Councils 'more worried about policing smoking ban than violent crime'

Cutting council tax, looking after the elderly, making sure the rubbish is collected properly and keeping the streets clean are all likely to be somewhere near the top.

But not in Whitehall. It has issued its own targets urging council bosses to concentrate on handing out morning-after pills in schools and reducing carbon emissions.

Smoking bans are a high priority for local councils

And, as far as the bureaucrats are concerned, improving meals on wheels and other home help for the elderly ranks at 15 in the order of priorities - while the importance of keeping streets clean, maintaining parks or repairing roads is similarly sidelined.

Gordon Brown said the targets were 'in line with the needs and wishes of local people themselves' and Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said they would 'mean less red tape and more freedom for local authorities to deliver what local people want.'

The list of priorities for council leaders and officials comes in a week when town halls themselves launched an advertising drive to convince the public they give value for council taxes that now average £1,146 a year for every home.

Communities Secretary Hazel Blears revealed the new targets

Posters put out by the Local Government Association emphasise keeping streets and parks clean, arranging swimming lessons for children and inspecting restaurant kitchens. They stress that councils are not responsible for policing or GP surgeries and hospitals.

But the Whitehall goals set out by Mrs Blears make councils responsible for hitting targets for crime, illness and death rates, and stopping smoking.

The list supplies 35 different priorities for the 150 biggest councils in England. Those regarded as the most pressing differ from locality to locality, but in all cases councils have been instructed to devote more time and more council tax payers' money to trying to meet them.

A list of the 20 most common targets shows the highest priority is given to reducing the number of NEETS - 16 to 18-year-olds who are 'not in education, employment or training'.

But councils can do little about the number of NEETS because although they fund schools they do not determine teaching or school policy, and they do not run employment training schemes.

018XA.1ST.01 copy.jpg

Second priority is the under 18 conception rate - in other words cutting teen pregnancies. Councils are partly responsible for the £138million Teenage Pregnancy Strategy that has been based on handing out sex advice and contraception in schools.

The strategy is running far behind its own targets and recent figures have shown a rise of 10 per cent in abortion rates among girls under 16.

At number five on the list is a reduction in the carbon footprint of everyone in the local area.

A call for social workers to do more to give frail old people control over what home help they get is relegated to number 15.

Officials said the targets followed a YouGov poll earlier this month that found voters wanted 'safer communities', improved local economies, better health, and more ' environmental sustainability'.

Tory local government spokesman Eric Pickles said: 'These aren't true local priorities, but rather those of Whitehall bureaucrats and the unelected Government Offices of the Regions.

'It speaks volumes that key issues of local concern like keeping council tax down or protecting weekly rubbish collections aren't mentioned.'

Christine Melsom, of the council tax protest group Is It Fair? said: 'These targets are nothing to do with democracy.

'They seem to have been based on a spurious and entirely unrepresentative opinion poll, in which people were not asked whether they wanted to pay less council tax or have better rubbish collections.'

• Tory's warn councils to ignore Labour's bin pilots

Tory council leaders were warned yesterday not to join the Government's trials for pay-as-you-throw rubbish taxes.

Eric Pickles, the Tory local government spokesman, said invitations from ministers to join next year's pilots were 'a trap to entice Conservative councils into supporting the Government's deeply unpopular plans'.

He added: 'Councils which introactduce bin taxes will be vilified and punished at the polls. In short, bin taxes will harm the local environment and increase the cost of living. This is just another cynical Labour attempt to tax families more by stealth, but with a thick coat of greenwash.'

It is thought party leader David Cameron may make opposition to pay-as-you-throw taxes a key Conservative election policy.