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Councillor John Mills |
Judge us on our record
Would the Tories, Lib Dems or Greens
match Labour’s record in Camden? Not by a long way, argues
John Mills
ON May 4 2006, having been first elected in 1971, I shall
step down from being a member of Camden Council.
It will be a big wrench to do so. I have loved being involved
with local government for 35 years. What are my thoughts as
I leave?
The first is to reflect on how important local government still
is. How well or badly the council operates has considerable
impact on everyone, even those whose only contact with the local
authority is having their refuse collected and the streets cleaned.
For many people living in the borough, however, the local authority
provides a much wider range of services than this – housing,
social services, education, leisure, planning and benefits –
and whether they are well or badly run makes a massive difference
to their lives.
Over the last decade, Camden has made a huge effort to improve
the way the borough is run.
Of course, not everything is as good as it should be but, in
an imperfect world, Camden Council has done much better than
most other local authorities, gaining a great deal of external
recognition in the process.
In my opinion, the calibre of both members and officers in Camden
is well above average and they have done a better job than in
most other places. It would be nice if this were recognised
more widely than it has been.
Second, it makes a lot of difference who is elected in local
elections. Both individuals and political priorities have a
big impact on what happens and that, because being a councillor
is a fairly thankless task, you have to care a lot about the
borough to get on the council and then to stay there.
In Camden, it is because of the determination and commitment
of the people who have been elected that the borough has, for
a long time, been a relatively highspending authority but with
an exceptionally wide spread and depth of services.
Of course, the downside is complaints about the level of Council
Tax but the upside has a lot to do with what makes Camden such
a desirable place to live – much better than average council
facilities and a lot more money spent on keeping the community
together than in many other places. If this is what most people
want, surely they should be entitled to vote for it.
Third, I think we are all lucky in Camden that we have a community
which is exceptionally interested in what is going on and thus
heavily involved.
From tenants’ associations to environmental pressure groups,
from those concerned with education issues to people involved
in every nook and cranny of the voluntary sector, there is a
huge amount of interest in what the council does.
This makes the life of councillors – and officers –
both harder work but also a lot more interesting and rewarding.
How do you balance the interests of car owners with pedestrians
– let alone the environment and the frustration of traffic
congestion? How should scarce social housing vacancies be allocated?
What criteria should be used to decide who should go to which
school? Finding fair and acceptable ways of dealing with all
the conflicting interests involved in tackling these sorts of
issues is difficult, but very satisfying when it works out right.
It is nice to see that the extensive survey evidence we have
shows that more and more people in the borough think that the
council pays attention to their needs, even if they cannot always
be satisfied.
What, therefore, do I hope will happen on May 4? Of course,
I hope that there will continue to be a Labour-controlled council
– but also something more. When the votes are cast, I hope
that they will be a judgement on what has been done locally.
The forthcoming elections are not about the Iraq War or identity
cards or national changes to the way education is organised.
They are – or ought to be – about whether the Conservatives
or Lib Dems or even the Greens would do a better job running
Camden Council than Labour. In my view, the record of the last
decade suggests that any of them would have a struggle to match,
let alone to beat Labour’s local record.
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