The first thing to do when trying to understand Local Government in the Isle of Man
is to recognize that we are not England. Councils and Commissioners on the island
share little in common with their close cousins across the Irish Sea. Despite what
many may assume, your local commissioner does not exercise any authority over
road repair, the police, healthcare, the schools or the fire service.
So, given this, what does local government on the island do?
There are the basic legal obligations, to maintain hedges, verges and burial grounds, collect rubbish, contribute to amenity sites, sweep the streets, maintain War Memorials and run elections
There are the basic legal obligations, to maintain hedges, verges and burial grounds, collect rubbish, contribute to amenity sites, sweep the streets, maintain War Memorials and run elections. Some rural parish commissioners, bastions of local libertarianism, undertake these responsibilities and little else, forgoing the right to make byelaws or provide various services, in exchange for giving their residents very cheap rates.
You have towns, like Peel, Castletown and Ramsey, who host local events, support
arts and charities, run libraries, maintain parks, street lighting and provide social
housing.
And of course you have the City of Douglas, the residents of which pay on average
the island’s second highest rates, to a council that has a budget higher than some
government departments. The City 1 has byelaws include regulating where dogs can roam, abandoned cars, vagrancy, noise pollution, and loitering in front of church doors.
Douglas hosts weddings, a municipal golf course, Royal visits, ambitions to build a
solar farm, digital library services for the island, and publicly owned venues that drive community social, like the Legion and Market Hall.
Beyond what some might consider nice but unnecessary luxuries, the municipality
also delivers vital services and fills needs unmet by central government, it runs the
island’s recycling infrastructure, it operates the only crematorium, commerce in the
town would suffer without it’s parking facilities. Douglas arguably maintains the most
effective anti-poverty program in the country with its relatively vast stockpile of social housing and the ambition to expand it further. It has pushed to boost wages for contractors, entrench environmental standards and enforces building standards on dilapidated buildings.
What a local authority does is ultimately a reflection of values of the community it
serves. The work of an authority ultimately shapes that community and helps
determine who chooses to join it. That feedback loop ultimately explains why such a
small island has local governments who behave so differently.
It’s clear that both types of institution could learn from the other. It is important to
note the moral hazard of having relatively wealthy rural residents who benefit from a communities that pay for amenities that they do not contribute towards. Some might see a reflection of the Isle of Man’s own relationship with other jurisdictions in this arrangement. Larger local authorities should not let their ambitions lose touch with the priorities of their residents.
In many ways, local governments are insufficiently radical compared to the legacy
they are bestowed. They were the birthplaces of Manx democracy. They cleared the
slums and provided the first public transport. They lit up dark streets during long
nights and kept them clean. Much of the foundation of our modern society was
developed from the hard negotiations of local communities that fought to solve local problems.
With a central government that lacks internal accountability mechanisms, these legacies may have to be reclaimed.
The views expressed in this post are the author's and don’t necessarily reflect the view of Reayrtys.
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