Middleton Councillor broadly welcomes devolution

Date article online: 26/10/2006

Middleton Councillor Ian Robertson has broadly welcomed the move by the Administration to accentuate Township devolution, but says that "final judgement will depend on the detail".

He explained that there is a wide view among Middleton residents that the town has been in decline since the merger with Rochdale in the 70's.
 
The new plans add impetus to the devolutions already under way - the devolution of Highways, Street Services and most recently the new Leisure Trust operations. However these do not yet involve budgets and Councillor Robertson said: "I understand that budgets will also be devolved to Townships, and most importantly Townships will be able to move money between budgets.

"This approach also ties in with the Government's Double Devolution agenda which seeks to make services accountable to communities and thus bring communities into the decision-making process through local partnerships.

"The move ought to bring flexibility and responsiveness to the way that we deal with the concerns of residents, but there are many issues to be argued over, particularly those around possible penalties for not hitting certain government targets. (If the amount of money the Borough gets from Government is tied to targets, and say three Townships hit the targets and the fourth doesn't, does the fourth Township have to make up for the shortfall?).

"Also there's the matter of cost. If budgets are delegated, who is going to administer them? That human resource will also have to be moved out from the centre.

"Thus there are now three trends that reinforce each other: the ongoing devolution bequeathed by the previous Labour Administration, this new devolution initiative, and the new Government's White paper 'Strong and Prosperous Communities'. They all share the same theme: 'return power to the people'."