Local democracy is not all potholes and bins

By the time this is published Thursday’s European elections will have rendered the local elections a distant memory, but this is a monthly column so bear with me. Throughout the run-up to and analysis of the local elections earlier this month we were constantly told they were all about Brexit rather that local issues like “potholes and bins” and that hard-working politicians who had been dealing diligently with said potholes and bins were being unfairly punished for the sins of their national parties.

Well if my daily cycle ride to work is anything to go by, austerity has put paid to any comprehensive action on potholes. Until, that is, they threaten to swallow a bus. And bins: they haven’t been a political issue since we were all given recycling bins 10 years ago. But no, no: I’m falling into the same trap!

问题是——我们真的认为这就是地方政府的全部工作吗?那么社会服务、教育、住房政策、交通和道路、环境卫生、社区发展、再生和规划呢?这些事情不重要吗?我意识到，地方政府被剥夺了权力和责任，但它们仍然非常重要。例如，他们不再经营大多数学校或拥有他们的市政住房，但他们仍然控制着进入学校和社会住房的权利。就大多数人的日常生活而言，大多数时候他们至少和国家政府一样重要，当然比坑洼和垃圾箱重要得多。以这种方式提及地方政府是一种极大的优越感，并助长了地方议会被边缘化和被视为无关紧要的更大趋势。

In Greater Manchester we don’t have the mayoral election until next year but the main election issue in many districts was the Greater Manchester Spatial Framework. In the places that saw political shifts, like Bolton, Stockport and Trafford, the issue was allocation of sites in the green belt (even if this was much reduced in the most recent consultation draft of the plan published earlier this year). Sure Brexit will have played its part and probably accounted for independents being the main beneficiaries of the protest vote, but it was real local politics.

Quality architecture and placemaking need respected, well-resourced, self-confident local government

This matters for those of us in the built environment. One way or another local councils are partners in all development. They have regulatory oversight over planning and building regulations, they collect S106 and CIL contributions, they provide services like education to new residents, they adopt the completed public realm (taking responsibility for future potholes) and, yes, they even empty the bins.

They are also significant players in the property market as major landowners, promoters of regeneration programmes and, increasingly, direct investors and developers. And they are the ones who have to account for the outcomes of development to their electorate in a way that developers and architects can largely avoid. We all complain about bureaucratic officers and ill-informed local politicians but we shouldn’t be surprised if this is the result of the constant belittling of local government. Quality architecture and placemaking need respected, well-resourced, self-confident local government.

We should also celebrate local representative democracy. We talk a lot about direct democracy, about community involvement and participation, about localism, neighbourhood planning and the co-creation of new places with the local community.

In much of this debate, direct democracy trumps representative democracy. With direct democracy we are talking directly to the community rather than to distant councillors. However the term “local community” implies that we are somehow talking to everyone, whereas in reality even in the most engaged communities, we are talking to a few hundred people at most and they may not be representative of the wider community. By contrast my local councillor Angeliki Stogia was re-elected in May with just over 2,500 of the 3,600 votes cast on a 33% turnout. This is more than 10 times the mandate of all the local community or voluntary organisations in the area. Of course there is a question about how many of those votes were due to her excellent work locally and in the wider city and how many came from tribal loyalty to her party.

我常常想，理想的制度应该是每个社区聚在一起，提名三个人在更广泛的城市辩论中代表他们发言。这才是真正的民主。然后我意识到，这正是我们已经拥有的;只是感觉不总是这样。