Mary Reid

Some years ago the people who live in Shere Close got together to present a petition to the Council, asking for improved parking in their rather restricted cul-de-sac. The petition was discussed, with them, at a South of the Borough Neighbourhood meeting and eventually we were able to find the money to create some extra parking spaces.

Shere Close has 12 houses, and the petition was signed by one person from each house.

Now they may not know, but that activity may have actually shifted Government policy.

You see, Hazel Blears (the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government) has got quite interested in petitions to Councils in the last year or so. They are an important element in her vision of empowering communities, and although I don't agree with everything she's championing, I do agree that everyone should have the right to present a petition to local government, and that petitions should be discussed by councillors.

Last winter she carried out a consultation on 'Local Petitions and Calls for Action', and she has now given the Government's response. In the consultation, she asked whether a petition should have a minimum number of signatures before the Council would be obliged to respond - an earlier pronouncement had suggested that 200 signatures would be needed.

In my own submission, I referred to (without naming) the 12 signatures on the petition from Shere Close, which represented 100% of the people affected. I believe that all petitions should be taken seriously (apart from the obviously inappropriate ones) and should be discussed, however few signatures they may have.

I'm delighted to say that the Secretary of State has accepted this point and the document reads:

Some respondents were concerned that a high threshold could exclude minority groups or issues which only affect one street.

...

The Government proposes that the local authority should respond to all petitions. The response should be proportionate to the seriousness of the issue, or the level of support for the petition - but it should always be substantive. Responding to petitions should not be a tick-box exercise.

Once the local authority has considered the issue raised by the petition, they could respond in the form of a letter. The local authority may also want to change or review their policy, hold a public meeting, or run a public consultation to gather more views on the issue.

One staggering statistic to emerge is that less than one third of Councils in England guarantee to respond to petitions. From our position here in Kingston this seems unbelievable, but I have been surprised myself to discover how other Councils around the country do manage to bury petitions.

The proposals in this document have been transferred directly into the Communities in control: real people, real power - White Paper, which will eventually become a parliamentary Bill. I'm pleased that at last the Government is proposing that Councils should have a statutory duty to respond to all local petitions.

And I'm even more pleased that it explicitly includes electronic petitions.  I got Kingston to lead the first project on online petitions in local government, and they have been widely accepted as a sensible addition to our democratic tools.

I'm also relieved that the Government is drawing back from prescribing how Councils should handle petitions. There are lots of decent ways of processing them - from petitions committees, through petitions slots on all agendas, to the full-blown officer reports that we expect at Kingston - but that should properly be up to the local Councils to decide.

By the way, Hazel Blears started a blog to coincide with the launch of the White Paper.