When is Devolution Not Devolution? by Nigel Slack.

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Since the Greater Manchester Combined Authority 'came out' as the first of the Northern Cities to be offered and to accept the Clegg/Osbourne version of devolution I have written about my concerns. I have written not only about their sudden acceptance of an imposed elected mayor but also about the weaknesses of the deal and the impact for the other Northern cities of this split in their, until then, united front.

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Click here for the previous article Divide & Conquer the North? - by Nigel Slack - 3rd Nov 2014.

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Since then there has been discussion and debate amongst a broad range of people as to whether this type of deal would be offered to Sheffield City Region and whether they would fall for the rhetoric. I use the word rhetoric because for me the Greater Manchester deal is full of holes, both in the freedom it alleges it will give Manchester and in describing it as devolution at all. The deal as outlined by the Daily Telegraph seems to be nothing more than an extended version of the 'City Deals' that have been around for a while now and which enable government to target funds at Local Councils in return for them following agendas and targets agreed between the two.

The freedoms being offered in the 'devolution' deal are similarly ringfenced with specific policy aims;
Housing Investment Fund £300M, to build houses.
Planning Powers, but no detail and presumably still bound by current planning law.
Local Transport, something already in negotiation in the North with Rail North and attempts to reintegrate bus services.
Pooling of Health & Social Care budgets, probably could be negotiated without this deal.
Greater responsibility for business support and economic regeneration, already being targeted at the City Regions through the Local Enterprise Partnerships.
£100M for 'welfare to work' making local councils responsible for administering National Policy on benefit claimants.

Why do I say this is not devolution? If you look at devolution as exhibited in Scotland you have some monies and policies determined by Westminster but, most importantly, a significant amount of money is given by way of a block grant with no strings attached and the Scots powers can decide how this money is spent. They can vary the way they spend that grant to achieve not only their legal obligations but also determined by their local policies rather than those handed down from on high.

That is devolution. In addition it is backed by legislation not some shady back room deal. Without an Act of Parliament the deals being bandied about by Clegg/Osbourne can be withdrawn by any future Government on a whim.

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So where does that leave us in Sheffield? On the 5th I asked in the Full Council meeting a number of questions about the city's view on the Clegg/Osbourne deal. I knew something was amiss when a question I would normally expect to be answered by the Leader, Julie Dore was instead responded to by Leigh Bramall with his business and economy hat on. Then at the beginning of this week I was being told by a different city council cabinet member that there was no deal on the table.

Fast forward to Wednesday morning when I attended a meeting of the Sheffield Executive Board , that body of leaders from the city's public services, private sector and VCF sectors that influences the direction of policy within the city. The first hour and a half of the meeting was a closed session, public excluded.

Attending the open session it soon became obvious, from a number of dropped comments that the closed session had been discussing something about the 'devolution' deals doing the rounds. At the end of the meeting I enquired why the devolution discussion had been held in closed session and it became crystal clear that they had been discussing an actual offer on the table for the City Region to decide upon. I imagine and to some extent hope they were being asked their view, but possibly it was no more than an information session.

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I was due to attend the City Council Cabinet meeting that same afternoon so drafted a quick question asking if the public would get an opportunity to consider and offer an opinion on the 'devolution' deal for Sheffield currently on the table, before the City Region decided? The answer, this time from Julie Dore was a straightforward No. She explained that they were under pressure to agree the deal before the Chancellor's Autumn Statement and therefore there would not be time. Just like that the option for any democratic debate on a huge decision for this city and this region is squashed.

The decision will now, presumably be made by the ten council leaders that make up the Sheffield City Region Combined Authority. Not by their Council's elected representatives debating the benefits or pitfalls of the idea, not by consultation and consent of the Millions of people over whom they will govern but by ten men and women behind closed doors negotiating and consenting to secret deals. That is why this is not devolution, it is not even democracy.

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Finally we have to ask, why is the government so keen to have this deal decided before the Autumn Statement? The autumn statement is where the Chancellor reveals the Local Government settlement for the next financial year. In other words he will be telling local councils how much money they have to spend or cut over the following year. Could it be that once the City Regions have signed on the dotted line there will be a nasty clause in the small print that they have all overlooked? I guess only time and George Osbourne will tell but I wouldn't trust him would you?

21st October 2013 - Sheffield City Council, Locality Management General Briefing, by Nigel Slack

This was a meeting of invited members of the voluntary sector in order to brief them on the new arrangements for 'Locality management' that will replace the now abandoned 'Community Assembly Meetings'. I presume that I was invited, as an individual, because there is to be no public meeting as such.

The meeting was opened by Councillor Geoff Smith (Labour) who gave a welcome statement and relayed the apologies of Councillor Mazher Iqbal (Cabinet Member for Communities and Inclusion) who had lead the development of the new arrangements. He then introduced Sharon Squires (Director, Sheffield First Partnership). She helped the City Council in developing the model for the new arrangements, Local Area Partnerships. She explained that the success of LAP's would be about building strong and resilient communities that can cope with the huge changes that are being thrust upon them by the current austerity measures. She also emphasised that Locality Management was a part of the framework of the solution but not all of it.

The meeting was then presented with a slide show of the new arrangements by Martin Hughes (Locality Manager) who discussed how the VCF sector (Voluntary, Charity, Faith) could get involved. The new model has four key principles. Councillors as community leaders, Prioritise resources to areas of greatest need, Develop effective partnership working, and Enable communities to help themselves.

