It's time to transfer power from the central state to local people

David Cameron has launched a major policy green paper outlining Conservative plans to give power back to local communities.

He explained that “decentralisation, devolution and empowerment” are naturally part of a Conservative approach to government, and stressed the importance of an “empowering state” rather than an “overpowering state”.

‘Control Shift’, our decentralisation green paper, outlines a series of policies that will see powers transferred from the central state to local people and local institutions:

• Abolishing all regional planning and housing powers exercised by regional government, returning powers and discretion back to local communities
• Creating bottom-up incentives for house building, by allowing councils to benefit more from the increase in council tax revenues from new homes, rather than being equalised away by Whitehall
• Allowing councils to establish their own local enterprise partnerships to take over the economic development functions and funding of the Regional Development Agencies
• Giving local authorities a new discretionary power to levy business rate discounts, allowing them to help local shops and services, such as rural pubs or post offices
• Provide citizens in all large cities with the opportunity to choose whether to have an elected mayor, through mayoral referendums
• Greater use of direct democracy, including allowing residents to veto high council tax rises, and instigating local referendums on local issues
• Requiring councils to publish detailed information online on expenditure by local councils – including the pay and perks of senior staff, and issuing new guidance to stop ‘rewards for failure’ to sacked town hall staff.

Caroline Spelman, the Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, said, "It’s not just about empowering local government; we want to empower the people it serves so that they can have more say in how much of their money they want their council to spend on their behalf.”

Read David Cameron's Guardian article on decentralisation 

Read Alistair Cooke's blog post on the history of Conservatives and decentralisation