The government is currently consulting people on the planning laws relating to houses in multiple occupation (HMOs).

The consultation follows last year's commission that reviewed the current position on HMOs.  This review recommended that people should be consulted on possible new legislation on HMOs.

This subject will be important to the many Liberal Democrat councillors and campaigners who are working in student areas, seaside towns and those populated by young people sharing houses.  The review is suggesting three possible causes of action:

Option 1 is to rely on existing ‘good practice' from councils around the country.

Option 2 is to change the Use Classes Order, so that HMOs need planning permission and therefore go through the usual planning procedures to decide whether each application is appropriate.

Option 3 is a proposal to allow HMOs anywhere at all - except where the government agrees to give special powers to councils in limited areas (Article 4 Directions).

The deadline for comments is 7th August and you can find out more on the Department for Communities and Local Government website.

Thank you to Cllr Sharon Ball of Bath & North East Somerset Council for her blog post that alerted us to this important consultation.

The introduction of a local income tax, an end to capping and a return to local control of business rates are just some of the recommendations made in a report out this week from the Communities and Local Government Select Committee. 

The committee chaired by Labour MP Phyllis Starkey - which includes Liberal Democrats John Pugh and Andrew George as members - also calls for stronger powers for local councils on health and policing.

The key recommendations are:

• ministers should set a higher threshold before intervention
• Department of Health and Home Office should work with CLG to establish a local authority commissioning model for local policing, health and healthcare.
• supplementary local income tax should be introduced alongside council tax with a corresponding reduction in central taxation, business rates should return to local authority control, and capping should be scrapped.
• the Government should prove its localist credentials by introducing constitutional legislation, placing the principles of the European Charter of Local Self-Government on a statutory footing.

The recommendations have already been rejected by Local Government Minister John Healey MP who said that "the government has already given councils more financial freedom to meet local needs and priorities... it is right that the Government continues to protect council taxpayers from excessive increases."

To find out more, you can read the full report or the articles on it from The MJ and the BBC.

The Government have introduced legislation making it harder for people to petition their local council.

Over 8 pages of the Local Democracy, Economic Development and Construction Bill are dedicated to setting conditions on the form petitions to local councils can take. The section runs to 3,221 words of primary legislation, with further statutory guidance expected to follow.

Liberal Democrats in the House of Lords are mounting an attack on the Government’s ridiculous proposals to force local Councils in England and Wales to spend time and resources on setting up and managing these complicated bureaucratic procedures.

Commenting ahead of his attempt to remove the legislation from the Bill, Liberal Democrat Local Government Spokesperson Lord (Tony) Greaves said, “This Bill gives councils the chance to throw out the vast majority of petitions they receive because they will not be ‘valid’ according to the bureaucratic and legalistic rules they want to set into law.

“Far from helping people to put forward their views, they will make it a lot harder. “I have been an elected Councillor for about thirty years in total and I have been a member of the Lords for nearly nine years and I have never seen anything quite as silly as this.

“It’s Gulliver politics. This Lilliputian government is seeking to tie up Councils in red tape and detailed rules which will cover every single thing they do, just as Gulliver was tied up on the beach.”

“Instead of wasting councils’ time and resources, they should be freeing councils’ hands to provide support to local people during the economic crisis.

It is expected that the House of Lords will debate the relevant sections of the Bill today, Monday 26 January 2009.

Each year the local elections are followed by an often dramatic round of negotiations in the many councils in “no overall control” (NOC) to sort out who will run the administration for the following year. The variety of agreements that are hammered out from formal pacts, coalitions and power sharing agreements, to informal agreements, “sit on your hands “ or rainbow administrations demonstrates that UK politics has plenty of experience in dealing with the situations where one party does not have overall control. A lesson that may be very relevant after the next general election!

ALDC has again recorded these administrations in its annual publication “Who controls Where?” available to download here for ALDC members