Letter: Thinking local

In the centralism versus localism debate much of Brian Monteith's analysis (Perspective, 11 July) is pertinent. However, two key issues need to frame the debate. The first is our oppressive tendency to duplicate our management of public services. Education is only one of many examples of such excess.

There we have at least four layers of management: Scottish Government sets policy, provides funding and builds a labyrinthine regulatory framework; the inspectorate also sets policy (though it should just inspect); local authorities provide another layer of bureaucratic policy and delivery; head teachers and school management interface with our young people (after they have negotiated the policy morass).

Which leaves parents, who should be the key decision takers, at the bottom of the pile with, more often than not, Hobson's choice.

The second is the philosophy, often driven by a stultifying equality agenda, that services (and life!) need to be pretty much the same everywhere. Many rail against the "postcode lottery", the phrase itself often a mantra of equality philosophy.

Of course there will be advantages in a common delivery in certain fields, but the aspiration to improve life or remedy deficiencies is a greater inspiration that the desire to ensure that no one gets an "unfair" advantage - which is what this philosophy often is.

Community councils are currently ill-equipped to take on more responsibility - though that could well change if they were given a dramatic increase in their power.

Any extension of their powers must be matched by corresponding reductions in bureaucracy elsewhere - a trick which has proved evasive hitherto.

(Cllr) Cameron Rose

City Chambers

Edinburgh