. His successor, David Miliband, appears to be developing this approach further, suggesting the continuing development of a new localist agenda in Labour's third term (which began in 2005).
Key new localist policies include:
Foundation hospitals - the granting of more autonomy to NHS hospital trusts that score the highest marks in their inspections, including freedom to borrow money on the markets and adjust staff pay levels. The foundation trusts must create an elected board including representatives from the local community to oversee their work.
Freedoms for local government - Labour granted a number of new freedoms to councils, including the right to freely borrow capital on the financial markets and a general reduction in the number of plans that must be submitted for central government approval. Further freedoms were promised to those councils that scored the top 'excellent' grade in the key Comprehensive Performance Assessment inspection process. These include freedom from council tax capping and a three year holiday from inspection. The local government community has complained that these freedoms are not always granted in practice.
Neighbourhoods - Labour showed a growing interest in creating new forms of more direct neighbourhood governance in the hope of improving the responsiveness of public services and engaging local people in both local democracy and the delivery of their own services through service level contracts and co-production.
Education reform - it might also be argued that the government's policy of transferring power to school headteachers from local education authorities represented a new localist approach to devolving beyond the council to local communities.
Read more about this topic: New Localism
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