Let councils take the decisions – and the blame

Let councils take the decisions – and the blame

If there’s something strange in your neighbourhood, the coalition wants you to call ‘bureaucracy busters’. This may sound like an irritating bit of alliterative spin, but
it’s actually one of the government’s most radical proposals. The idea is to help individuals and community groups overcome the regulations and government restrictions that stand in the
way of innovation at a local level: in other words, to clear a way for the big society.

Bureaucracy busters is the brainchild of Greg Clark, the minister for decentralisation. Clark has a degree from Cambridge and a doctorate from the LSE, and is astute enough to have grasped that
politicians can’t do things alone. As he struggled with the bureaucratic maze of his own department, he realised how difficult it must be for the public to make their way through the
regulatory obstacle course. If innovation was to come from the ground up — as the coalition wants it to — the people would need help.