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- The Guardian, Wednesday November 17 2004
For the past few months, like thousands of others on my patch, I have been rediscovered by my county council. After years of anonymity, and plain indifference to the people it is meant to serve, the newish chief executive and rather older leader decided that a publicity blitz - lavish colour magazines, umpteen leaflets on how to contact officialdom and get things done - was the best way to reconnect with a distant and confused electorate.
Maybe I should have been grateful that, rather belatedly, this obscure organisation had woken up to its main role in life: serving the people and telling them what it does. Like many others, I wasn't impressed by its halfhearted efforts.
In truth, the blitz was borne out of panic and self-preservation. This council, like a clutch of others, was threatened by John Prescott's plan for an elected regional assembly in north-east England. If voters had said "yes", a messy period of reorganisation was guaranteed because one tier of administration - I hesitate to call it local government any longer - would have disappeared. And there's nothing like the threat of extinction to galvanise a creaking municipal machine, badly in need of re-engineering, if not reincarnation.
In the event, voters resoundingly rejected the deputy prime minister's version of devolution. You could sense the collective sighs of relief in county hall. "Phew! So that's all right then." Back to normal? Don't bank on it.
Sure, reorganisation goes out of the window, for the time being at least. But the demands from the government for multibillion pound savings and greater efficiency from councils are driving a much wider agenda. Ministers are already questioning why district councils cannot pool resources, particularly council tax collection, to achieve economies of scale. Throughout the big Whitehall spending departments, deeper questions about local governance are now being asked - none more so than in the Home Office and in the Department for Education and Skills.
Something, then, should be stirring in town and county halls, and their representative bodies, on the back of that crushing vote against Prescott's devolution package. Don't take too seriously the new mantra from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) that the bodies will "maintain a strong regional presence and continue to strengthen the regional dimension".
Consider instead the head of steam building up against non-elected regional "assemblies", those little-known bodies now blessed with strategic planning powers by the ODPM and soon to assume, we are told, some responsibility for housing strategy as well. Councils, from the north-east to the south-east, are now questioning whether these bodies - for some, a threat to local democracy itself - provide value for money. In the south, Tories are even considering mass resignations over Prescott's contentious housebuilding targets.
Referendum day in the north-east should go down as a defining moment for local administrations, a time to reassess the relevance of what we still endearingly call "local government". The old institution, once a power in the land, has been on the back foot for too long, seemingly incapable of presenting the country with an adventurous, corporate "brand", let alone telling people what it does. Now it has an opportunity to fill the regional vacuum, and start reorganising itself before the government pounces.
Away from Prescott, ministers are not standing still. Tony Blair's post-referendum comment that the government will now "continue to strengthen local democracy in other ways", should not be taken as a vote of confidence in councils. Rather, it is an indication that strengthened local governance - quite a different concept - is on the agenda. "Localism", after all, is all things to all politicians, but among Downing Street ultras it means driving a little power down to communities and neighbourhoods, bypassing councils along the way.
Intriguingly, the best indication of government thinking came recently in a provocative, yet thoughtful, speech from the education secretary, Charles Clarke. The underlying message - namely: for God's sake, get real - should be taken as the strongest challenge this year to the old institution. "Let me face you quite directly and say that your role is not for the most part concerned with directly providing services," he said. "It will increasingly be about commissioning and working with and through others - voluntary community organisations, private companies, cooperatives, whatever it may happen to be. You face huge and critical leadership challenges, of vision and strategy, of joining up and empowering, of supporting and training others."
That should be taken as the view of Downing Street. It was doubtless seen as a threat by some councils. But the golden age of town and county halls is passed. Councils have to evolve into community champions, become strong advocates for their areas, punching above their weight and seizing the high social and economic ground. They now have a window of opportunity. It won't come again.
· Peter Hetherington is the Guardian's regional affairs editor.
