But devolution to local government is not the end of localism. A
“local big state” is no more desirable than a “central big
state”. Local government should seek to devolve to the most
local level possible and to encourage communities to take over
services. One example would be libraries. Libraries face funding
challenges – in that they are more discretionary than other
services, usage has declined, the unit cost of lending a book
can be more expensive than the wholesale price of a book and
customers have new book and information media and services (e.g.
Amazon, social networking sites, etc). The level of community
resistance to closing a library is usually disproportionate to
the level of local usage, because communities believe that a
local library belongs to them, not the council, and they believe
in the future potential of the library to do great things.
Devolution can allow new ideas to develop. For example – in
North America libraries are often run by volunteers not paid
council staff, whilst in the UK c