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Councils can publish more spending information

Dec 2nd, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
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When asked by the Department for Communities and Local Government to publish all spending to suppliers over £500, all but Nottingham City Council did so. Of those that did, there are still some issues regarding how the data is put online.

This degree of transparency is still in its infancy though, and will hopefully become more efficient and more meaningful in some areas. After all, allowing residents to properly analyse spending without having to wade through a maze of indecipherable data is the whole point.

Some councils are going beyond the £500 limit. Hammersmith and Fulham have recently published all spending, not just to suppliers and not just over £500. They have acknowledged the benefit of this exercise to taxpayers and ultimately to the council themselves.

While they admit there are limitations to the data at this early stage, it is undoubtedly a big undertaking and one which we would encourage all other councils to follow.

European Regional Development Fund loses millions

Oct 19th, 2011
by Paul Harwood.
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Alastair Jamieson at the Telegraph recently reported that huge amounts of public money were lost by the EU after being used to prop up schemes to “reduce economic disparity” between countries and regions as part of the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF).

The total ERDF budget for England was £3.7 billion between 2000 and 2006 during which time the Department for Communities & Local Government (DCLG) confirmed that £38.1 million (about 1%) had been misspent or unaccounted for. Losses could have totalled £236 million, but officials had managed to “claw back” £63 million and a further £133.9 million remains outstanding.

In 2010 the UK made a net ‘contribution’ to the EU of £9.2 billion (about the cost of the police and courts combined) and a total transfer to the EU of £19.7 billion (roughly a quarter of the education budget). Amongst the indispensable projects on which this money was misspent were:

  • an enterprise scheme in Tees Valley where £1.8 million is unaccounted for due to “audit trail and document retention issues”;
  • a rooftop plant nursery to provide seeds for biodiversity projects, which lost more than £300,000 after its promoter, Tower Hamlets Environment Trust, went into liquidation;
  • regional film agency Screen East was responsible for £368,000 of “ineligible expenditure”.

The situation was so bad by March that even the EU had had enough and cut funding for the projects. Funding resumed in July after the DCLG, which allocates funding for projects, introduced tighter controls to prevent further losses.

The EU itself doesn’t seem too concerned. Out of a total budget of €140 billion (£122bn) the EU claims that “a 2% to 5% error rate is not big” which works out at £2.4bn-£6.1bn . This is fine, we are told,  since “this represents a considerable reduction from past levels”. Luckily, suspected fraud only accounted for about £244 million of the EU budget by their own estimates.

DCLG may be reintroducing weekly bin collections but there is still a large waste management problem to tackle with these EU budgets.

Wiltshire Chief Executive goes

Oct 14th, 2011
by Tim Newark.
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Three cheers for Wiltshire County Council (WCC) leader Jane Scott. After weeks of speculation and postponed meetings, the decision was finally made to jettison their chief executive, Andrew Kerr. ‘The buck stops with me,’ she says. ‘This is an organisation which is led by politicians, not by officers, and that is what we are talking about here.’

The move was made to help save £1.4 million from the council’s budget, but £4m is being put aside to pay for the redundancies of Kerr and one of four corporate directors removed alongside him.

Criticism has been levelled at Cllr Scott for initially agreeing to the employment of a chief executive when WCC became a unitary authority in 2009, but she has hit back by saying she wasn’t happy at the time with the extra expense of paying for Kerr’s £183,000 salary. ‘I didn’t want to pay out for such a post in particular,’ says Scott, ‘but my hands were tied by the DCLG [Department for Communities and Local Government] transitional arrangements to enable us to move to one authority.’

One Wiltshire local questions why chief executives are paid so much in the first place: ‘CEs aren’t the chief policy makers in local government, but they are paid salaries comparable to their private sector equivalents who have more responsibility.’

Some more than others, though

Since the beginning of this year, as part of its Localism Bill, the current government is seeking to answer this question. ‘There is increasing evidence that senior pay in local government,’ says its publicationon the subject, ‘has escalated in recent years and that the process for determining senior pay lacks transparency and local democratic accountability to taxpayers.’ An Audit Commission report found that basic salary levels for county council chief executives has risen by 34 per cent between 2003/04 and 2007/08. This was well above the level of their counterparts in universities and hospital trusts, as well as in the private sector. The report explains this by saying that a high turnover rate in local government chief executives has led to councils out-bidding each other for competent senior officers and whacking up their salary costs.

It also hasn’t helped that the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers (SOLACE) has been involved in setting the pay for their own members! An amusing justification of their own jobs can be viewed on their website and includes a variety of demanding roles from promoting local democracy to ensuring cohesive communities. How ever did we manage without them? But clearly WCC feels they can do very well without their guiding hand.

In order to deal with the problem of excessive chief executive pay, the government has put forward several options, one of which is to introduce a central cap on senior salaries. However, because this conflicts with the essential ethos of the Localism Bill, which is to transfer power to local communities, such a measure is not being recommended. Instead, it is favouring an option that requires local authorities to approve and publish annual senior pay statements. This may improve transparency, but will do little to stop council’s outbidding each other for supposedly talented chief executives and escalating their wages. So, sadly, a bit of a fudge, in which an attempt to understand and defeat wasteful high salaries is undercut by its own localism philosophy.

