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24
Oct
Deputy PM Angela Rayner makes key council announcements in Harrogate
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner said during a speech in Harrogate today that councillors will no longer be forced to attend meetings in person.
Ms Rayner also announced councillors will no longer have to publish their names online, as part of what she described as a new “collaborative and constructive approach” between Whitehall and town halls.
Ms Rayner’s 20-minute speech marked the end of the Local Government Association’s three-day annual conference, which attracted 1,600 delegates to Harrogate Convention Centre.
The last Conservative government temporarily dropped a legal requirement to hold full council meetings in person during covid but reintroduced the rule in May 2021.
Ms Rayner said Labour would change this to encourage “people from all walks of life to have a stake in local democracy”. She said:
It’s not our place to decide whether councillors should attend your meetings remotely or use proxy votes when they need to. We are putting forward proposals to let councillors make the decision for themselves.
She also said the government would remove the requirement for councillors’ home addresses to be published in response to death threats and intimidation.
Housing targets
Ms Rayner, who is also Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government, started her speech by saying Labour “uncovered a shocking crisis in local government which was far beyond what we ever anticipated” when it came to power in July.
The last Conservative government, she claimed, had recklessly “ripped away any financial oversight of council spending, scrapping the Audit Commission and pushing councils to borrow more and more”.
She told delegates Labour would introduce “multi-year funding settlements that will give you the stability and the certainty to plan and invest for the long-term and that we will end this Dragon’s Den approach to bidding wars between councils for competitive funding pots”.
Ms Rayner also said the government would continue to provide exceptional financial support to troubled councils but would scrap the “punitive” 1% premium previously likened to a pay-day loan.
And she said council planning departments would be strengthened to enable them to cope with new mandatory housing targets, as part of the government plans to build 1.5 million homes. The right to buy housing scheme would be reviewed, she added, to “stem the loss of precious council homes”.
The Stray Ferret also attended Tuesday’s opening day of the conference when North Yorkshire Council deputy leader Cllr Gareth Dadd told delegates it was now spending more than £1 million on some individual care packages. You can read more about his speech on the financial challenges facing the council here.
Next year’s LGA Conference will be in Liverpool.
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