People must do more to help themselves in the coming four years, is the policy of local councils questioned by NRC.

The paper analysed the responses from 60 local councils, all of them coalitions and including those in the biggest ten cities.

Without exception, says the paper, they are preparing to give a prominent role to what they see as the changing relationship between government and citizen in their policies.

Essential

The councils consider the participation of citizens essential because from 2015 they will take over a number of heavy responsibilities from central government.

Last week, for instance, the senate voted through the decentralisation of long-term care for the elderly and handicapped.

The decentralisation is being pushed through in conjunction with hefty budget cuts, and the agreements reached by the local councils count on volunteers, NRC says. All they have to do is encourage people to participate.

For instance, Breda is putting €1m into ‘neighbourhood initiatives’, Zoetermeer is opening a ‘participation centre’ and Rotterdam will have a ‘citizens jury’ to judge city policy.

Doubts

However, there are doubts about people’s willingness to participate. Last month, the government’s socio-cultural policy unit wrote that expectations are too high because neighbours are often not willing to help and children live too far away.

According to NRC, the councils are convinced people will take part. Nijmegen, for instance, has already started to cut its spend on the maintenance of parks and street greenery to reach a saving of €800,000 a year by 2016. It says it hopes people will ‘maintain’ their ‘own surroundings’, the paper says.