News Date: Wednesday 22nd September 2004
Keeping it Local - Is Worthing big enough to manage itself ? (Worthing Society Lecture)
Tim gives his thoughts on the future for local Government and how local communities should have more powers to run themselves, and what Worthing needs to do to bring itself into the 21st Century and enthuse its residents to become part of that process.
This is the full text for the speech Tim gave to the Worthing Society Lecture ? Tuesday September 21st...
Good evening and thank you for inviting me to give this lecture this evening. As I discovered from surfing the net the Worthing Society could do with a higher profile!
I remember back almost nine years ago now when I arrived for my interview to become the prospective Conservative candidate for the new constituency of East Worthing & Shoreham. In doing my research for the interview I mentioned an edition of the TV show Blind Date where the lucky couple had their expectation rapidly (but unfairly) deflated. After expecting to be whisked off to a scuba diving trip in the Maldives or a white sand beach in the Caribbean, they instead picked the envelope which offered a weekend in sunny Worthing, and worse still it later turned out that it coincided with a national convention of funeral directors in the town. What a clich?!
But I for one have never regarded Worthing as a caricature:
- left in a time warp, perhaps
- failing to punch up to its weight, probably
- lacking a clear idea of what it wants to be and where it wants to go, certainly
- full of enormous potential, most definitely.
Let us leave aside the favourite and increasingly weak caricatures about Worthing being God?s waiting room, or Taiwan with tea shops as the Independent put it a few years ago after Worthing had surprisingly topped a business profitability poll, or something to do with Oscar Wilde or most recently the cannabis caf? capital of South-East England and the home of the chap who threw purple powder at the Prime Minister in the House of Commons.
Let's instead look at the facts:
- Worthing is the largest town in Sussex (around 100,000 in the borough) and growing
- There are now 20% more under 20 year olds living here than the number of citizens over 60 : 21679 against 17985 (despite figures from the last census which shows that nationally we now have more pensioners than children, and despite Worthing?s reputation for having the highest proportion of over 85 year olds in the country). Let me quickly add that I am not trying to discriminate and we value both ends of the spectrum (despite the relative cost and annoyance to the town, topically, of night club brawls against coffee morning contretemps) and a lot in between too! After all the largest rises in the proportion of age groups in Worthing between the 1991 and 2001 censuses were 35-39 year olds up 36.4% and 50-54 year olds up 42.2%.
- We are the most densely populated part of Sussex with just over 30 people per hectare, narrowly ahead of Brighton & Hove at 30, and well ahead of what we would regard as highly urbanised Crawley Borough at 19.9 and contrasted starkly with Chichester at just 1.4 people per hectare.
- Interestingly despite having one of the lowest proportions of ethnic minorities, with 97.2% ?Anglo-Saxon?, Worthing is in the top quartile for the proportion of Buddhists in the country ? 58th out of 376 local authorities. And we are one of the worst, (19th out of 376) for households without access to their own bathroom!
- We have some of the best schools and colleges in the area with an above average educational level of achievement.
- Worthing has attracted and hopefully retained many innovative and world leading companies such as B&W loudspeakers and FTSE 100 multinationals such as Glaxo SmithKline, Lloyds and Norwich Union.
- And as I alluded to above for three years running Worthing was named most profitable town in Britain in the Experian annual survey of 250,000 companies across 430 towns (all down to Glaxo?)
So, on the face of it Worthing has a lot going for it. Demographically things have been improving greatly over recent years and Worthing should be a great place to live, visit and do business.
Yet, many describe Worthing as having been trapped in a time warp since the 1960's at which stage the majority of half way decent historical buildings in the town seemed to have been caught in a Soviet like vortex of bulldozers and transformed into multi-storey car parks and anonymous apartments.
