It is good to see that Haringey Liberal Democrats are already well ahead of me putting into practice two of the ideas which the book will include.

Stroud Green ward Councillor Richard Wilson has blogged about how the new powers to create cross-council bodies can be used in those areas where council boundaries chop up natural communities.

Elsewhere in the borough, the Liberal Democrat councillors in Fortis Green are running an online local survey to help put into action the new powers to protect community assets.

There is nothing Haringey-specific about either of these ideas and they will in fact work well in many other places right across the country. So why not take a look and think about adapting them for you area?

The book, by the way, will be sent free to all ALDC members so if you have been thinking of joining ALDC, now is a good time to do so. It is a follow up to the Campaigning in your Community book, already out and available.

* Mark Pack is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and writes a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

Improving trust in local government is important, and can’t be done just by focusing on improving services: that’s the verdict of State of trust: How to build better relationships between councils and the public, a piece of research from the think-tank Demos and IDeA (the local government Improvement & Development Agency), published in 2008.

The report sees trust as underpinning a wide range of objectives:

Trust is one of the most important assets that a governing institution can posses. Its presence helps to foster democratic participation, economic success and public sector efficiency.

For example, if people don’t trust an institution, they are less likely to think taking part in elections is worthwhile. Trust in varying degrees is required for most economic transactions: do you trust the goods are any good? do you trust the payment won’t bounce? and so on. The more people trust an institution, the easier it is for the institution to get the public to play a productive role, such as by responding to planning applications so that well-informed decisions are made, or by reporting graffiti so that it can be removed quickly.

However, the report argues that relying on improving the quality of local government services is not enough in itself to improve trust in them. Well run councils will be more trusted than badly run ones, but that is not the whole story. Communicating clearly, and developing two-way dialogue with residents, is also needed, as is having decision-making processes that not only produce good results but are seen as going about their business in a fair way.

None of this suggests any radical policy departures from what good Liberal Democrat councillors have been doing for many years, though talking about trust is a concise way of bundling up many of the benefits that a devolved, liberal approach brings.

It is also a good way of testing policies against the often all too tempting siren calls from some council officers for brave and decisive decision-making, when what they really mean is ignoring the public and doing what the officers want. Yes, difficult decisions have to be taken sometimes, and yes, councillors shouldn’t dawdle over making decisions, but pausing to ask whether the decisions taken, and the processes being followed, are ones that will improve or damage trust in the council could save many a councillor from a bad choice.

It is also useful to be reminded how strongly people’s perceptions of the quality of a service are related to their knowledge of it: almost always more information brings better reputations. In particular, the less remote that people feel a council is, the better value for money they feel they get from their council tax.

Where the report is likely to get a more controversial reception amongst Liberal Democrats is in its rather uncritical attitudes towards executive mayors and cabinets. There are numerous ways of describing the motivations for the introduction of mayors and cabinets, and many of those are far from flattering, but the report rather meekly merely describes their introduction as being driven by a desire to improve trust in local government without giving any reference to the controversial genesis of these reforms. With both more powers given to local councils to choose their own structures and also referendums on the introduction of Mayors, the questions of which structure works best and why are once again very relevant.

The report also takes a rather anti-politics attitude towards the role of councillors, warning of those who damage a council’s reputation by constantly criticising it and saying that all councillors – in opposition or not – have a role to play in building up a council’s reputation without any real caveat or justification. Again, it takes one side of a heated debate without even apparently acknowledging that the other side exists, let alone addressing the counter-points. Is it really the job of opposition councillors to build up the council, or is it to hold the council to close scrutiny, using criticism to get improvements and offering the public a clear choice by presenting an alternative vision for how things should be done?

Finally, there is also tucked away within the report a morsel of hope for the overall standing of politics in the public’s eyes. Trust in doctors is currently at historically very high levels. Yet when you consider all the challenges that doctors face – such as the regular whipped up health scares that undermine confidence in modern medicine, the heavy media coverage of doctors who go bad or even kill, the pressures on their time and the restrictions on what health treatments they can prescribe – it would in fact be very easy to excuse away falling levels of trust in doctors. If despite all these hurdles, doctors have managed to improve trust, why shouldn’t those involved in politics be able to do the same?

* Mark Pack is Co-Editor of Liberal Democrat Voice and writes a monthly newsletter about the Liberal Democrats.

This following graphs show the change in the Liberal Democrat vote share in by-elections, measured since the seat was previously contested and – to even out for those factors – take in two month averages.

The sort of consistent vote share gains seen in November and December is still a long way short of opposition heydays, but the trend has been one of consistent recovery from May’s nadir.

And thankfully, I haven’ yet.

But just sometimes I’m tempted to walk into a local council communications department and shout, “Idiots! Idiots! You’re all idiots!”.

Here is why, courtesy of a short speech I gave on the fringe of the last Liberal Democrat conference:

(By the way, do watch to the end to see the slightly bizarre collection of related videos that YouTube offers up. Me and R.E.M., so often thought similar… almost as often as me and Robert Redford.)

Starting early in 2012, all ALDC members will get access to CONNECT’s casework facilities for free (or rather, for no extra charge beyond their ALDC membership subscription). It is a logical extension of ALDC’s similar free provision of its MyCouncillor blogging system and will make a good system available to thousands of councillors.

One of the nice touches of the MyCouncillor system is that it makes it easy for people to share stories with the sites for fellow councillors, such as a piece about a council-wide issue. Similarly the casework system will provide a very secure way of sharing casework information where appropriate and legal, for example if a resident has raised a piece of casework with the whole ward team via a residents’ survey.

But most importantly, it should provide a simple, robust system that helps tackle on of the biggest administrative headaches for councillors – keeping on top of all the casework.

