‘Devolution and localisation is at the heart of our vision for Birmingham. Delivering that vision will be one of our principal objectives when we take control of the City Council.’ That’s what Labour’s Council election manifesto said. What has made the news since then has been a row over the decision to hold the District Committee meetings – these are the renamed Constituency Committees which hold devolved budgets for some Council services (see list at end) – in the Council House rather than in the constituencies.
Tory and LibDem councillors, and Rob Pocock, Labour councillor for a Sutton ward, have complained that holding the meetings in the city centre, and during the daytime rather than the evening, prevents local people from attending. According to a post on the Re-Stirred Forum blog, just two people attended the first Hall Green District Committee in the Council House compared to around fifty at previous meetings in the constituency.
Albert Bore’s defence of the new arrangement reveals the fatal democratic deficit at the heart of Labour’s devolution policy. The reason District Committee meetings have to be in the Council House and in the daytime is because it’s more convenient for officers to attend. The reason why it doesn’t matter that citizens don’t attend is because District Committee meetings aren’t intended to be for them. The Manifesto spells out the division of labour between Constituency (i.e. District) and Ward Committees:
‘Constituency committees will not be about themselves engaging directly with residents and communities – this will be the role of Ward Committees.
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Rather, Constituency Committees will focus on key policy priorities at the constituency level by receiving information on the needs of the constituency, by commissioning and monitoring the delivery of services to meet these needs and by taking budget decisions in support of all those matters’
- ‘Ward Committees will be the vehicles for engaging directly with residents and communities. Ward Committees will enable local communities to shape service priorities, work in partnership with Constituency Committees and ensure services reflect the needs of local communities’
So decisions over service delivery, including in some cases their devolved budgets, will be made by quarterly District Committees which are made up solely of the councillors for the local wards. According to the Code of Conduct members of the public can attend but cannot speak apart from asking a question, and that only if the chair allows.
Where citizens are allowed a voice is in their Ward Committee meetings. Labour’s manifesto claims that ‘we have advocated devolving service delivery and decision making to the local level to give people real opportunities to influence and take decisions over the issues that matter most to them.’ But Ward Committees have no power either to take and implement decisions about service delivery or to mandate councillors to vote for and implement them on the District Committee. Participants are totally reliant on persuading ward councillors – of whichever party – to act on their behalf at District Committee meetings. In essence the councillors exercise a veto over the demands of local citizens.
This will become most evident if Ward Committee meetings oppose cuts, marketisation and privatisation in services. How many councillors will commit themselves to representing that view and arguing for it at the next District Committee when all the three main parties are committed to implementing the cuts? How many councillors will see their role in Ward Committees not as empowering their local community but as managing it on behalf of the Council leadership?
Our alternative: four policies to democratise local government in Birmingham
There is a deep disaffection from local politics in Birmingham and radical measures are needed to overcome it. Democracy cannot mean just voting for a councillor every few years, or even being consulted now and again, it means the opportunity for citizens to participate effectively in all the local policy decisions which shape their lives. There is a fundamental principle: where there is power, there must be public participation. In practice this means four key priorities:
1. Open up District Committees to elected community representatives
District Committees should comprise councillors and representatives of local communities elected from Ward Committees and Neighbourhood Forums (which should be set up throughout the city – wards alone are too big). There is a precedent. Some Labour Councils in the 70s and 80s had co-opted representatives from the community on their committees.
There may be places for representatives of local service providers as well, but without voting rights.
2. Open up strategic decision-making at the centre to public participation
More popular participation at the local level is of limited value if the big strategic decisions which determine what happens locally continue to be taken by the tiny group of Cabinet members and top-level officers with no direct public involvement. (And the right to ask questions at Council meetings is a trivial substitute.) We want public participation in the creation of a vision for Birmingham as a whole, which is much more than the aggregation of parochial neighbourhood concerns. There are two steps towards city-wide democratisation.
i) Set up city-wide Forums
Perhaps one for each of the six Cabinet portfolios (Development, Jobs & Skills; Health and Wellbeing; Social Cohesion and Equalities; Children and Family Services; Green, Safe and Smart City; Commissioning, Contracting and Improvement). The Forums, meeting perhaps three or four times a year, would be open to all, but perhaps with voting, where consensus could not be reached, limited to elected representatives from local ward and neighbourhood bodies. Their function would be to enable public discussion between citizens and councillors on issues which affect the whole city.
ii) Open up Scrutiny Committees
In two ways: places for non-Councillors elected from the Forums, with the right for Forums to put issues on the agenda and receive report-backs. The democratised District Committees should also have a scrutiny function.
3. Build a culture of democratic participation
Public participation in decision-making requires a huge culture change. For councillors and officers it means a new relationship with citizens and communities. But it also means changing the present widespread culture of public alienation from city politics -from believing that you can’t make a difference to finding out through experience that collectively you can. There are three vital steps to take.
i) Make meetings welcoming to participation
Too often Ward Committees and other local bodies are not hospitable places. Dominated by councillors and officers, with rigid agendas and exclusionary procedures, and of course the feeling that whatever you say nothing will happen. All that has to change, (perhaps driven by a city-wide taskforce of councillors and community leaders).
ii) Work in the communities to develop participation
We know that promoting and widening participation can often be difficult. The biggest incentive would be the message that it will make a difference. But people also need the knowledge, skills and confidence to be the voices of their communities. The strongest basis for participation in local governance is strong local community self-organisation, and the Council needs to do all it can to support it. Again, a taskforce could play a useful role in pooling and disseminating the best experiences.
iii) Be at the forefront of e-democracy
How the Council communicates with citizens needs to be transformed from one-way information provision (and that itself is far from efficient) to a two-way dialogue, using the latest technological means to foster the widest possible informed participation in the policy conversations across the city.
4. Move towards Participatory Budgeting
The democratising changes in structures and culture that we propose provide the basis for the introduction of Participatory Budgeting. We mean by this much more than the allocation of mini-budgets to Ward Committees or neighbourhood bodies. We mean the transformation of the whole city-wide budget-setting process, rooted in debate and decisions at the sub-local level but feeding into public participation in decisions at the city-wide level, and with a redistributionist dynamic so that the poorest areas of the city benefit most.
The ‘Devolution: Making it Real’ Inquiry
The Districts and Public Engagement Overview and Scrutiny Committee, chaired by Councillor Lisa Trickett, has set up a commission of inquiry into the devolution policy (see Devolution Making it Real Inquiry Outline.pdf on Google). It will ask ‘What is the purpose of devolution, how do we measure success and what actions are required to achieve that success?’ During the autumn it will seek evidence from a range of sources including community organisations, trade unions and citizens. If it is genuinely open to discussion and proposals it could be an important step forward towards democratising local government in Birmingham. It’s an opportunity we welcome.
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Devolved services
The services delivered by the new Local Services Directorate and subject to devolved executive arrangements include:
- Housing Management/Landlord Services (Homes & Neighbourhoods)
- Youth Services (Children, Young People & Families)
- Community & Play Services (Leisure, Sport & Culture and Homes & Neighbourhoods)
- Community Libraries (Homes & Neighbourhoods)
- Community Safety (Homes & Neighbourhoods)
- Neighbourhood Offices (Homes & Neighbourhoods)
- Sport & Leisure Services (Environment & Culture and Homes & Neighbourhoods)
- Refuse Collection and Street Cleansing Services (Environment & Culture)
- Highways Services (Development and Environment & Culture )
- Environmental Wardens (Homes & Neighbourhoods)
Socialist Resistance: Birmingham Group 
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