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Howard Simmons
Director for Cultural and Community Investment, London Borough of Hounslow
and Adviser to the Local Government Association on Community Issues

I am very pleased to be here and to be able to bring a contribution from the Local Government Association to this debate. I identified a great deal with many of the points that Angela Sarkis made in her presentation about the opportunity that is there currently for inter faith organisations to have a real impact - not only on policy and planning but also on service delivery. The opportunity is there – it is for you to grasp. I think that it is also true that local government is far more aware and responsive now than perhaps it has been in the past on these issues. I say that as someone who has worked both in local government and for local government. I say ‘in’ because I have worked in a number of boroughs in the community sector and have been involved in trying to influence local authorities which, at times, have seemed recalcitrant and unresponsive, to take more notice of community issues. So I recognise that dynamic as well.

I’ll just quickly start out with an interactive bit. Could I just ask how many of you have visited the Millennium Dome in London? [a significant number of the audience raised their hands at this point]. That’s quite impressive - quite a number! I’m not here either as an advocate or apologist for the Dome but I would like to reflect briefly on the Faith Zone in the Dome. Did those of you who have been to the Dome enjoy this Zone when you went there and think it worthwhile? I must say, I was very intrigued, not only by the content but also watching people’s reactions to it. It made very clear the multi-racial, multi-faith nature of Britain today, but also some of the challenges that we all face. In fact, I jotted down two of the statements that were up on the various banners and boards and I would like to read them out to you because both of these have particular relevance to the reasons why local government might take an interest in faith organisations and inter faith organisations.

"Each faith draws on the commitment and conviction of its followers to convey and shape ideas about ultimate reality, about family and community, right and wrong and the very nature of who you are and what you do"

"Each faith community calls on its followers to treat other people as they wish to be treated themselves. This is a strong basis for those of different faiths to work together to combat the world’s evils – poverty, hunger, war, injustice, discrimination, fear. In the new Millennium, the faith communities will have the opportunity [note the ‘opportunity’] to organise, to improve, and to lead by their example in fulfilling this commitment to every human being."

Now that made me reflect and I thought "Yes". I think these statements also underline why local government is starting to take more interest in, and notice of, faith groups and faith organisations in particular. What I plan to do is to quickly run through the nature and role of the Local Government Association (LGA) and to say a little bit about local government today and about some of those opportunities of which I think, if you wish, you can avail yourselves and in which you can become involved.

The Local Government Association was formed in April 1997 and so it is only just over 3 years old. It brought together three previous local government associations: the Association of District Councils, the Association of County Councils and the Association of Metropolitan Authorities. The difficulty when these all existed was that each spoke for local government but with a different voice. So in discussions with central government this usually meant that three different perspectives were expressed. The bringing together – the merging into one national organisation – was to strengthen the voice of local government.

Every single organisation in England and Wales is a member of the LGA. Scotland is separate, they have their own organisation called the Confederation of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA). So all 34 county councils, 238 district councils, 47 unitary authorities, 36 metropolitan district councils, and 33 London Boroughs, and the 22 Welsh Authorities are members of the LGA as are the police, transport, and fire authorities. Fifty million people are represented through the organisation. Some £66 billion are presently spent on local services and local government employs 2 million people itself across the country.

At a local level, you can get involved and make a difference. The LGA is a campaigning and advocacy organisation and it seeks both to protect and promote the nature and role of local democracy, to build on good practice, to identify the best ways of involving and empowering communities, and to disseminate that good practice to other local authorities. That is very important. I think all of us have experiences of the good, the bad and the ugly in local government as we do of many sectors – the voluntary sector, the private sector, etc! However there is a wide spectrum of practice: there are local authorities which excel in terms of their progressive policy and there are others that have a long way to go to become more responsive to, and reflective of, community needs.

What has happened in the last few years is a major shift in both central government policy, and, indeed, local government policy, in terms of what is broadly called the modernising agenda. This modernising agenda opens up opportunities for people to become involved – actually to help to shape the agenda itself and to say what needs to be done. In local government, this goes broadly under the title of ‘better local government’ and what it means is that local authorities are now charged with seeking to bring forward far more relevant policies for social inclusion. This will involve working out ways for greater participation and involvement. It is hoped that the process will have the result of greater social justice and will lead to improving the nature and level of services that are being provided as well as making sure that they are relevant to their local communities.

