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Shall I explain a bit more what is intended in this.
First of all I have been very impressed in my meetings over the last year with district groups, district advisory boards or other local groups, that
while they may be satisfied to a greater or lesser extent with objects of
major Govt programmes whether its housing, education and social welfare,
they are extremely frustrated about a whole range of comparatively small
things that do not involve very much money, that affect their lives and the
lives of their families very much. I mean outside their door traffic
conditions, near their home whether there is a zebra crossing or not for
their children to get to school, whether someone has dug up the road and failed to put it back again, whether the pavements are in proper condition or not, whether there are too many hawkers or not. These kind of things are not affected by major Govt programmes but my goodness they affect the lives of people, and I have been conscious of a demand for more powers at district level for comparatively small things for which funds often exist but simply because the Govt is so concerned with larger issues it doesn't
focus on these smaller things. So the plan is, as in the Green Paper, to
offer a kind of partnership between officials and selected members of the
public at district level to focus on these things and put them right, or
if they can't put them right at least local people should understand why.
Now there are two sides to this. The first thing is to achieve this policy we must first of all detail a nucleus of tolerably responsible and
competent officials to focus on a district with defined powers and responsibilities to either act themselves or move their parent departments to act and if they
tc.
can't know the reason why. The second part is to join with them selected
members of the public of a district so that the officials act with the advice
of local people and not on their assessment of what local wishes are.
There should in my mind be a, something of a constructive tension between
the officials the unofficials. That's the way usually Govt works best. Now how the unofficials should be selected obviously affects how well
the whole scheme works. The prime requirement to my mind is that they should