Paternalism

At a Green Spaces Forum last night the Director of Culture and Environment repeated his statement, made at a previous meeting, that ‘local people don’t always know best’.

It’s understandable that when he talks to such groups Paul is often to be heard bemoaning the government cuts as a reason why the council can’t do what the Friends of Parks groups want, this even stretching as far as an inability to conduct half-decent consultations.  The council’s position is certainly tricky but in more favourable times with less budget pressure some of us recall similar council failures and wonder if more money would really make the difference we would like to see. And a job advert in the Guardian for a new Head of Parks (actually ‘Environment and Countryside’) working under Paul quotes a salary of £65k.

The original question at the previous meeting had come from me, asking for local people’s wishes to be considered first when moneys did become available, rather than ‘pet projects’ favoured by managers. Hence the “local people don’t always know best”.

Well I referred to this in my question last night at a well attended meeting with over 20 groups represented: “Given that local people don’t always know best, how do we ensure that those with more influence – officers, directors etc.- don’t get things wrong with potentially more serious and expensive consequences?” The answer I was looking for was of course more scrutiny of decision making particularly public scrutiny. I would have said scrutiny by councillors but they have largely abandoned the role they should be taking of holding officers to account to give themselves more time electioneering and engaging in petty inter-party warfare.

Some of us who attended another event last week organised by Sheffield First  on the Devolution Deal listened to speeches from Council Leaders and others. Easily the most incisive contribution was from Prof. Matt Flinders from the University of Sheffield’s Crick Centre. He wanted more citizen engagement in the debate. He referred to what he called the Paternalistic Shadow, a culture to be found among politicians and within institutions like SCC and elsewhere that people prefer not to talk about. In brief it comes down to a presumption that “The public don’t know what’s good for them, so we’ll do it anyway and they’ll find out we’re right”.  

Bringing it back to parks and green spaces, what happens when the officers and managers are not overwhelmingly blessed with superior judgement?