Wilfred Pickles was a talented man. He was an actor and a radio star from the 1940s to the 1960s. Celebrated for his generosity of spirit, he famously gave money away each week on his radio show ‘Have a Go’.

Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, however, is a more stereotypical Yorkshireman. Not noted for his generosity of spirit, he is certainly not in the business of giving money away. His main talent appears to lie in making massive public spending cuts - not always a guarantee of popularity nor, in the long run, political support.

Fortunately for Mr Pickles, the prime minister has produced a useful smokescreen for his dark activities in the shape of the ‘big society’ initiative. This, David Cameron argues, is about building a ‘bigger and better society,’ with a redistribution of power away from the town hall and Whitehall to the man and woman in the street.

Power to the people

I don’t have a problem with the ‘big society’ idea. I’ve long argued in this column and elsewhere for people to be given a greater say in how their communities are run. However, I have never seen localism as a way of necessarily reducing the cost of public services or the number of people employed.

What I am all for is mutuality and co-operation and communities delivering their own services through purpose-built third sector organisations. One great advantage of these models, is that any profits generated through services are recycled back into the community as ‘sticky money’ rather than siphoned off as profit to distant private sector shareholders - which happened all too often with the compulsory competitive tendering of public services in the 1980s.

Harsh memories of poor services supplied and fortunes made in the Thatcher years make me deeply sceptical about the coalition government’s motives 30 years on. I find it difficult to believe the Tories can make the jump from ‘no society’ to the ‘big society’ in one generation.

I fear Eric Pickles’ view of giving power to the man and woman in the street will be to hand them a broom and ask them to sweep it on a voluntary basis. Indeed, he has publicly stated that Mr Cameron’s big idea ‘is unashamedly about getting more for less.’

However, even if the prime minister’s aspirations for the ‘big society’ are taken at face value, many rocks lie ahead in the road. To start with, the idea has not been fleshed out and the four pilot authorities have little idea of what is expected of them.

A voluntary cause

We do know that voluntary organisations are expected to play a critical role in all of this. But they are bracing themselves for a huge loss of funding when the nation moves on to the main course of public spending cuts, and their possible contribution will be diminished.

The question of where all the ‘big society’ volunteers will come from has yet to be answered. It is difficult to engage people in community affairs and sustain their interest.

Mr Cameron should try sitting in a cold community room on a wet Wednesday night in November discussing youth services with ten other people - six of them council officers. It might dampen his aspirations.

In my experience, people come out in force only if they have something to protest about. Recently, I chaired a meeting of 500 people through a megaphone in a school playground. The school canteen booked for the meeting, which holds 100 people, was not big enough. The subject on the agenda was a proposed controlled parking zone. If we had been discussing homelessness in the neighbourhood, I doubt if a dozen people would have turned up.

Somehow we have got to catch the public interest and involve people on a wider front across the community beyond their own immediate concerns. I believe we can do this only by passing real power and a measure of financial control to the grassroots - a view shared by the National Association of Local Councils, which represents the 8,500 elected town and parish councils in England.

With an annual spend of about £400 million, NALC members employ more than 25,000 staff. Some 15 million people live in the rural and urban communities they serve, about 30 per cent of the population of England. NALC believes the recession offers opportunities to its members, as district and county authorities may turn to them to deliver more local services when the cuts really begin to bite.

Save the grassroots

More than 150 new parish and town councils have been created since 1997, but the coverage remains patchy and these grassroot councils will not escape the cuts. I also suspect Mr Pickles might see these councils as another formal (and expensive) tier of local government and not quite the free ride he and the government are looking for.

I believe these and other community organisations could provide the foundations for a new and nation-wide level of truly local government. By abolishing county councils and introducing a two-tier local government structure of unitary authorities and elected town or parish councils, we could bring local government and its services closer to its customers and devolve more of the community services to the second tier.

Authorities could work together to cut the cost of backroom services and provide lean procurement. As the Tories control all but two of the English county councils, I can’t see it happening. But if they are genuinely interested in localism, it’s something they should seriously consider.

Bill Randall is a housing writer, journalist and Green Party councillor

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