In so much as it represents a symbol of modern urban 'hip', the town lacks a multiplex cinema and instead relies on moving pictures charmingly, but archaically, powered by naked flame and viewed from protected lumpy seats. We have an undersized and crumbling swimming pool; undersized, crumbling and un air-conditioned theatres long since overtaken by Chichester; an impressive museum and art gallery with important collections recently under threat; a distinct shortage of business class hotel accommodation let alone a conference centre; long derelict shopping centres at the gateway to Worthing; gridlocked roads and a congested A27 which now threatens to drive away business investment let alone drive residents simply trying to go away their everyday journeys to despair.
I am being unduly gloomy for effect but I think many people would be able to identify the town I am describing. Is the problem the one I mentioned earlier - that Worthing does not know what it wants to be and where it wants to be in 10 years time for example. Is Worthing a slightly faded seaside resort; is it a place to attract cutting edge business; is it a retirement town or an outlying commuter town? Whenever I ask this question I get a multitude of different answers. Witness the furore a few years ago about what should be specified on the new brown 'Welcome to Worthing' signs.
In the past Worthing has clearly marketed itself as a seaside resort. A seaside resort based on sunshine and obligatory beach balls as the collection of tourist posters in last week's Sentinel shows. ?Sunny |Worthing - Britain's sunshine record town 'twixt sea and Downs'. As the editorial put it --- there was a time when Worthing took itself seriously as a holiday resort. The town was regarded as an upmarket destination for the higher echelons of society, leaving the bucket and spade brigade to Brighton and Margate.? Or as the posters at Victoria Station were once prone to proclaim involuntarily - Dover for the continent, Worthing for the incontinent!?
Pevsner put it more starkly: ?Worthing is an exasperating town. Put very briefly it began by imitating Brighton and ended by imitating Bournemouth, and the two seaside traditions have met head-on, without benefit to either. The result is that architecturally it is full of brave beginnings and ignoble endings: socially it seems to have become the most genteel of Sussex resorts without any of Bournemouth's compensations. The thing is summed up by the signs to the public lavatories - which say coyly, 'toilets'. Yet at the same time it is both friendly and lively.?
The truth is that Worthing probably plays a mixture of all those roles, but by accident. The concern is that it still lacks a strategy for which of these will be the key to boosting the town's prosperity in 10 years time, or what sort of town we can offer to our young citizens currently at school when they will be making decisions about whether they want to stay here and bring up their own families here. A lot is riding on the newly revamped Economic Development Department at the council and the strategy and vision of the new administration itself. Yet we lack a coordinated business lobby in Worthing and groups representing residents, youth interests or leisure and tourism activities are relatively fragmented.
But the other major question I want to concentrate on here tonight is whether Worthing has the power or means to determine its own destiny, or indeed whether its citizens have the enthusiasm to participate.
I was recently reading through a history of Worthing in the 19th century up to and around the time when the town was granted its charter as a borough in August 1890. Its promotion to towns status under an Act of Parliament in 1803 in the wake of royal recognition as a health resort with the visit of Princess Amelia, was accompanied by a decade of frenetic building. A theatre, assembly rooms, covered baths and circulating library were all added under the auspices of a small Board of Commissioners responsible for the then 2,500 inhabitants.
Subsequent economic depression brought a prolonged period of decline and the Board of Commissioners came close to going bust. But in the second half of the Nineteenth Century Worthing emerged a radically different type of resort to Brighton with its own character and attractions for the more discerning - 'a nice place for nice people.' Certainly something it has retained today. The ubiquitous drainage problem was only properly tackled after the appointment of a more dynamic Local Board of Health in 1852 who invested significantly in sewerage. Subsequently the horticultural industry sprung up in the area
with a considerable reputation for the quality of its grapes, figs, cucumbers and flowers. The equable climate was also recognised as the main factor in recommending the area as ideal for convalescence, residential settlement and retirement. Hence perhaps the origins of Worthing?s earlier schizophrenia between tourist resort, commercial hub or retirement town.
With the expansion of the residential base facilities such as the people?s park at Homefield appeared, followed by a new hospital, new Assembly Rooms, new Council offices, Heene baths and a pier. The urban sprawl was intensified with the formal incorporation of Worthing and West Worthing into one borough. With much cheering of large crowds and interminable speeches by portly gentlemen with hairy faces, the Borough of Worthing was born, with roughly one seventh of its current population.
