What a co-incidence!

What a co-incidence!

After the Seminar telling me how control over planning and development was being taken away from locally elected and democratically accountable local Councillors and passed to appointed and unaccountable regional guanos. The timing was perfect for me to receive an e-mail invitation to a briefing in Westminster about the historic agreement reportedly signed on December 12th between the Government and the Local Government Association.

Apparently this follows on from commitments made in The Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Act and the "Concord" aims to transform the relationship between central and local authority. Most pertinently by stating clearly that both are equal partners in delivery of services to their citizens. It also states that

‘there should be a presumption that powers are best exercised at the lowest effective and practical level.’

The Concordat commits to –

• Recognising the electoral mandate of every councillor in the country.
  

• Transparency in local service funding and greater flexibility in council funding.
  

• Giving local authorities ‘autonomy’ in line with the rest of the EU.
  

Not sure at all how this squares with the removal of planning from local authority control, unless of course “the lowest effective and practical level" promised in the Concord actually means Regional Level. This would of course also explain the final bullet point about giving local authorities ‘autonomy’ in line with the rest of the EU.

UKIP of course want local to really mean local and resist regional control of anything as we all know the real agenda here is divide and conquer through the regionalisation until there is no such place anymore as the United Kingdom and opposition to the European Union ceases.

On balance I don’t think I'll pay the £215 fee to attend the briefing.