Local services - What is needed?

A while back I Blogged about a chance to redefine what local services should look like and where they should be targeted, as the government is promising local councils much greater powers to decide what is needed locally.
http://alvin-finch.blogspot.com/2010/11/26-cuts-or-opportunities.html

I also mused about what it is that a council must do. What a good council should do, and what could be left out, if residents don’t want it. Councils are legally obliged to fulfil their statutory duties. But what are the statutory duties they are required to fulfil? New ones are added each year and we hardly ever see any taken out.

http://alvin-finch.blogspot.com/2010/07/statutory-duties-and-budgets.html

I read today at http://www.localgov.co.uk/index.cfm?method=news.detail&id=96368 that “Councils are being offered the chance to ditch what they regard as their most onerous bureaucratic burdens.”

There are it seems that there at least 1294 statutory duties that councils have to abide by.

16 Whitehall departments and agencies are publishing their initial list of statutory duties for which they are responsible. Councils are now being asked which duties are vital to keep.
They are also being asked whether there are other duties that could also be removed.

More information at:
http://www.communities.gov.uk/localgovernment/decentralisation/tacklingburdens/reviewstatutoryduties/

The questions I asked before are:

What sort of things should your council be obliged to do?
How much do you want to pay for those things?

What other questions should we be asking?