Should your future be decided locally?

Because that is exactly the group's aim - it wants to give power back to the people by radically changing the decision making process from the top down, as it is now, to the bottom up.

Local Works aims to do it with the Sustainable Communities Bill, which, if adopted by the Government, will radically alter the balance of power between ordinary people and those who make decisions in distant corridors of power.

The bill would enable citizens to tell Government how it can help promote vibrant communities, forcing central government to support locally-made decisions.

Local economic needs would be promoted - so money that is spent locally would benefit local shops, services and communities and not remote shareholders.

The long-term environmental impacts of any planning or economic policies should be central to the process of deciding whether they go ahead or not, the group says.

The provisions in the bill empower communities and local councils to make their own decisions on how to make their areas sustainable.

The Government has its own bill, the Local Government and Public Involvement in Health Bill, which it claims has similar aims and offers more devolution of power. The Government says the Sustainable Communities Bill is overly bureaucratic.

The bill is being promoted throughout the country by Local Works, a coalition of interested individuals and groups, cross-party MPs, environmentalists, small business owners, pensioners' groups and many others.

They would like to see more people get involved in their local areas by giving them the mechanisms to make decision about issues which affect their daily lives.

The bill covers four main areas: preserving and enhancing local services and economies, local decisions on environmental protection such as local energy schemes, social inclusion where pensioners and others do not feel excluded from everyday life and increased democratic participation through local people making their own decisions.

To that end the last in a series of public meetings around the country will be held at the Reebok Stadium tomorrow night between 7.3opm and 9.30.

Ron Bailey, local campaign organiser for the Sustainable Communities Bill, said: "Community decline is hitting hard everywhere - communities in and around Bolton have recently lost Post Offices, bus services and police stations.

"Meanwhile, in the past decade Britain has lost a fifth of all its post offices, a quarter of all its independent grocery stores, a quarter of its bank branches and 13,000 local newsagents.

"Local people know best how to solve their own problems. People are fed up with consultations and want a participative say in how their communities are developed or conserved.

"The Sustainable Communities Bill will mean local people in and around Bolton having the final say on things like local public services, planning and preserving the local environment. It will turn society upside down, with central government policy being driven by communities and their councils."

Steve Shaw, is national campaign co-ordinator of Local Works. He said: "One thing I noted was that, unusually, most people knew Ruth Kelly was their MP.

"But she has now declined to come to this meeting which is being held in her constituency even though she is the Government Minister for Communities and Local Government.

"A lot of people seem unhappy about the decline of local things like Post Offices, bus services and local police stations.

"If this bill does become law it will turn the decision-making process upside down with councils and their communities driving central government policy, rather than the current situation where civil servants and ministers predominantly determine local issues."

Mr Shaw said that while visiting Westhoughton he discovered most people were against Sainsbury's supermarket planned to be built on the cricket club.

"The indoor market is also to be reduced and people weren't pleased about this either. And as always local people, especially older people, were angry and frustrated about Post Office closures and bus service reductions.

"Local people are not apathetic, they're just fed up with the current political system - this bill can change that."

Mayor elect and Liberal Democrat leader Cllr Barbara Ronson will be attending the meeting as one of the political party representatives. She said: "There is so much power still in Whitehall and we want to draw down power and redistribute it among different local levels.

"I have spent 20 years as a local councillor in Horwich where they moan about interference from Bolton and experience as a councillor in Bolton where we moan about interference from Whitehall."

The campaign for local communities started in 2002 following the publication of two reports by the new economics foundation (nef) entitled Ghost Town Britain II and Clone Town Britain.

These reports looked into the continuing trend of community decline - thousands of local post offices, newsagents, bank branches, butchers, bakers and grocers closing as well as green space development and a decline in many aspects of community life.

Local Works has more than 15,000 individual supporters, 85 national supporting organisations and backing from more than 1,000 councils. More than 400 MPs of all parties have also signed motions of support for the bill in Parliament.

A spokeswoman for Ruth Kelly said: "As has been made repeatedly clear by ministers, while the Government supports the aspirations of the bill we believe that the Government's Local Government White Paper and subsequent bill go even further in devolving power to local government and communities.

"Our concern with his bill is that it would be overly bureaucratic and complex, and less devolutionary than our own measures."