Going local

The Conservative Party has recently discovered to its dismay that it is unpopular. This is despite having a leader who seems fluent and intelligent, and who actively promotes ideas about society and politics that deserve some respect. These ideas (summarised as ‘localism’ and the ‘big society’) echo some fundamental themes in British conservatism, dating from Edmund Burke or before. In particular, conservatives propose that society is not a structure that can be demolished and rebuilt at will, but an organic whole, in which each citizen has a wide range of personal affiliations which involve mutual interdependence, guidance, and support. The term ‘big society’ has presumably been coined by David Cameron’s advisors to contrast with ‘big government’, which, according to conservatives, involves the replacement of these relationships by the impersonal imposition of centrally-determined rules, and the creation of subordination to the state in place of the mutual interdependence of free people. Localism is the logical consequence of this central idea. Conservatives see an efficient government as an essential requirement for a civilised society, but wherever possible it should be organised as part of that society, being delivered locally by people who know each other’s needs, rather than imposed centrally.  

Conservatives do not of course believe in equality as a virtue. Indeed, many conservative theorists celebrate inequality - a feature that makes conservatism particularly attractive for those with great wealth or high social status. Yet conservatives are usually reluctant to recognise that the extreme inequalities in this country undermine their very aspirations for both the big society and localism. Wealthy corporations and individuals make decisions with little regard for the day-to-day lives of their workers or the people who live down the road from their offices and factories. They prefer to build houses where they like and erect large standardised supermarkets to replace the distinctive local shops in our traditional high streets. Local control of planning would inevitably obstruct such developments.

These conflicts can be seen in the government’s Localism Act and its proposals for neighbourhood planning. One element of the Act is the ‘community right to challenge’. This involves parish and town councils taking over the running of services previously provided by city, county or district councils. But once a case is made by the parish or town council, then the service is open to tender. This means that the likes of Serco and Capita, which excel at winning contracts but not at providing decent services, will move in and expand their empires.

Another conflict, particularly relevant to my own village, is over new housing. The Localism Act has introduced ‘neighbourhood planning’, which is intended to give individual parishes, towns and neighbourhood of cities the right to develop their own plan for the development of their locality. ‘Town planning’, however, no longer involves the sort of vision that gave the world Bath or even Welwyn Garden City. Instead, it now means little more than the allocation of land for housing and commercial development, and ensuring that the necessary services are in place to support them. Nevertheless, devolving the right to determine land use is potentially important. The English countryside with its scattered communities is precious and vulnerable. But developers prefer greenfield sites (which are cheaper) in country villages (which are more attractive for prosperous commuters). Local control over development sites would enable towns and villages to block the speculative housebuilding which has covered so much of the countryside with breeze block and stud walls.

However, localism and neighbourhood planning contradicts the general  operating principles  of national and local government in England, which are based on centralisation, secretiveness, and subservience to the powerful rather than respect for the views of the ordinary citizenry. In my part of England, three district councils have come together to develop the South Worcestershire Development Plan (SWDP). If it had followed the principles of localism, it would have identified future needs for employment, housing, transport and other public services in the South of the County, and then set some general targets to be discussed and implemented locally. Instead, the SWDP not only specifies individual development sites in each town and village, but also the precise number of houses to be built on each site. The total number of houses for South Worcestershire has been based on national targets (no doubt set after a cosy discussion between senior civil servants and the building industry), and the allocation of housing numbers to individual towns and villages has been based on sites already identified by developers. A ‘consultation’ by the District Council’s planning department consisted of a planner visiting the village hall and telling us what was going to happen. 

And so Malvern Hills District Council, which only six years ago fought against an appeal by a developer to despoil a local view in my village, now supports the SWDP which schedules the very same site for 62 houses. At the same time, it is organising workshops to explain its commitment to localism. Perhaps they should listening to people as a first step.