My point - is that you could just not envisage that happening today. With relatively little central government interference other than to pass various pieces of enabling legislation, Worthing was left to get on with it. The town looked after its health, its fire service, its public building programme, its police force, its roads and most of all its character ? for right or wrong. And increasingly with the passing of the Reform Acts of 1832 and then 1867 onwards, an increasing number of local citizens (albeit male) played an active part in it.
In today's world that is hard to imagine.
Worthing's finances, not untypical for local Government, are in a febrile state, whatever central Government may say about the generosity of central grants. Without getting too political about it, today West Sussex receives around 62% of its spending from central revenue support grant with the other 38% coming from local council taxpayers. The percentage from central government continues to shrink when the extra responsibilities placed on local government are ever increasing. I say responsibilities rather than powers as in most cases these extra duties are centrally imposed on national targets and models with which local government is obliged to comply. Central Government is obliging local government to raise more local taxes to deliver more of its national agenda ? increasingly devoid of a local character or local agenda.
That is why council tax has risen by more than 70% over the last 7 years and is such a contentious issue. That is partly why Worthing was contemplating 15% increases earlier this year and all counties forced through increases in the high teens last year. And to add insult to injury West Sussex and Worthing do particularly badly compared to other parts of the country when one adds in additional special and specific grants for regeneration projects, special educational or health schemes for example. Including all central government direct and specific grants a Worthing resident currently receives £692 per head compared to £1536 in Liverpool or £1533 in Manchester.
No prospect of lavish capital spending schemes in Worthing then to regenerate the largesse of the Victorian legacy. Instead councils like Worthing are forced to maximise assets to patch up facilities elsewhere and balance the books - selling golf courses, car parks and council depots.
Government may claim that financial support to local government has never been higher but the cost of running its increased responsibilities has run ahead of this considerably. Only in the pursuit of the Government's so called devolution programme have the funds increased disproportionately. The cost of running the Scottish Executive for example is now put at £234m pa, let alone the cost of a lavish new Parliament building. Added to this the increasing cost of setting up a structure of regional government and we can see where the money is really going.
So financially Worthing is more hamstrung than ever to look after itself and that is probably the most significant consideration when assessing its independence. But how has legislation changed over recent years to empower or constrain local government?
A very brief look at legislation over just the last 7 years will reveal the extent of new duties and responsibilities on local government.
ﾃｯつｷ List legislation ...(separate notes)
All have an impact. All have a cost and few have added to the freedoms and powers of the borough of Worthing or the county of West Sussex to manage themselves. Councils and councillors feel disempowered. Their constituents feel disillusioned and unimpressed with the lack of responsiveness and failure to change unpopular decisions locally. Increasingly local accountability is being muddied by a plethora of new quasi-governmental bodies and local partnerships ? local crime and disorder partnerships; area economic partnerships and numerous new health boards and toothless watchdogs. They are one step removed from the accountability of elected local councillors or MPs and in any case no one really knows what they do and what they are responsible for.
The frustration is perhaps most strongly felt in the whole area of planning. My case load is increasingly influenced by controversy over planning decisions and planning law, and not just big strategic decisions. This is a so called quasi-judicial area where traditionally MPs have sought to distance themselves but that is proving increasingly impossible.
Most recently we have been fighting the battle of Beeches Avenue - the recycled (but environmentally unfriendly) attempt by Hargreaves to build 90 houses at the top of Beeches Avenue next to Lyons Farm, in the wake of the planning inspector?s challenge to the Worthing local plan a couple of years ago which wanted this area retained as agricultural land. The scheme offers no improvements to the infrastructure which would add potentially 150 cars in a minor road which feeds out into a notoriously congested A27 if you are prepared to wait 10 minutes or so for the privilege at the moment.
