AMT Public

A push towards greater community involvement within the local area appears on the surface to be a positive policy. It does however require a need for all sectors of the community to have the capacity and ability to get involved with the avoidance of any unintended consequences.

A discussion group at the Small Towns for Tomorrow Conference focused on how to reduce the democratic deficit in the small town setting, exploring ways to ensure that local people retain a voice and input into their community and are not overshadowed by bigger interests.

Key points

1. The emerging Big Society agenda attempts to empower local communities to make decisions and shape their local areas. How can small towns make the most of this as an opportunity?
2. Giving communities a greater involvement in decision making is a good thing, but there must be a framework in place to ensure that this is done in a democratic and accountable way.
3. Local democracy is vital if local people are to feel fully empowered. Addressing poor voter participation levels is key – party politics or single issues can often get in the way of the democratic process. The provision of continued training for town councillors and clerks to ensure that they have the capacity to understand the wider policy context and can fully represent the communities for which they stand is helpful. The roles of the various tiers of councils, and how the elected representatives at each tier interacts at the town level, is variable and can lead to gaps and a lack of follow-through and ownership.
4. From a planning perspective, open source planning is a risk and based on little evidence of success. Rather than engaging local communities and fostering a spirit of innovation and entrepreneurship, it could create widespread disappointment with planning schemes being hijacked or bottom-up suggestions ignored.
5. Community Led Planning is an approach to bottom-up strategy development, but is often dependent on who is leading the partnership and more often than not focuses on the ‘lighter’ issues. If you can identify good volunteers, however, they can often have a greater interest in local issues than even the local councillor.
6. Transparency is a core issue in terms of spending and the precept was viewed as a good example of transparent and democratic way of raising funds for specific projects.

Do you agree with these key points? Add your comments below.