A few days ago a story went largely un-noticed about Hazel Blears proposing that local councils and local communities could form a contract with each other about expectations put upon local government. The idea is that if the council fails to tackle things like drug dealing, graffiti and dirty streets, then local residents could be entitled to some of their council tax back...though it is keenly stressed this would only be in the most serious of failures, an as yet unquantified level of problems.

Charters or so-called 'community contracts' will help councils, police and health authorities and local people to work together in tackling the issues that matter, improving their local neighbourhoods and improve public satisfaction

Now I can't help but think, based on the above, that this seems all very sad for the councils. Hazel Blears is putting this out here, despite her claims of services being much better now, that councils are failing in their duties in local areas and that she feels the need to introduce a punitive system for them to actually keep them on the straight and narrow. I welcome the scheme personally if it does that, but the question from this has to be how long have councils been failing in their duties despite putting up our council tax? And just how are these contracts going to be enforced, independently or are councils just going to be able to shirk responsibilities in a more beguiling way by using the "forced hand" argument to reduce services elsewhere that are equally as important yet not covered by such declarations of intent?

I'm all for transparency, but this kind of move is wrapping up the ideals of what a council should be doing anyway and offering it to us as some kind of new amazing governance reform.