People are very much aware of the changes that have come about linked to devolution in Scotland and Wales. The creation of the Greater London Assembly in London, with the new Mayor, is another change. There are also important developments on the regional front with Regional Development Agencies and consortia being established in different parts of the country. This means you have got two focuses for attention and involvement: the regional and the local.

The role of the LGA has been to try and take forward discussions with central Government. There are what are called "local/central meetings" on a quarterly basis where the senior politicians from local government sit down with Cabinet Ministers from central Government to discuss common issues of concern. The agenda for these discussions can be shaped by people in communities who put forward issues they believe are important. These then go through the machinery into those discussions. So there is the opportunity to become engaged and involved.

That’s the role of the LGA as a whole, and within that context, there is work on the community and voluntary sector which is twofold. There is an organisation called the Community Development Forum which brings together local authority representatives with representatives of the community and of the voluntary sector. That is recognised and supported by government in the Active Community Unit of the Home Office and it has been a very fruitful area for dialogue and discussion. There is also at present a task group looking at ways that local government can work better with the community and voluntary sector as a whole. I very much hope that – perhaps following on from this conference - there may be some submissions from inter faith organisations to that task group about ways in which relationships can be improved and taken forward.

Why is local government important? The truth is that all of you, wherever you work and are involved with your faith community, are in a local authority or sometimes based where you cross the boundaries of one or two authorities. So, local authorities have a big impact on a lot of what you do and on the quality of life for many of the people that you work with and on your families and friends.

Local authorities provide basic services – education, social services, housing, and so on. For this reason they are very important. I think for a long time there has been a tradition that these services should be run either by professionals or by politicians who know best. It is important to remember, though, that local politicians are elected from the locality – they are local people themselves that put themselves forward for those positions. In terms of local democracy, you can vote people out as much as you can vote them in. This government is keen to see a renaissance in local democracy – greater participation in the actual voting process, that’s one thing – but far greater participation in the actual planning and carrying out of day to day work in local government. That is underwritten by a whole raft of new strategies and policies that have to be taken forward.

Angela Sarkis talked particularly about regeneration work. That is a very important area – and there are a whole range of funding regimes in which inter faith organisations can become involved and work with local government. Apart from the special forms of funding there is also the mainstream set of council services and their planning and provision and it is very important to realise that you can also impact upon, contribute to and influence these areas and processes. Again, you have that opportunity, that role should you choose to take it.

It is important to hear about problems and difficulties where these exist, about bad practice, but that is what we need to tackle and change and eradicate, and to do this examples of good practice are very important. The LGA would be very interested in seeing examples of good practice so that it can disseminate these and share them with other authorities so as to encourage similar initiatives.

If I could just quickly look at some of the opportunities that I think do exist currently for linking and for partnership, and engagement. Very clearly, there has been a traditional opportunity for influence at a sort of symbolic, ceremonial, civic level – working with the local mayor, and so forth. There are, however, many other ways in which inter faith groups and organisations can have impact and can educate and take forward work and thinking in local government. It is quite clear that you can become involved around education through SACREs. Many inter faith groups and multi-faith organisations do this. There is also a whole social care agenda, including the development of community care plans for local areas and planning environmental issues. Each authority has a statutory requirement to draw up a community safety strategy and it has to do that jointly with the police. Again, feeding into that and contributing ideas and suggestions to it is important. The same is true in the context of the health agenda with the development each year of the health improvement plans which have to be drawn up by all areas.

There are, in fact, some seventy different strategies and plans that each local authority is involved in drawing up for their areas. So the opportunity exists to make a contribution to some, all or any of those. It is a question for your locality what is particularly relevant and important to you and where you will want to say ‘we wish to become involved and we feel that we have a role to play in that’. There is new legislation being proposed by the Government in which responsibility is being placed on local authorities for planning the Social, Economic and Environmental well-being for their communities. All local authorities are going to have to plan how best to take this forward in consultation with other stakeholders

This is not something that the local authority can do alone. It is something that the local authority must do in partnership with the community and voluntary sector, with the private sector, and with all the interests that exist. This amounts to identifying their stakeholders, finding out what the key issues are in localities, and then responding and planning services accordingly. That is to be enshrined in each local area in the development of a "community plan". Again, this community plan, which each local authority will be required to produce, is not the local authority’s community plan. It is the plan that all the different agencies in that area can feel some ownership for.

