Action Briefing December 2006 - January 2007
	The Newsletter of Birmingham Friends of the Earth

Council gets ethical! (while you weren't looking)

Passed by Birmingham City Council when we weren’t looking! The Sustainable Communities Bill – which proposes a mechanism to make national Government much more responsive to local needs, and empower Local Government too – has been featured in several previous Action Briefings.

Unknown to us, back in the spring, some members of Birmingham City Council had proposed a Council motion in support of the Bill – which was passed in June, uncelebrated. The motion was proposed by Councillor Timothy Huxtable and seconded by Councillor Robert Alden.  If we had known, we could have sent out a congratulatory press release, giving us the opportunity to be supportive of the Council for once!

The motion has committed the Council to asking local MPs to support the Bill in Parliament, which hopefully will be happening soon. The Bill has also been looked at by the Task and Finish Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Sustainability and Climate Change, which is an impressive group of councillors headed by Councillor Steve Bedser. What is particularly impressive is the cross-party nature of the group, which is probably one reason why it finds itself able to be honest and open about the issues Birmingham needs to tackle.

The Sustainable Communities Bill covers a lot of issues relating to campaigns we have run in Birmingham, and not all have previously received much support from the Council – such as the issue of supermarkets killing off small shops – so it will be interesting to see whether its support for the Bill makes the Council more aware of these issues, particularly with the support of the Scrutiny Committee.

The Bill outlines the concept of local sustainability as follows:
The promotion of local economies
The promotion of local services and facilities
The protection of the environment
The reduction of social exclusion, and
Measures to increase involvement in the democratic process

The measures the Bill outlines are:

Requiring the Government to assist Councils and communities in promoting local sustainability in ways decided by those Councils and communities; and

Setting up a participatory process whereby Councils and communities can drive the way in which Government uses its power and influence to assist with the promotion of local sustainability; and

Recognising that a “bottom up” rather than a “top down” one size fits all process is required which is fully in accord with current thinking in Local Government in that it impacts on central authorities and does not impose any new duties on Councils but instead enables them to influence how Government uses its resources and influence to help Councils and communities.

We had previously attempted to persuade local councillors to support this motion, but had found that some senior officers and councillors felt that the process outlined by the Bill was too complicated to be implemented successfully. They also more fatalistically objected purely on the grounds that national Government will never limit its own powers – as the old theological debate goes…

Some of us had sympathy with their first point, as the process raises more questions the longer you look at it, and this is one reason that we had neglected the Bill for a while. However, in conclusion, I definitely think that the Bill is worth supporting because firstly the process problems can be ironed out as the Bill develops, and most importantly its general principles for decision-making and sustainability are so much better than what we already have, and raise such a lot of awareness amongst politicians of what really matters to people, that it is worth supporting as it stands now.

More recent news is that that famously turquoise campaigner David Cameron has also signed in support of the Bill. I hate to be cynical, but given that the Bill takes power away from national Government, it is a very easy Bill to sign whilst in opposition! We’ll take bets on how long it takes the Conservatives nationally to u-turn if they get elected in the near future.

More information about the Bill can be found at www.localworks.org.uk. If you don’t have access to the internet, contact us and we can give you copies of Local Works’ newsletters and other information.

Karen Leach