If localism is ever to get off the ground, the size and power of local authorities must be drastically reduced. Ordinary citizens simply won't get involved in "taking responsibility" for local services and policies if councils can continue to make the costs of doing so enormous and the benefits tiny. Local authority officials have a vital advantage over ordinary citizens: they are paid for what they do. They can attend meetings for hours on end without risking their jobs or needing to find someone to care for their children. For ordinary citizens, getting involved in a local issue and trying to change the way it is handled by the local authority always involves a sacrifice, if only of time. For the officials, however, it is merely "part of the job". It gives them the ability to wear down citizens by attrition. Ordinary people are often willing to give up some time and effort to improve their communities - but their commitment has limits. Citizens who were originally concerned to change something eventually come to the conclusion that it's just not worth it because it involves too much time, effort and frustration, for no tangible benefit. I have witnessed this process at first hand. Although there are some people committed enough to put up with all the boredom and aggravation, many, understandably, are not.

So if it is to succeed in enabling local people to take the decisions that affect their own communities, localism will have to involve the dismantling of large chunks of local government bureaucracy. That would obviously be of great benefit in many ways, not least because the amount of waste in local government is enormous. There is a colossal amount of pointless duplication, with committees piling on committees. Radically diminishing the size of local government would have the additional advantage of saving council taxpayers a part of their bill.

Cutting back local authority bureaucracy is a "no-brainer". But not one of the major political parties has pledged to do it. In fact, none of them has even seriously discussed it. Presumably, that is because none wants to take on the collective power of local bureaucrats. Yet unless that power is confronted and dismantled, localism is bound to fail.

Until the main parties produce concrete plans for radically diminishing the size of local authorities, their pronouncements on the topic are nothing more than empty rhetoric. Decent and public-spirited citizens such as Rosie Jones - precisely the people who need to be involved in local activities - won't get involved. And that will mean that the plight of people like Gemma, whom local authorities so frequently fail to help, will continue to get worse.