Conclusion & next steps

Ultimately, we think that the Local Democracy Bill should improve outcomes for every community by bringing communities into a process where they have access to greater powers which enable them to be in greater control of the factors that affect their lives in terms of:

  • Ensuring that citizens’ rights are met by good public services which respond to the issues that communities raise and prioritise. These services are strengthened as a result of community engagement.

  • That community views on service delivery and its impacts are seen as valid in a culture of partnership where power is genuinely shared.

  • That the extent of this is indexed to community aspirations and community capacity to do so and not forced on communities who have concerns about taking on too much responsibility.

  • Communities are supported to do this by producing high quality community-led action plans involving their whole community - including on what resources are required and how they are used.

  • That communities are supported to pursue autonomous community action e.g. funding bids, campaigning or mobilising voluntary effort to address issues in their communities.

  • That skilled community development, and other technical support is made available to communities taking these powers on.

Trade union engagement

Whatever the outcome of DM2 it is likely to require staff in services to operate in different ways. It is possible to develop these ideas with the active support of workers in public services, who often live in communities they serve, but in order to do so and to avoid the potential for misunderstanding and fear, it is essential that staff are engaged in the discussion via their professional associations and trade unions.


A new deliberative process

We recognise that the gap in time between DM1 and DM2 caused by the pandemic has caused momentum to be lost to some degree. This is one of the key reasons that citizen involvement in the current consultation has been both less extensive, and less specific than may have been hoped for, although this has also been affected by a loss of confidence in empowerment and community engagement in achieving change.

This is all the more reason why a more deliberative process must now be developed building on the ideas that people have expressed, but turning these into more tangible, robust, stress-tested proposals after a period of consideration where they can be properly explored in terms of their intent, likely outcomes and the potential trade-offs involved in implementing them. We think the issues such a process should cover are as follows:

  • What models work in other places.

  • Local government boundary reform – purpose, practicality and potential alternatives.

  • New decentralised democratic powers – why, what and how.

  • Decentralisation of powers in practice – finding a workable model.

  • How representative and participatory democracy can co-exist.

  • Community anchor processes – agreeing which structures deliver representativeness and a clear and inclusive community mandate.

  • Identifying and securing the support communities need to make this work.

  • How best to future-proof new legislation, so that there are protections in place to ensure progress towards long-term reform and culture change is not hampered by, for instance, changes in governments.

Depending on the methods used, this is a process which could be delivered over a period of about 12 – 18 months leading to more concrete recommendations to inform a Local Democracy Bill in the late Spring of 2025.