There has been a casework system, Casework Manager, available from EARS for several years. Although it has won a large market share amongst MPs, it has not made that much of an impact on the councillor market partly due to its cost and partly due to Casework Manager’s variable reputation: some Parliamentary staff rely on it day after day and are satisfied customers but many others are very critical and often only use it in the absence of a viable alternative. Whether or not MPs’ offices move over to CONNECT from Casework Manager will be important both for CONNECT’s overall take-up and also a strong sign to others as to how some of the most intensive users of systems view their relative merits.

For more about CONNECT see the interview I recently conducted with Mark Sullivan.

There is a council by-election campaign underway in Shortlands ward, Bromley where the excellent Anuja Prashar is the Liberal Democrat candidate. (So excellent, I’ll forgive her for organising a raffle once that broke all my Lib Dem raffle rules.) She has been campaigning against council plans to axe the lollipop ladies at two local schools and, as part of that, presented a petition signed by 283 residents to the council.

And then things started being done differently…

For the first time, Bromley Council decided to respond personally and directly to all the signatories on a petition, posting out a letter to all of them – using council stationery and council postage – from the relevant Conservative Cabinet member, Colin Smith.

A very generous soul might think that perhaps Bromley Council had been planning to start writing directly to every petition signer and it’s just chance this started during a council by-election campaign in response to a petition organised by a rival candidate. Oh and that the council wanted to spring a pleasant surprise on everyone which is why that decision had been kept secret.

But even such an extremely generous soul might struggle a bit when it comes to the text of the letters. For what is in them? Not simply a reply on the issue of the petition, but a defence of several other controversial council policies, none of which were mentioned in the petition and even promoting the council’s work in other areas.

The Chief Executive has been asked to explain what his council is up to and the District Auditor has been asked to investigate.

No person shall spit on the floor, side or wall of any public carriage, or of any public hall, public waiting room, or place of public entertainment.

Aside from the loophole which excludes ceilings from this ban, the by-law does raise two more serious issues. First, like many of the others that are still in force, it is out of date – in this case by limiting the maximum fine to 40 shillings. Second, the wording of the by-laws (which, remember, we’re all meant to obey) are hidden away. You do get some public signs reminding people of the by-laws which apply in a particular place, but by no means all places of public entertainment remind people of the spitting one, for example. They are not available online – which is also the case in many, though not all, other councils. Moreover, as with some other councils, the printed version is in such a fragile state that making electronic copies is a tricky business.

One reason for this state of affairs is that councils used to have to get the approval of the Secretary of State to create or abolish a by-law, meaning that councils tended just to ignore the state of their by-laws. One good thing Eric Pickles is doing, however, is to change that so that councils need only consult their own residents in future rather than him before making changes.

The document reveals concerns within Cotswold Conservatives that the organisation is seen by voters as: “toffs legislating for toffs.”…

Concerns were also raised about the impact of the cabinet’s links to Cotswold Media, which is run by cabinet leader Cllr Lynden Stowe (Campden-Vale ward) and also employs Cllrs David Fowles (Hampton ward) and Susan Jepson (Campden-Vale ward).

You can read the full story about the Cotswold Conservatives here.

It turns out that Kensington & Chelsea has been spending thousands of pounds on couriering council paperwork to a Conservative Councillor Daniel Moylan’s holiday home … in Thailand. The council’s argument is that this is a necessary action as he has to keep up with the paperwork and it includes large maps which are best looked at on paper rather than electronically… but even if you buy the argument that paper is better than screen, it doesn’t say much for Cllr Moylan’s ability to delegate or arrange cover for him to insist that he and only he can deal with those matters whilst he’s on holiday.

Add this to the council’s record of first class trips to the US and expensive lunch at the Four Seasons and there’s a wider picture: those in power at the council are over generous in spending money for their own convenience.

Blunt appears to have qualified to stand under the provision that he owned property in the area. However the wording of the law is unclear, talking about “occupying as owner” with the possible implication that therefore you also have to actually be living or otherwise have use of the property. In Blunt’s case, though, the property was rented out to others – leading the defeated independent candidate Colin Roberts to argue that he therefore was not qualified to stand as he was not occupying it.

This point of law has been interpreted in different ways by different councils over the years. Some council lawyers have taken the view that the use of “occupying” in reference to owning property means that simply owning property is not enough. Instead you must in some ways actually occupy it, either by living there or scenarios such as using it solely for your own business purposes without other people living there.

However, other council lawyers have taken a different view, which is that such an interpretation would mean this ground for qualifying as a local election candidate is substantively no different from other grounds. If you have to live somewhere to qualify under the ownership provision, for example, then it makes it no different from the other qualification option of living there anyway. Therefore, so this legal argument goes, it is the wrong interpretation of the law as it reduces the different qualifications to duplicating each other. Moreover, case law in other areas points to “occupy” meaning something wider than residence.

The case may also raise questions over the Electoral Commission’s role because the Commission has been aware of the conflicting interpretations of the law since at least 2008, when I raised it with them after two separate incidents (one in London and one in Wales) in which Liberal Democrat candidates were nearly blocked from standing.

I pushed the Electoral Commission in both 2008 and 2009 either to come to a clear view on how the law should be interpreted, and then give a clear steer to Returning Officers along that line, or if it decided the law was not clear to request a change in the law from the government. At the time the Commission decided to do neither and instead reworded its guidance to hedge on the issue (as can be seen from the latest English guidance which uses phrases such as sub-letting “will point against you having ‘occupied’ it” rather than providing a clear view of the law).

A court ruling may provide future candidates with the clarity the Electoral Commission decided not to seek.