Recently in Local government Category

These are testing times for local democracy. But the spending cuts are only part of the story, for a trend is emerging in local government to divest itself of both services and responsibilities to its electorate.

We have already seen the rise of the mega-borough, particularly in London, that diminishes or even sidelines the will of the voter.

In other parts of the country a different threat to local democracy is under way. Suffolk Council, for example, is already minded to outsource so many of its services that it w

ill be left with precious few to run, rendering it mainly as a commissioning body.

Now, it seems, Bury, in Greater Manchester - the home of the World Back Pudding Championships - is going even further. 

Without any sort of mandate from the residents it purports to represent, the puddings at the town council have announced that they will no longer provide any services. That's right: none. Instead, Bury Council will become solely a commissioner of services run by the private sector or voluntary groups.

In these circumstances, it is difficult to believe that frontline services will not be cut. Moreover, the public will have little chance of redress through their local councillor because, apart from agreeing contracts with providers, their role will be to meet only infrequently to assess progress (which may turn out to be the entirely wrong word).

The only hope may lie with the local elections in May. 

Bury is a Tory marginal, with Labour the second largest group and the Lib Dems offering little of the support to the Conservatives it does at national level. There is a huge opportunity here to save local services but the electorate will have to turn out en masse if this road to undermine democracy is to be blocked.

Picture: Rex Features

When the Conservatives abolished the large city councils in the mid 1980s, the justification was that they were too big, too cumbersome, to operate efficiently in a society that didn't exist.

A quarter of a century later the concept of society has been rehabilitated - and a big one at that - and so has the notion of the mega-council in the name of, wait for it, efficiency. Few Tories are objecting this time round.

London is the main breeding ground with Hammersmith and Fulham, Kensington and Chelsea and the City of Westminster at the forefront. 

They have conspired to ride roughshod over the electorate which has had no say in the plan for an uber-council with a built-in Tory majority intent on providing service cuts to 588,000 people. 

If the swing borough of Hammersmith switches to Labour in the next local elections, it will matter not one jot, for there is a permanent Tory majority in the other two councils and the increased service provision demanded by the small red corner will be ignored by the big blue corner. Labour will be irrelevant, accountability stifled.

Following the inner London lead, the outer boroughs of Merton, Sutton, Kingston, Richmond and Croydon have advanced plans to merge many of their services.

Combined, they will be providing service cuts to more than one million people, none of whom voted for this arrangement. Pattern developing, comrades? However, unlike the inner London junta, these outer boroughs are of mixed political hues - though there is no overall control in Merton.

Trade unions are convinced jobs will be lost and it is difficult to see how the frontline will be spared, if not this year but next when the mergers have bedded in and all the HR departments and legal teams have been rationalised and there is still a need to make savings. 

The question must be whether these amalgamations are temporary measures, wrought through expediency, or whether they will be permanent, wrought through ambition. 

That no one has had a chance at the ballot box to decide on what are, in effect, boundary changes that influence policy is undemocratic. That the Local Government Boundary Commission has been silent on the issue is downright mystifying.

What happened to small is beautiful? The three Conservative councils in London that plan to amalgamate their services seem intent on regional government - but I fear something more sinister is in the offing.

Local government minister Grant Shapps sounded thoroughly exasperated when he appeared on television yesterday reprimanding Barnet councillors in north London for awarding their senior figures huge increases in allowances.

Boris Johnson beware: your nemesis in London's mayoral election in 2012 could turn out to be Asbo queen Louise Casey.

The word "adequate" is proving a controversial one after the publication of the Care Quality Commission's annual performance assessments.

Any Labour voter who says they pay little attention to opinion polls should perhaps revise that view on account of some disturbing findings in The Independent this morning.

So you have some spare cash and you want to put some aside for the proverbial rainy day. Do you invest it in a low-interest account or do you stash it away in a high-interest one?