I've had a number of goes writing about why we continue to need party politics and their role in local government, and to be frank it hasn't been as easy as I had initially thought.  It's not that I feel that party politics is redundant, or that I am unsure of my own politics, but for some reason the post doesn't seem to have flowed (maybe because someone has asked me to write something rather than me thinking up the idea).fficeffice" />

Political parties are coalitions of people who have recognised that in order to win power it is better to compromise with people who are of relatively similar political persuasions.  The political process we have encourages this sort of approach as it is designed to deliver government rather than reflect the proportion of people's votes for particular points of view.

There are of course exceptions to the rules and you will find councils that are governed by independents, who have usually come together to fight off the political parties, and councils that are hung, where two or more parties do a deal to determine who runs the show.  These are the exception, and I'll completely ignore them.

The parties compete at election time on differing manifestos which set out in greater or lesser detail the ambitions they have for services and their approach to running them.  The manifesto is also the start of a process for keeping the coalition together after elections.  There is often a feeling that people like outspoken politicians who challenge their own parties as if they are more honest than those that tow the party line.  For someone like me who is on the other side of the fence, someone who isn't loyal to the party they belong to is betraying their colleagues, the activists and possibly the electorate.  Politicians know they are rarely, if ever, elected on their own popularity and that it is the party label that determines how most people vote, and so to deliberately turn against your party the subject needs to be fundamentally important. (Should I just point out that there will be different views to mine on the need for party loyalty?)

So in theory you have competing visions of how the public sector should be ordered who are then in a position to implement their programme or to oppose it and hold the executive to account. 

Moving from the theoretical to the practical Lewisham Council recently set its budget for next year, the Labour Group supported the Mayor’s proposals and the Liberal Democrats moved an amendment.  Conservatives often write to the local papers outlining their view that they are better placed to run the council than we do.  Whether anyone outside the political arena pays a blind bit of notice is a different question.

The optimistic view of this is that party politics allows creative tension with all of us trying to develop attractive and effective ways of implementing better services for the public.  The pessimistic is that all it creates is bluster and “yah boo sucks” politics.  Here in Lewisham, we remain reasonably civilised in the way we debate with opponents, without letting people get away with too much.

I'm off to a London Remade meeting today in Hammersmith to look at how London boroughs are going to meet the recycling targets for 2006.  For Lewisham this means persuading people to find 8% more of the waste we produce to put in their recycling boxes and the estate bins.

We think that we have a radical way of coming at the problem and the senior officers and I have pitched the idea to Steve Bullock and he bought what we were saying so once we have taken the idea to my political group and officers and the council staff are ready we will start to pilot the approach.

I'm not going to say what the approach is just yet as I'd like to talk it through with my fellow Labour councillors and then I'll let everyone know where that leaves us.

In the meantime if you have any good ideas then feel free to leave them in the comment boxes and I'll make sure they are passed on (and if appropriate credit will be given where it is due.)

As I said I've been to a London Remade conference today on meeting our recycling targets for 2005/2006, which in Lewisham's case means going from 10% of the domestic waste being recycled to 18%.

There was an interesting presentation which outlined the challenge.  It pointed out that we need to move from a London average participation rate - the number of people that use the kerbside recycling on offer - of 46% (Lewisham's is 30%) to 80%.  They suggested that we are looking to increase the amount that each household recycles by 180kg a year, and that those living on estates by 120kg a year.

On the micro level I know that my household can probably increase our recycling by that much, but at the borough level it is going to be a real challenge.  And as they say we really need to be there by April 2005 (so that we can be sure that we don't have to over achieve over the next three quarters).

One of the suggestions that seems to be gaining ground at the moment is that local authorities begin to charge people for the amount of waste that they produce.  Indeed a comment here points out that this is common practice in parts of Europe and a study I've been reading tells me that parts of the US have moved the same way.

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Here, in the ffice:smarttags" />UK, while the government have been thinking about it at the moment local authorities are prohibited by law from raising a separate charge for collecting general household waste.  Of course anyone who lives in Lewisham will know that we charge for the removal of bulky items (at a very reasonable £15 for three items and £30 for a fridge), while those in business will be very aware that they are required to have a trade waste agreement where they are charged for the amount of waste they produce.  But for the moment we are not allowed to extend the principle to our householders.

The question is should we if we could, and if so what sort of change could we expect if we did? Existing research seems to show that it has a very definite impact on the amount of waste produced and on the cost of running the service, but there are a number of barriers that we would need to think about if the law were to change.

The main issues appear to be; fly-tipping to evade paying, is it socially equitable, and is it politically feasible.  Questions to ponder on.

If you're a resident in the borough you will probably have seen the poster campaign for the Young Mayor for Lewisham that has been running for the last month or so.  The result is going to be announced on Monday 26th April and I've been reading the manifestoes of the candidates to get an idea of what they are interested in.  There is a lot that these young people want to acheive for the borough and quite a lot that falls in my area of responsibility; the parks, litter and recycling get quite a few mentions.

I'm looking forward to working with whoever gets elected, I'm sure that it is going to be stimulating.

The Mayor has appointed me to a neighbourhood management committee for the ffice:smarttags" />Lethbridge and Heathside estates in my ward.fficeffice" />

I'm not entirely sure of what to expect from the experience but, as I understand the idea, neighbourhood management is supposed to give local people much more say over the services that operate in their area.  The way that this is achieved is through persuasion rather than by extending decision making powers over budgets down.  Nevertheless, the results that are achieved have been impressive, according to those I've spoken to who know what they're talking about.

There has already been a community forum in the area for the last couple of years that have achieved some quite impressive levels of synchronisation between services, and more remarkably across the borough boundary of Lewisham and Greenwich.  So the development of neighbourhood management needs to build on these existing achievements.