The plans bring with them no improvements to education or hospital provision where most of the local schools are already oversubscribed and short of space and we have some of the longest waiting lists in the region still. None of the local residents think the proposals are sustainable. The local councillors oppose them. The Council oppose them. I oppose them. Yet if the plans are thrown out unanimously by the borough?s planning committee again the developers will probably go to appeal and an inspector from Bristol appointed by the Deputy Prime Minister could well overturn the decision on the basis that the Government has determined that West Sussex needs an additional 46,500 houses over the next 10 years, Worthing must take its fair share and this spare field is as good a place as any.
Yet if this small patch of land goes then it sets a very bad precedent for a whole ribbon of agricultural land adjacent to AONB land across the top of Worthing, Findon Valley and much of Adur, which for all intents and purposes is part of the Downs. Part of the landscape and character of Sussex which makes this area such a good place to live. Worse still there are serious implications for AONB land protection if the South Downs National Park goes ahead, and no doubt we can have a separate debate about the merits of that or not. Whatever the conclusion of the current lengthy and costly enquiry there is no doubt that this is a political objective which the Government has decided is desirable and it will get its way. But where the new boundaries of that Park are eventually drawn, inevitably former areas of AONB left outside its confines will be declassified and become prime targets for development. Yet more green fields to bulldoze and concrete over with a whole host of implications for the environment, flood protection, transport and the various other infrastructure shortfalls that I have already mentioned.
Worse still the Government is already suggesting that the 46,500 centrally imposed house building target is woefully inadequate and will have to be doubled. The Planning Inspectorate has West Sussex?s 22 strategic gaps in its sites ? all potential building sites. The headline in the Mid Sussex Times this week is ?Burgess Heath ?? ? with the news that Burgess Hill and Haywards Heath could merge into one super town if government plans to force more new homes into the south-east go through. Perhaps we can look forward to Sompt-worth or Lanc-ham around here ?
Yet at the same time we read about the mass demolitions of perfectly good houses in places like Darwen, |Salford and Liverpool, supposedly all in the name of regeneration. It is particularly expensive regeneration at that, not least in human terms to the many families and communities who do not want or need to be displaced from perfectly habitable dwellings and split up.
At a less strategic level too local people have reason to feel put upon and that their council is powerless to make a difference. The latest trend is for developers to take options on, or buy outright, properties with large gardens in the middle of town. Under the Deputy Prime Minister?s new regulations gardens are now regarded as brown field sites ripe for building on. A classic example last year was the Charmandean Road proposals where pre-war houses, with a bit of character in Broadwater, had already been knocked down to make way for rather anonymous looking, but higher density flats. A developer wanted to do the same on the other side of the road and offered lucrative sums to as many house owners as would take the loot and then lodged proposals to knock down three family sized houses and replace them with up to 30 up market flats.
There were big implications for the traffic, for the character of Broadwater and the pressure of density and infrastructure in one of the oldest parts of Worthing. Planning officers struggled to oppose the proposals according to the rule book which make it increasingly difficult to oppose unwanted developments despite the fact that again local people, local councillors and me were all against it. Increasingly it is a case of ?better the devil you know? as councillors reluctantly are cajoled into approving an unwanted development on the basis they can add restrictions rather than risk going to appeal and having no control over the nature of the eventual development, let alone all the financial implications of fighting a legal challenge. Again it set a bad precedent for turning the whole of this part of Worthing into an even more crowded mass of characterless, incongruous, homogenous blocks of flats which threaten the quality of life of people who have long made their homes there. Against my expectations the inspector threw out the plans but this was the exception rather than the rule, and residents will have to continue to be on their guard.
I used the term ?homogenous? and this is perhaps the most depressing aspect of what is happening to our planning system. In many parts of the country where there have been significant new housing developments by the likes of Wimpey, Berkeley Homes or Barratts to name but three, it is virtually impossible to work out where you are. The same style of house whether you are in Worthing, Walsall or Wrexham. At best only passing acknowledgement of the use of flint facing in walls in Sussex or sandstone in the Cotswolds. The local character of our buildings is being subsumed into national standards and guidance in the pursuit of national targets and regulations, and I think that is a tragedy.
