For many years, those of us who have toiled on local councils ripped our hair out as we watched private developers build superstores on virtually every roundabout in town. This is not because we’re against the 500 jobs that typically come with these stores, or the opportunity to be able to buy bagels in the early hours of the morning, or even because they tend to shift the centre of gravity away from the small shop economy. The reality is that many small town centres have been in decay for years. Changes to how we live our lives have made the superstore and its multiplex derivatives an essential part of Young Britain.
But what about the corporate social responsibility that comes with building these new hubs of activity? In return for these new supercentres, what have our communities gained?
Typically, they will have gained something called a section 106 agreement with the local council. It’s effectively the same as a bung of a few hundred thousand pounds for the councils to spend on education or leisure facilities somewhere (often elsewhere) within the boundaries of the local authority. No matter how
good your local councillors are, tracking that money down through the system is impossible: local government staff come and go, budgets in one department are balanced against others to avoid going into the red and one corporate local re-organisation follows another.
But that doesn’t have to be the case. If we believe in joined-up government, and if we are serious about improving delivery of local public services, we need to give council leaders the powers to say, ‘Thank you, Mr Comet/Tesco/Halfords (delete as appropriate), welcome to our town. Now, instead of a section 106 agreement, how about we try this…’
Where shall we begin our wish list? A walk-in health centre would be good. Let’s face it, it saves queuing if you’ve got to do your shopping anyway. Obviously the doctors and nurses would remain in the NHS whilst that nice Mr Superstore would be paying their salaries, and no doubt benefiting from the extra trade in his own pharmacy.
Of course, trade would also be boosted by the after-school club attached to the building where mum and dad can leave the kids while they shop. And the supercentre car park need never be as full again now that there is a bus service running directly to the store courtesy of that nice Mr You-know-who, with drivers employed by the council in the new buses, owned by the council, and paid for by… yes, our friends in the private sector. No extra taxes required, and yet a boost to education and health at a very visible, easily reached, local level.
It may seem like heresy to those that believe health and education must be entirely funded by the taxpayer, but the way we live our lives, the density of our communities and where we spend our time has changed. The superstore is already king: it’s time we gave local government the power to tap into new revenue streams to supplement – but not replace – public services.
Improving health and education through the use of existing, if beefed up, local government institutions makes sense, not least because it puts the ball back into the court of local politicians who often just blame failures in public services on lack of support from central government. By shifting the onus to local government and putting it in partnership with the private sector to supplement those creaking public services, we separate the genuinely ethical local investor from those that are just there to find cheap labour and make a quick buck.
Let’s give them the chance. If they have a real desire to improve the communities from which they gain their revenue, then surely they will build community bus routes, after-school clubs and health centres with the same speed and professionalism that
they build their supercentres.