Listening post

Posted by: Jules Birch

11/06/2010

Do you want to reserve council housing for the over-30s? Stop mosque building? Cap local authority pay at £50,000 a year?

If you have other ideas, and you haven’t already commented on the coalition’s programme for government, you’re too late. The deadline passed at midnight and you’ve left the field open to people who want to cut public sector pensions, make Christian teaching compulsory and curb the power of the homosexual lobby.

Any public consulation in general - and any online consultation in particular - is bound to attract its fair share of people who are certain they are right and it’s easy to dismiss them as meaningless. 

But the coalition has made consultation such a key part not just of its programme but also its approach to public spending cuts. It wants to recruit an army of ‘armchair auditors’ to scrutinise the information on all council spending over £500.

Genuine or not, that makes who responds to consultations like this one very important. 

The 320 responses to the Communities and Local Government section of the programme unsurprisingly started with enthusiasts for coalition policies like scrapping regional spatial strategies and banning garden grabbing. There was lots of support too for giving more power to local communities and more transparency in local spending and some genuine optimism about some of the new policies.

‘Neighbourhoods having the power to determine housing poilcy will be a bonus, especially for those rural areas where there are huge issues surrounding affordable housing and families are split becasue they can find no suitable housing in their area,’ hopes one respondent. 

Mixed in with that are some sensible pleas for support for social housing, shared ownership and self-build. 

‘Build more social housing and stop leaving the decision about what type of housing to build to the market,’ says one response. ‘Let’s not cut off our intermediate housing nose to spite our face.’

And ‘why is affofdable social Housing not a major priority and area for investment’ and ‘I do appreciate that cuts have to be made and am really pleased that this government is taking the debt very seriously indeed, but please do keep offering affordable housing products’. 

There’s even some opposition to coalition policies. ‘Abolishing RSS is madness – that is a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater – local councils need guidance on a range of planning subjects that cut across council boundaries,’ pleads one respondent. 

There’s a plea from ASB Professional ‘not to restrict the use of covert surveillance by LAs - the ability to tackle issues that can destroy communities and severely impact on residents’ quality of life will be compromised’.

And there’s opposition to the government’s decision to drop regulation of the private landlords and agents. ‘It is time that tenants within the private rental sector had some protections in place against negligent, greedy and temporary landlords.’

But the final few stages of the consultation look like an organised attempt by Christian groups to hijack the agenda. 

‘Congatulations to the LIB-CON alliance, I believe God has allowed this for a purpose as HE enthrones and dethrones,’ is the message from one respondent. Eric Pickles as God’s Messenger? Hmmm. 

Much of the responses are pleas for more funding for faith-based groups. ‘In this time of cut-backs, is the government aware the extent of Christian voluntary works that undergird the social systems of the towns? In our town over 100,000 man hours are spent annually, providing care to addicts, the elderly, the unemployed, the debt-ridden, etc,’ asks one respondent. 

But mixed in with that are some moral messages such as ‘council houses SHOULD NOT BE GIVEN to people less than 30 years old, so to encourage teenagers to study instead of getting pregnant’ and ‘the homosexual lobby is far too powerful and influencial. Stop being scared of them and letting them manipulate!’ 

The most sensible combination of the lot comes from Sharon, who pleads: ‘When you do your consultation, please remember that only certain areas of the population will respond, you can’t just use the comments you have here and think this represents all of the UK. The people who respond are the people who know about these sort of consultations, who have the ability and the know how to respond and are willing to put their head above the firing line.’ 

But is anyone listening? And will anyone different be responding to the even more important consultation on spending cuts.