The UK’s system of government is overcentralised, remote and very confusing

It is a Frankenstein’s monster. Ask yourself if you truly understand it – how local taxes are raised and shared out among other councils, what power your mayor has, whether you have a unitary system or whether you are under a county and district councils.

If so, who does what? Streetlights, main roads, health, education, car parks, parks, bins, police? If there’s a problem, who do you go to?

And then there are the devolved nations – how are they funded and what control do they have?

Central government has its fingers in all their pies and, ultimately can give – and take back – power.

It can order local councils to do its bidding, without funding them. Covid was a good example with central government giving orders and local councils having to find the money and a method to carry out their instructions.

Councils had to make the orders from on high work locally, even if those instructions didn’t make sense for the local communities and their specific needs.

This lack of local responsibility and control, along with the confusion of local and regional government systems across the UK, baffles many of us, erodes trust in local government and diminishes our democracy.

The size of some local authorities and the overbearing control imposed on them by central government, means councils cannot easily offer the right responses to the unique problems within their communities.

Local governments become little more than goffers for Westminster, while having to take responsibilities for actions imposed on them by central government bosses.

There is a better way.

We believe power should be handed back to local councils so that decisions are taken closest to where they will have their effect.

Real power to the people, with local councils doing what you tell them to do. You decide – they deliver.

And if they don’t you vote them out. It’s direct democracy.

Take back control - READ our report on Decentralisation