Who should decide what is best for a community?

Guardian supplement 11 July 2007, pages 4-5

“A local-level playing field: will devolving power, renewing local democracy and engaging communities bring benefits – as well as combat voter apathy. We ask the experts”

Dave Coates, Manager, Lonsdale Community Centre, Hull:

A colleague of mine once made a radical comment at a community enterprise conference in Hull. He said: “Why don’t we just directly give communities the money they need to respond to the local needs themselves?” There followed numerous objections, such as the need for accountability, the need to measure outputs and outcomes and “proper” monitoring and evaluation techniques. These things are important, but my point is that underlying this was the unstated assumption that local communities are like children, unprofessional and incapable of dealing with responsibility and accountability.

In short, there’s a lack of trust in our local communities and too much emphasis on top-down “outputs and outcomes”. The result is a layer of professionals to handle these, and no real devolution of control. Consequently, money is soaked up by the bureaucracy created to manage control, with less money and less power to determine how the money is spent at a local level.

I believe in the potential of our communities to help themselves, given the means and the freedom to do so. So, if the government is serious in wishing to empower our citizens and communities, they, yes, let’s be radical and devolutionary. Let’s trust our communities and not have any more top-down enforced initiatives bloated with bureaucracy”.

Well said, Dave!