I was at a conference the other day where Milton Keynes Council were talking about the process that they have undertaken on their community planning process. They started some time ago. It took them four years and the first year was actually spent trying to explain the process to different people, to get them involved, get them interested. By the fourth year, which has just finished, my understanding is that they got 400 different organisations across their area, from the public, private and voluntary sectors to sign up to that community plan, not only saying "we agree that these are the broad objectives and the relative priorities", but also "we commit ourselves to putting this level of - it might be resources, staff time, or cash – into actually achieving those objectives". So it is a very embracing strategy that has been developed in that one authority. That model is something that could be worked out, and should be worked out in every local authority in the country in the few coming years. You have the opportunity, again, to become involved in that process, and to influence and shape.

There is a clear statutory requirement upon local authorities to consult their local communities through developing the new duty of Best Value in terms of reviewing all forms of service provision and in relation to the new Community Planning process. It is a real opportunity that you can take, if you so choose, to become involved and to help shape and to take this work forward. I do recommend that to you, and ask that you consider very carefully how best you might do that.

I hope that this has given you a quick overview of what the LGA has been doing. I cannot speak to either the positive or difficult times that you have been having in your own particular local authority but can point in general terms to the positive opportunities that exist. Driven both by central Government’s legislative programme and by local government’s own desire actually to reform, improve and develop local government there are real opportunities for much greater community engagement and involvement. All of you have a real opportunity to take part in that and a real contribution to make. I wish you well. Thank you.

Question: The Human Rights Act comes into effect on 2 October and also for the first time in 2001, hopefully, a question on religion will be asked in the Census. Do you not think that there are now going to be useful opportunities because of being able to identify the scope and participation of faith groups in development in the areas in which there has been underdevelopment?

Howard Simmons: Essentially, yes, there are real opportunities. The door is ajar and all we have to do is take the handle of the door and push it and come in. Because local government should be being very responsive now. Some people may say ‘in my area, we have real difficulties, we are not recognised.’ I should stress that what local government tends to want to see, without becoming too bureaucratic and structured, is properly representative bodies. It feels far more comfortable in dealing on that basis. I think that the handbook which was produced by the Network with the ICRC, The Local Inter Faith Guide, to which Angela made reference earlier, is an excellent resource in terms of developing this kind of representative structure. It also sets out very usefully some of the issues and how to approach them and outlines some of the different models and structures that can be used.

There are opportunities there. There is a growing recognition of the real contribution that faith communities make in the community and the fact that they are active on a day to day basis, doing things such as delivering services and being involved with people that the local government services quite often don’t reach or find it very difficult to reach or communicate with. They offer a huge chance for partnership and influence.

Question: What would you say about local government’s approach of imposing its structures on the voluntary sector of which faith communities are part?

Howard Simmons: That is, I suppose, an example of bad practice or of municipal paternalism which local government itself is endeavouring to change and challenge. One of the strengths of local government, as of any voluntary or community sector organisation, is diversity. Local authorities differ a lot. I do recognise the picture though. I was myself at one stage working in local authorities that said "We want to set up mechanisms for consulting so we’ll have a framework that is like this, and we’ll draw up the constitution like this, and groups that comply with this we’ll talk to and those that don’t we won’t." That was a disaster, even though it wasn’t recognised as such at the time. It is recognised as such now, and there is much better practice around which shows how you can work in partnership with a range of organisations in the community and voluntary sector without taking away their independent role and their cutting edge and ability constructively to challenge what is going on. If a local authority starts to intrude on those two things then it’s not doing its job properly.

Question: You said there were some seventy areas in which local faith communities could seek to affect the agenda of local authorities. You mentioned two of them but do you have a list of the other 68 please?

Howard Simmons: I can gladly provide a list of the major ones.

Major Initiatives Affecting Local Government

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