Levelling Up? Councils eroded as Mayors to make decisions over their heads.

Michael Gove's new ‘Levelling Up Bill’ appears to be on the face of it the complete loss of local democracy turning decision making on everything from ‘the local share of opportunities’ to planning and infrastructure over to Mayors.

Councillor Kath Nisbet a person who has been involved with local civic mayoralty for a number of years is not happy that democratic decision making is to be removed and is being placed in the hands of one single person, a Mayor, she said “Over the last twelve years we have seen decision making at a local level destroyed by the Tories and centralisation becoming the norm, leaving this nation open to corruption and the stupid acts of demigods”.

“I fully support the role of civic mayors whose role it is to bring the council into the public domain and for the regional ‘shared mayors’ position of chairing and ironing out the differences in regional politics, but all powerful mayors is about removing democracy and leaving the public nowhere to turn to resolve their local issues Councillors will sit and preside over empty agendas whilst those who vote us into office will be fed the lines that Councillors are to blame for everything that goes wrong in society a true Orwellian change, ‘the ducks in a row are to blame’”.

“The Levelling Up Bill to me is about spin,spin,spin with the hard work of revitalising and filling empty shop premises being dumped on Councils after 200years of commerce and market forces has led to their eventual decline whilst mayors will sit pretty and preside over anything new, it's looking ever more like the USA and not the UK and if I wanted to live in the USA I would move”.