For all the talk of localism, power remains concentrated in the hands of central government. Now with the publication of the Government's Empowerment White Paper and Policing Green Paper - and the prospect of a radical Green Paper from the Conservatives on local democracy - there is cause for hope that the days of “Whitehall knows best” are coming to an end.

Trying to run public services from the centre doesn't work. The postwar politician Herbert Morrison knew this when he argued for a strong role for local government in healthcare. But the Attlee Government was determined on a National Health Service run from Whitehall, and a mighty bureaucracy was born. To this day, Parliament jealously guards its role as the ultimate authority and MPs expect to have a strong hand in shaping public services. The problem is that they don't know their limits.

Too often the Government legislates where it would be better to leave practitioners, communities and their elected local representatives to get on with the job. The result is endless reorganisation, over-burdensome performance and inspection regimes and costly bureaucracy. So when an Empowerment White Paper is published that is more about promoting good ideas and good practice and giving encouragement, it's a shame that most pundits knee-jerk reaction is to say “there is nothing in it”.

Did anyone really think that Hazel Blears,the Communities Secretary, could magic up a White Paper that would change the balance of funding between central and local government, restore health and policing to local control, and extend the power of gen-eral competence to councils? This wish list would mean getting buy-in from the Treasury, the Department of Health, the Home Secretary, and No10, to cede substantial amounts of power and funding from the centre to communities. There is very little appetite for this, judging by the response to Sir Michael Lyons's report into local government in 2006.

The Empowerment White Paper should be welcomed. It contains a series of small steps to strengthen communities and support local government, ranging from a new “duty to promote democracy” to new rights for citizens to petition and call for action from public service providers. It also includes measures proposed by my organisation to give citizens a direct opportunity to scrutinise and input to local decision-making.

This direction is boosted by the proposals in the Policing Green Paper, which recognises the accountability gap at a local level. How many people know who runs their local police autho-rity, or even what a police authority does?

According to a poll done for us by ComRes, only 10 per cent of councillors say they don't get asked to take action on policing and healthcare, 7 per cent of councillors think that policing and healthcare are accountable enough, and 86 per cent say that councils need more local freedom to act. The challenge now is to persuade Whitehall, and Conservative and Liberal Democrat policymakers, that it really is time to let go. Our Getting to the Heart of Local Accountability proposals put forward a new joined-up, devolutionary, citizen-focused solution, with a single commissioning process for all local public services and local health and local policing budgets devolved to councils. Morrison was right, central control has failed to deliver. It is time for a new approach.

Andy Sawford is chief executive of the Local Government Information Unit (www.lgiu.gov.uk )

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