constitutional localism

Dear XXX,

Thanks very much for your email and my sincere apologies for not having got back to you and the lack of specificity. And I'm grateful for your response nonetheless.

In terms of the countries on which we'd like to focus, We would like choose Denmark, France, Germany and the Netherland, and Australia, NZ, S.A. and Canada. We feel that anything more would be beyond our scope. We sent more detailed outline of our project to XXX XXX, which I enclose herewith too. We've started work on the first section, dealing with Charter compliance.

I also enclose the email I sent XXX. You'll notice that in my email to him I also mentioned that we will need funding in order to complete the project: I explain why below, but it's worth restating the reasons why we do:

- We are extremely excited about this project and look forward to bringing it to a successful completion and launching the report to our mutual benefit

- Nonetheless, as the project needs to be written during February and early March, it necessarily requires our very small team to take time out of what has been traditionally our recruitment season, during which we hope to find new members to fund XXX for the following year. Recruiting new members immediately after the start of the new financial year has historically been very unpromising proposition.

- Owing to this, unfortunately we need to ask the XXX to compensate us for the opportunity cost that this time spent represents.

- We very much hope that this won't be an obstacle to our continuing to work on this project, which we both feel is highly promising and about which we are both very optimistic.

The perspective of the report is that we believe that local government has greater freedoms in the peer group that we isolate and that it is worth analysing the ways in which local government is especially hampered in England and highlighting them by contrast to international, more liberalised practice. I will accordingly run through the questions you ask of each topic, with apologies for repetition of material in my email to XXX below or in the enclosed proposed project structure. I want also to emphasis that the five areas I asked you to get back to me on didn't reflect a full structural proposal.

1. A comparative analysis on which services are delivered locally: I think that an exhaustive examination of services is beyond the scope of the report. We should probably confine ourselves to mechanisms of delivery for health, education and transport funding. The CLGF handbook is, as you say, exemplary in this regard. A similar breakdown on the four European peers would be great.

2. Performance management regimes in commonwealth and EU countries: As you say, this is too broad a title. You're also right that a comparison of the CPA/CAA/PSA regimes with others is what we want, but we're also loking to highlight the fact that abroad performance management as it is understood here doesn't really exist - abroad authorities abroad are more monitored for illegality than for poor performance, as far as I understand it. Something that we would like to conclude from this would be that a lighter regulatory touch (as opposed to the CPA's mere 200 indicators) makes for a more innovative and effective council.

3. Local government role if any in the legislatures: We want to know whether councillors have legislative roles in the targetted peer group partly because it is something that XXX XXX mentioned in his inaugural speech. We know that it is a rather unrealistic thing to agitate for, and that accordingly too great a concentration on it would dilute the persuasiveness of the report, but we think that as a long-term ambition for local government it would help to compensate a fairly substantial democratic deficit. So yes, we are " looking to find out where local councillors are represented in the lower and upper houses" as you say. This isn't a core analytical point - it's a prospective goal. If such an analysis could reveal that subsidiarity was better achieved with the inclusion of councillors in the legislature then it would, of course, be a useful thing to include and would bolster the profile of this section in the report.

4. Status or protection in written constitution:

5. Scope for reorganisation - who can do it and how? Points four and five I now realise really address the same point from different angles. You ask whether the fifth question should read "devolution of powers and how to achieve it" but that is in fact the converse perspective to what I had intended, which was rather a comparative examination of the ease of difficulty with which central governments can erode, curb or curtail local autonomy. While we are interested in how devolution can be achieved, some countries have strong safegaurds on their local governments' autonomy: for example Denmark (I think) requires that constitutional changes to local gov't status must be passed by two successive legislatures by two-thirds majorities. Of course, no such protection exists here, but to avoid this section becoming a constitutionalist's screed we would also like to focus on how fresh legislation in a selection of our peer countries (all of them would be too many) allocated resources and powers to local authorities. On what terms are new powers meted out - is there a set mechanism which determines the different levels to which the responsibility for administering new funding or legislation is given? "I have some extensive info on Denmark which has undergone a major transformation of local government in 2006 (reducing the number of councils, and then giving them more powers including welfare etc – very good info which I will send you). Are you also looking for info on where the relationship between central / local is better? " This sounds exactly right - yes please. For this more in-depth part of the report, I think we'd want to focus on Denmark and Germany.

I know that XXX is also interested in consitutional safeguards of local government status from the perspective of counties and districts bidding for unitary status: if we could see the relevant clauses of countries' consitutions which refer to the circumstances under which authority reorganisation can be undertaken - if such clauses or guidelines exist.

I hope that you find this a useful set of responses. We are of course flexible as to when you supply the information - we don't have to write the report linearly. We would, however, like to be able to publish by mid- to late March if possible. We also look forward to taking this forward with you and I look forward to hearing back from you. Please find below my earlier email to XXX.

With all best wishes,

XXX