Angela Smith (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government; Basildon, Labour)

The clause is a key plank in the Government’s commitment to ensuring greater engagement and empowerment of local communities. It will insert a new section 3A into the Local Government Act 1999 placing a duty on best value authorities in England, except police authorities, to involve representatives of local persons in the exercise of authority functions where appropriate.

Authorities will need to consider if and how local representatives should be informed of, consulted on and/or involved in local authority decisions. It will be for the authorities themselves to determine the most appropriate means of involvement, but they must have regard to any guidance issued by the Secretary of State. Within those existing powers, authorities will be able to involve local people directly in management and in decision-making responsibilities.

The leverage provided by the duties is essential to ensure that authorities engage appropriately with local communities. It will provide an important counterbalance to the reduction in top-down controls in the new performance framework. A number of authorities already inform, consult and involve local people, but not all of them do. We want all people, irrespective of which authority area they live in, to benefit from greater engagement and empowerment.

Several mechanisms will provide recourse should an authority not meet requirements of the duty. Risk assessment, audit and inspection will have a greater focus on outcomes for citizens, including consideration of how an authority is meeting the duty. That will be an external challenge to authorities and may lead to closer inspection if they are found wanting.

National performance indicators, including citizen perspective indicators, will also be published to increase accountability not only to inspectorates and partners  but to local people. If the indicators show cause for concern, it could lead to additional inspection or to challenge from peers or from local people who raise a community call for action. The new overview and scrutiny arrangements will also provide an opportunity, if an authority appears to be failing in its duty, for internal challenge by councillors. Should the issues be raised by a community call for action, that in turn could be examined by overview and scrutiny.

The clause will provide the Secretary of State with powers to make additional exemptions from the duty using secondary legislation subject to the negative resolution procedure. It will not provide authorities with any additional powers, and is therefore not a duty to devolve. I commend the clause to the Committee.

Robert Syms (Shadow Minister (Local Government), Communities and Local Government; Poole, Conservative)

I welcome the Under-Secretary’s making that clear to the Committee. She spoke about the involvement of local representatives. Were any of those community organisations or local representatives involved in the standards issue? People representing a particular body do have interests when they are consulted.

Angela Smith (Parliamentary Under-Secretary, Department for Communities and Local Government; Basildon, Labour)

That would be a matter for the Standards Board to consider. There is not a direct relationship, but the board will consider all matters in the normal way. I think that that will give local residents some comfort and clarity.