Each Ward will have a lead Councillor drawn from the three that represent each ward, Central Ward will be represented by Councillor Rob Murphy (Green). They will represent the ward to the LAP's who will have a small discretionary amount of money to spend on priorities that the four wards in each LAP agree on. These LAP's are lead by a Chair who is a Councillor, for Central it is Councillor Neale Gibson (Labour) but we are told that this partnership is not a decision making body and is not formally constituted.

At the end of the presentation there was an opportunity for questions. There were a number of questions on some of the ways in which the VCF sector can get it's voice heard in the larger arena, as many of them connect over the ward and area boundaries. I asked a particular question about the use of IMD (Index of Multiple Deprivation) for defining the levels of the 'Ward Pots' or discretionary funds for each ward. I referred to a recent meeting of the Sheffield Executive Board that received a presentation on Community Resilience and Wellbeing from the Young Foundation and discussed the need to reach beyond the stats of IMD in measuring the health of a community. I asked whether other measures would be used. The response was that IMD would be used for now but others would 'probably' be added as time went on.

There were then many comments and questions about the public oversight of the LAP's and the lack of formal structure for the public attendance at LAP meetings. The general response was to the effect that there is no formal structure to the meetings and they would generally not be open to to the public as it is not a formally constituted body. I therefore pushed them on the comments of the 'Fairness Commission' that fairness should not only be done but be seen to be done.

With the number of comments the organisers finally agreed that they would take back the comments and see what could be done to improve levels of trust in the structure and arrangements. We will see whether this comes to anything or whether, like so often, it was just to placate the meeting.


Cabinet Report on the replacement of Community Assemblies

11th September 2013. Sheffield Executive Board Meeting. By Nigel Slack.

Today I went to my first ever meeting of the Sheffield Executive Board.  This impressive sounding organisation was set up “…to provide leadership within the city on issues of city-wide significance, and to advocate for Sheffield collectively to Government, the European Union and other national and international forums”.

The Board consists of “..leaders from across the private, public, voluntary, community and faith sectors in Sheffield”.  This, at least, is according to their own website.

http://www.sheffieldfirst.com/the-partnership/sheffield-executive-board.html

The aim of the body is, essentially, to act first as a think tank for new ideas, policies and strategies for the city.  To then develop these potential policies into something workable, that can be supported by all the ‘partner’ organisations and finally to promote the finished product to the city as a whole and to the wider world.

Members include representatives from the City Council, Both Universities and Sheffield College, the NHS, Fire Service, Police, the Voluntary Sector, Sheffield Cathedral and Private Enterprise bodies.  Personally, I am concerned that the so called ‘faith sector’ is represented only in it’s Christian mainstream form.  No Islamic representatives, no Jewish representatives and none from the smaller Christian faiths.

This was my first visit to this meeting because, although their meetings are open to the public, they are not well promoted unless you visit the website.  Add to that the fact that the meeting had a last minute change of venue so that Leslie and I did not arrive until twenty minutes or so into the meeting.  We were, apparently the first members of the public to ever make it to a meeting and therefore caused some uncertainty but were welcomed and seated at the back of the room.

The item we arrived in the middle of was a presentation by ‘The Young Foundation’ concerning resilience and wellbeing in communities.  The research methodology looked interesting, although I didn’t catch it all, as it avoided using the Index of Multiple Deprivation statistics (IMD) in favour of drawing together evidence from a range of sources to create their picture of a community’s resilience and wellbeing. The illustrations given suggest an ability to drill down into communities and neighbourhoods better than the IMD data can.

http://www.youngfoundation.org/

The strategies for affecting a community’s resilience and wellbeing were based on the use of CBT (Conditional Behavioural Therapy) and Positive Psychology and they were delivered through community projects and volunteers.  This bothered me somewhat.  My experience of CBT is that it can work for some people some of the time for a short time.  Positive Psychology, on the other hand, whilst at the foreront of current practice, is facing a rising tide of challenges from academics and authors in the field. My concern therefore, is what happens to those for whom CBT does not work or who are not part of a community group?


Following the presentation there was some discussion in groups and then in general about the subject. Interestingly, during this, one of the NHS representatives present commented on the need for these types of strategies to have long term commitment to ensure the benefits that might accrue remained.  The result of the discussions was that the ideas were interesting and might be a way forward, helping communities become more resilient to the drastic changes being forged by the austerity measures being employed by the Government.


The second item in this ‘open’ session of the meeting was a discussion about the partnership working that would be happening with the redesign of the community assembly approach to local democracy.  This discussed the new structure somewhat and the fact emerged, from one of the newly appointed chairs of the Local Area Partnerships, as they ate currently called, that we would all have to get used to the fact that the Council is being forced to withdraw from offering many of the services they have traditionally fulfilled for citizens of the city.


This is both worrying and challenging, since many of the services from which they are withdrawing directly affect the most vulnerable in the city.  The question was left with the ‘partners’ to consider what they could offer in this new landscape to potentially fill the gap or redress the lack of services in these austerity years.


At the end of this discussion the guests that would not normally have been at the meeting left and we, as members of the public were also asked to leave.  The meeting was entering its ‘closed’ period where apparently they discuss items of ‘private business’. This, as you might imagine, does not sit well with me as someone who campaigns about transparency and openness in public business and decision-making.  I will therefore be making enquiries as to what sort of business this clearly influential organisation discusses behind closed doors.


Next meeting; Wednesday 9th October 2013, venue to be advised.