The same is happening in the high street and many of you may have seen the recent report by the New Economics Foundation which warned that Britain is on the way to becoming a nation of ?clone towns? with identikit shops owned by a small umber of powerful chains. Once distinctive towns are losing their character and customers face restricted choices in an increasingly global range of stores. Guildford has 70% dominance by chains. Bury St Edmunds and Gloucester are close behind and I have to say that Worthing is little different. Yet there are exceptions and it was refreshing to see nearby Lewes, where I grew up, reverse the trend with over 70% home grown local businesses in the high street and that surely has a lot to do with its renewed success and prosperity now. Why can?t we reverse the trend too?
Well, to achieve that we are certainly not helped by central dictats, once again from the office of the Deputy Prime Minister. There are now 25 PPGs or Planning Policy Guidance. A third of these have been revised over the last 7 years:
ﾃｯつｷ PPG3 on promoting affordable housing (so where is it ?)
ﾃｯつｷ PPG10 on waste management (a by product of all this extra housing yet our recycling levels are still woefully behind our major competitors)
ﾃｯつｷ PPG11 & 12 giving greater recognition to regional considerations (yet we know that the South East region of over 11 million people is a wholly artificial creation)
ﾃｯつｷ PPG13 promoting integrated transport (again where are the results when all the trunk road improvement schemes across the whole of Sussex were unceremoniously dumped by the Government soon after coming to power)
ﾃｯつｷ PPG25 on development and flood risk (yet that is apparently not enough to protect out strategic gaps and flood plain development locally).
ﾃｯつｷ PPG8, and perhaps the most contentious area of all central government policy on telecommunication masts.
Probably the biggest planning issue locally as regards my post bag has been the furore over the new TETRA police phone masts plonked in the middle of one of the most densely populated parts of town at the Woodside Road football ground, with minimal consultation, apparently no planning constraints and little regard for any local considerations other than where the mast can maximise the strength of the mobile signals.
No wonder people think that their local politicians and institutions are failing in their duty when they so conspicuously fail to respond to local concerns, however sympathetic they might actually be. No wonder therefore that the electorate continue to disengage from the political processes with turnout at the last general election down to a record low of 59.5%, and in local elections although slightly up on last year, barely a third of eligible voters bothered to turn up to vote despite the huge local controversy over threats of high council tax and the future of the town?s facilities, let alone the fact that it has practically never been easier physically to vote.
The bottom line is that no amount of glossy brochures about urban renaissance; community partnerships; neighbourhood renewal or whatever the latest buzzword is, has materially enhanced the net powers of local councils answerable to local people and local communities. They have given local government an enforced interest in virtually everything but power over virtually nothing. John Prescott, in so many ways, is fulfilling the phrase coined by Douglas Jay back in 1939 that ??The gentleman in Whitehall really does know better?.
The effect is an increasingly worrying democratic deficit which will have 2 likely effects which I believe are in no one?s interests:
ﾃｯつｷ Firstly the drift towards extremism and the opportunities opening up to those who would pander to prejudice and division
ﾃｯつｷ Secondly, playing into the Government?s hands by strengthening the case for overhauling local Government by consolidating powers at a local level into large, costly and remote regional assemblies with all the bureaucratic paraphernalia to go with them. If creating several hundred additional politicians and bureaucrats, based in Guildford or Milton Keynes is the answer, then goodness knows what the question was !
I think this is wrong and must be reversed. The Government?s agenda of ?New Localism? which is really fake decentralisation must be challenged and replaced with an aggressive new push for real localism. At its most basic, a local council must be an advocate for, and a servant of, its community, and the services it provides should reflect that. It must provide civic leadership and create a sense of belonging. It should help create and sustain communities so that citizens are proud to live in their neighbourhood, town or city.
