What is…South Tyneside Council?

In this series, we're going to be looking at South Tyneside Council - what it is, how it works, how it's funded and so on. This edition: what is the Localism Act and how does it affect STC?

Local government:

Although there are several elements to this section of the Act, including the abolition of the central Standards Board (local authorities now draw up their own standards code) one of the main changes was to give councils a general power of competence. Simply put, in the past councils could only do what the law specifically said they could do, that’s now been flipped and the council can do whatever they want provided they do not break other laws. The idea is to allow the council to be innovative and imaginative in their approach to meeting local needs.

With regards to the local community, the Act gives communities certain rights, such as binding referendums on Council Tax (if they want to raise CT more than the annual Government level, the council must get the support of voters in a referendum), a right to challenge (community groups can challenge the way the council is running a service, if the council accepts the challenge that service must be put out to tender) and a community right to buy assets of community value (should any listed assets come up for a change of ownership leading to their loss from public use, community groups will be given time to try to raise the money to buy them).

Localising planning:

The government considered the increased centralisation of planning powers as having had a negative effect on localised development with local people have little or no say in development decisions. To combat this, the Act introduced a new, local level of planning in the form of neighbourhood development plans. The intention was to empower communities to decide their own futures by making the planning system more democratic, effective and transparent with the hope that by having a say in the design and location, communities would be more willing to accept further development.

Localising social housing:

Previously almost anyone could apply to live in social housing, whether they need[ed] it or not. The Act gives local authorities greater freedom to set their own policies about who should qualify to go on the waiting list for social housing…[t]his means that they are now able, if they wish, to prevent people who have no need of social housing from joining the waiting list.

To address this, social landlords were authorised to grant fixed term tenancies for a minimum 2 years to allow social landlords to manage their properties more effectively to deliver better results for the local community. With regards to homelessness legislation, before 2011 homeless people were able to refuse privately rented housing and request temporary accommodation until long-term social housing became available - the Act allows the council to employ the privately rented sector.

Introduced as part of the Coalition government’s Big Society initiative, the Localism Act aimed to integrate the free market with a theory of social solidarity based on increased decentralisation and an emphasis on localism. But what has it actually achieved?

The Localism Act has had little effect on the balance of power between central and local government. Power continues to be concentrated firmly in the hands of central government, services have been devolved to boroughs however it’s often simply a cost-shunting exercise rather than a true devolution of power and fiscal autonomy, the responsibility is devolved but not the funding to fulfil it and as we have seen in the earlier episodes, local authorities are forced to depend on central grants which come with strict guidelines of what the money can and can’t be used for.

The CAST team strongly recommend that you take a look at the Localism Act as this is only a brief outline.

SERIES CONCLUDES HERE: How can we make STC more democratic?