Why we should welcome the localism bill

 By Dave Patten

The devil is in the details, of course.  This is the great British truism, mouthed by think-tanks and officials when any new idea looms against the horizon.  No less true for being a truism, of course, but also a cliché.

This won’t be the only new economics blog post about the Localism Bill, but my intention is to be refreshingly free of detail (but yes, of course, the devil is in them, I know…)

Because the question of whether the revolutionary new planning framework set out there will deliver us from Tesco, or deliver us further into their clutches – and the other monopolists – is not clear year.  But what is clear is that the Localism Bill is a triumph for a whole raft of ideas pioneered or popularized at nef:

• Variable local business rates – not our idea but a central plank of the Clone Town campaign.
• ‘Bureaucracy busters’, along the same lines as the Co-production Guarantee proposed by nef, which would provide support from the centre for innovative new ways of delivering services that are stymied by inappropriate regulation (which I hope will be used to rescue co-operative nurseries).
• Community budgets – again not our idea, but a critical pre-requisite for a sustainable local economy.
• Community assets: the right for local people to buy up local institutions or buildings if the council insists on closing them.
• Outcomes-based commissioning – setting broad objectives without specifying the ‘one best way’ to achieve them (yes, I know, don’t tell me – the devil is in the detail).

But perhaps the way the Localism Bill most reflects nef’s work is in the neighbourhood powers based on neighbourhood plans, which owe a great deal to the most important piece of under-used legislation ever passed in this area: the Sustainable Communities Act, drafted originally at nef.  That same idea, that neighbourhoods could draw up broad plans for what they want to achieve and draw down the powers they need to achieve them, owes us a great deal.

But no, this isn’t a panacea.  It is hard to imagine the community right to buy being very effective in a period of stringent austerity –though it will provide a basis for negotiation with local authorities.  Nor is there anything in the Bill about some of the most important aspects of localism – local entrepreneurs, local credit, local banks, or busting local monopolies.

That’s for tomorrow.  But we shouldn’t leap so quickly to the next campaign without paying tribute to nef’s funders and supporters, without whose imagination, pressure and resources, we never would have got this far.

But yes, the devil is…