April 1st 2016
Not since the heady days of early new Labour has there been
so much interest in ‘joined up government’. I was enjoying being a member of
the Government’s ‘Joining it Up Locally’ Policy Action Team, that was sponsored
by the Social Exclusion Unit on the Cabinet Office, which fed into the
Government’s National Strategy for Neighbourhood Renewal, and Modernising Local
Government programme. The product of all this enthusiasm and energy was a range
of powerful joining up mechanisms…the Local Strategic Partnership, Sustainable Communities
Strategies, spatial planning, placemaking, placeshaping, Total Place, Total
Capital, (…and more, much more.)
Talking to a civil service acquaintance yesterday, I learnt
that today marks the launch of a unique Whitehall initiative to join up a raft
of policies relating to welfare and housing. Making use of funding streams
available to councils through s.23 Local Government Act 2003, and the various
Community Rights Regulations (relating to Chapter 3 of Part 5 of the Localism
Act 2011), parish councils and other qualifying community led organisations in England
and Wales will be able to take local action to ensure that people out of work
can be provided with work and a home.
I tracked down a spokesman from the new cross departmental
team, WorkHouse, who told me, “For too long, it has been a stain on the government’s
record of fairness that there has not been any coordinated action in this area
of public policy. We need to ensure that people without work should not be
prevented from re-entering the labour market as a consequence of unfairly occupying
or underusing a publicly provided home. We will ensure that parish councils and
other well-meaning community organisations have the resources to provide new
forms of very basic accommodation, access to healthy meals, linked to a requirement
to work.”
Information about the employment aspects of the initiative,
already known colloquially amongst ministers, I understand, as the WorkForce
programme, shows that the value of the accommodation and food will be the
equivalent to the Living Wage, so the new programme will be cost neutral to the
taxpayer.
Initial capital and revenue funding will be available via
the Local Government Act 2003, which provides a general power for Whitehall departments
to directly fund councils for any activity not covered by other legislation.
The Community Rights Regulations allows property to be designated as Assets of
Community Value, and requires property owners to consider bids from community groups
before selling on the open market. It also contains a measure that requires
local authorities to exercise their powers of compulsory purchase where the local
community benefit is aligned with national policy priorities. “We expect communities
to want to take advantage of this new initiative, especially through the take
up of neighbourhood plans, to create what we are calling ‘work-houses’, to
ensure that their community becomes more self-sufficient, resilient and sustainable.
Community Right to Build Orders will be ideal to create this new form of
housing for the 10% or so of local populations not making their fair
contribution to society.”
A Treasury contact confirmed that “the Chancellor sees this
an important measure to improve national productivity.” Joined up government at last…phew!
