Coalition government hands power back to the cities
Eric Pickles, the Communities Secretary, has today suggested that that government will introduce a bill that will allow 12 of England's largest cities to directly elect their own mayor. The cities in question include Birmingham, Leeds, Sheffield, Liverpool, Bristol and Manchester with the likelihood that elected mayors will have more control on local spending and effectively decentralise power from the national government.
This is something which the Conservative party has been fairly vocal on over the last few weeks with the suggestion that centralisation of power under the former Labour government had gone too far. David Cameron is very keen to hand power back to the people of the UK and local government looks set to benefit in the short to medium term. However, how will these new powers be used?
Historically the more power that has been handed to local authorities the more this has cost consumers in the area as bigger budgets need to be funded. Whether this would be the case with the proposed changes remains to be seen but there is no way that power can be handed back to the local community without a further cost somewhere down the line. Time will tell!
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