This is an article I wrote for the New Local Government Network (NLGN) for publication in the Local Government Chronicle, January 2008

We often lament the fact that too many of our citizens feel local government is remote and bureaucratic.  A key challenge is making ourselves more relevant, and that means involving local people in tackling the issues that matter most to them where they live.  

Here in Lambeth, we’ve seen a 100% increase in gun-enabled crime over the past twelve months.  The problem is linked to youth gangs involved in drug dealing and other anti-social behaviour.  Our Guns and Gangs Commission, set up last summer, will publish a report this month that recommends interventions in five areas: family support; wider access to jobs and training; more support for schools; better youth services and peer mentoring; and  supporting communities to find solutions to their own problems.  Alongside that I would add tougher enforcement against those responsible for the violence.  We must tackle the criminals while tackling the poverty that breeds criminals.  In many of our inner cities this complex issue, rooted in access to opportunity, sits right at the top of the agenda.  It cannot be solved without strongly involving the community. 

At the other end of the age spectrum, our ageing population presents real challenges.  Councils are restricting access to older people’s care services as costs rise faster than inflation and the number of people needing support grows way ahead of central government funding.  We need to rebalance funding away from helping those older people who have already become seriously ill in favour of funding services that will help them stay healthier and live more independently.  Prevention not cure is the key.  The challenge is how to switch funding away from the Health Service and into social care while maintaining the delicate balance between the two.  If we don’t do it, we face the growing neglect of older people with serious levels of need. 

In these and other important areas, like the provision of affordable housing, we face a challenge in finding more creative, community-based and cost-effective ways of providing services.  Many of the new youth services we need will be better provided by faith and voluntary groups that already have deep links and high levels of trust within our most deprived communities.  By encouraging services to be delivered in local neighbourhoods, under local control, we will find ways to make what we do more relevant as well as more effective.  It also forces us to focus on the service user, the citizen, rather than the provider.  That pushes us to work in closer partnership, sharing services and pooling resources so we can focus on the frontline. 

We’re often told that people are no longer interested in civic engagement.  In reality, they’ve just moved away from the old monolithic town hall towards local communities they prefer to identify with.  The challenge for local government is to go there with them.