If we are serious about local government, we must keep it truly local. That means halting and reversing regionalization. Taking yet more powers away from councils for an extra layer of politicians and bureaucrats is not the answer. Local government must be genuinely local in character and composition, within easy reach of its citizens. Local authorities in this country are already larger than most of their European counterparts. In France, Italy, or the Netherlands, local communes or municipalities serve, on average, far smaller populations than even English district councils. On the other hand, some English counties such as Lancashire are larger in population terms than a good number of American states. ?Small is beautiful?. Only truly local government can provide government that is close to people, flexible, diverse and personal, something that centralism can never rival.
Moreover, at the very lowest level, we must empower ordinary citizens to enhance their surroundings. Just as central government cannot provide all the answers, nor must we presume that councils can provide the perfect solution for all. Social entrepreneurs, community groups and enterprises, allowing people to involve themselves in ameliorating their quality of life, must be allowed to flourish, They should be viewed, not as rivals to local government, but as partners, helping to rejuvenate run-down communities, creating choice in the provision of local services, or providing a sense of community identity.
As the House of Commons Local Government Select Committee put it:
'If local Government is going to regain the public respect and authority it once enjoyed, the Government must be prepared to trust it more.?
Firstly, we need to decide who does what. What should Whitehall and Westminster do? And what should local councils do? There must be clear demarcation of responsibilities. Ministers should not answer in Parliament for issues delegated to local government. This would amount to a fundamental change to our constitution and the way Parliament works.
Secondly, we need create no new layers of government; no new banks of politicians. Why do the great cities of Liverpool or Manchester need another layer of politicians when, by UK standards, they are very large entities? If we believe in local government, let?s keep it local and avoid creating artificial regions which will in fact be larger than some European countries. Worthing already has quite enough politicians to make the decisions and run the town with our partners at County.
Thirdly, we must enable local councils to become less dependent upon central government grant and to raise more of what they spend in local taxation without increasing the overall tax burden on hard-pressed families. As I have mentioned, only about a third of local councils? finances in this country are raised locally, compared with two-thirds in the US or France or Germany and over 80% in Switzerland, Sweden and Austria.
And fourthly, we must embrace diversity and pursue not the equalization of outcomes, but the maximization of opportunities for all. The crushing drive for standardization must cease. Innovation, efficiency and participation cannot flourish unless we let local disparities grow. Local authorities can be good at what they do. Bad ones can and do transform themselves into good ones.
Worthing needs then active engagement of all its citizens.I believe it is the right and duty of every person in this town to be involved in this process ? not least our young people and that is why Peter Bottomley and I inaugurated the ?Making Worthing Worth It? project inviting local schools to come up with their own proposals for how we redevelop some of Worthing?s derelict sites and replace some of the missing facilities that Sussex?s largest town should be providing. As I went round holding special school surgeries at the end of last year it was clear that young people have some very interesting and well articulated ideas about what they want to see I their town and what would induce them as the next generation to continue living, working and playing here.
They have ideas about how we should replace the Aquarena, what should go on the Tevile Gate site at last, how we could replicate Guildford?s Spectrum centre here for example. They expect and deserve to be listened too and not just patted on the head with the assumption from a planning officer in a dark suit that all they really need is a new skate board park and everything will be alright.
The borough have agreed to hear their presentations before a full meeting of Worthing Council on October 19th. I hope thereafter that their ideas will be taken on board and that young people will be able to sit in on meetings with councillors and officers to guide through and comment on future development proposals. This is an exciting idea and it is at the heart of putting local people back in control of what happens in their town.
So the answer to the question in my title is incontrovertibly and categorically yes. Indeed I believe it would be positively dangerous not to pursue this route. Dangerous to the integrity of local government accountable to local people; dangerous to the prospects for local people to re-engage in the democratic processes; and dangerous to the capacity of Worthing and its people to decide what it actually wants to be in 10 years time.
Of course Worthing enough to manage itself. Is central Government big enough to let it get on with the job and give it the tools to do it successfully and take away the barriers that have made that job progressively difficult ?
Tim Loughton MP