There is speculation now that Kerr may apply for the position of chief executive at Bath and North East Somerset Council, when their current chief executive retires. If this happens, it will be yet another case of a senior council officer grabbing a fat taxpayers’ cheque before moving straight into another highly paid post. Easy money if you can get it.

Councils can return to weekly bin collections

Sep 30th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
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Yesterday the Coalition announced it is to provide £250 million to enable local authorities across the UK to switch back to weekly bin collections. In June I wrote about our disappointment that the Conservatives had backtracked on their manifesto pledge to end to fortnightly collections. However, Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles yesterday made the offer councils will hopefully find impossible to refuse.

Council tax has almost doubled over the last decade and for many the most valued and visible service in return is waste collection. While councils across the country reassess their priorities after reductions in their central government grants, many are reluctant to return to weekly collections. But we regularly publish stories and produce research that shows there are savings to be made in council budgets.

While it is not ideal that the Government felt forced to bribe councils to provide the weekly service, as with the council tax freeze introduced earlier this year, it is often the only tool Ministers have. But this decision places power back in the hands of local residents. Councils will find it difficult to go against their will.

There will be some who claim that offering an incentive to local authorities goes against the localism agenda. Firstly, the offer is optional. The councils that genuinely believe a weekly collection is what their residents want but who find it financially prohibitive have the funds available, those who strongly believe in fortnightly collections can refuse. Secondly, the eye-watering landfill taxes councils frequently moan about emanate from the European Union, the very anathema of localism. Meddling from the EU in council affairs severely restrict the service they can provide residents. If councils want more power, they should first tell the Government to stop accepting diktats from Brussels.

Offering his immediate reaction to the news, our Chief Executive Matthew Elliott said:

“Weekly bin collections are the number one service which council taxpayers expect to receive from their local authorities, so it is terrific to hear that councils will no longer have any excuse not to provide this to every resident in their area.  Rubbish collection may not be seen as a sexy issue to the chattering classes in London, but it is one which is of great concern to ordinary hardworking taxpayers. It’s good to see a manifesto promise delivered despite the difficult financial times we live in. Woe betide the councils who do not reinstate weekly bin collections or who persist with plans to scrap this basic service, causing misery to local residents.”

Meanwhile our Campaign Director, Emma Boon, was on Sky News discussing the announcement:

Enterprise Zones highlight problems the rest of us will still face

Aug 18th, 2011
by Rory Meakin.
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The Department for Communities and Local Government yesterday announced eleven new Enterprise Zones in England designed to boost economic growth after disappointing recent jobs, inflation and growth data.

The current Enterprise Zones scheme was launched in March this year with the first zones covering sections of Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and London. The zones provide a 5-year break from Business Rates for new and incoming firms, departmental help to develop simpler planning regimes, taxpayers’ money to subsidize superfast broadband and, for 25 years, local authorities will be able to retain additional Business Rate revenues which arise from growth in the zone.

Some zones will also offer more generous capital allowances (effectively, lower corporation tax bills) for plant and machinery, but only for zones which are limited to identified sectors for a limited number of companies with a ‘manufacturing focus’.

The current scheme attempts to recreate the success of the London Docklands Development Corporation, one of the zones set up in a similar scheme in the 1980s by Michael Heseltine, which helped turn the run down, derelict London docks into the gleaming towers of financial commerce they are today. But while they share the same name as their Thatcherite predecessors, the new Enterprise Zones are notably different in some respects. Both boast relief from Business Rates, advantageous capital allowances for Corporation Tax and a streamlined planning regime. However, the new scheme has chosen areas more likely to respond to the policies and generate jobs and prosperity – it’s important to remember that while the Docklands was a success, the other zones were much less successful. Alexandra Jones, of the Centre for Cities, said:

They are locating the new zones in areas where there is a realistic chance of producing growth, rather than focusing on reviving rundown areas which weren’t realistically going to produce new jobs.

Councils will also be able to keep additional revenues from Business Rates in the zones instead of the money going straight to the Treasury. This will mean councils as organisations will directly benefit from development and enterprise. Currently, development often only appears to mean complaints and disruption in the eyes of short-sighted officials. It’s not all good news, however.

While the original zones often benefitted from planning deregulation that took planning decisions outside the remit of the local authority, the new scheme merely points out an existing power already available to councils -Local Development Orders – and encourages them to be used. And while the Business Rates exemption will be set at 100 per cent, it will only last for 5 years instead of 10. Finally, the generous capital allowances in the original scheme have been significantly weakened in order to comply with EU law. The new allowances are limited to just £55,000 per year and apply only in schemes where the local authority has chosen to limit the zone to specific economic sectors, such as the “Newquay Aerohub Zone”, which only applies to companies deemed to be in the aerospace sector.

As well as Newquay, there is also the Alconbury Airfield Zone, the Discovery Park in Sandwich, the Science Vale Enterprise Zone, the MIRA Technology Park and, with the most entertaining name of them all, the Humber Estuary Renewable Energy Super Cluster. All of these new zones will focus on economic activity in particular categories which thoughtful officials have decided is of greater economic importance than the prosperity businesses in other sectors might have provided.

They will no doubt help some economic activity relocate and will even result in actual marginal growth. The problem is that some of what’s good about them is just an exhortation to councils to do what they should be doing anyway. The rest of what’s good isn’t nearly good enough and should be applied nationally and across the whole economy. As JP Floru pointed out in this deliciously absurdist parody for the Adam Smith Institute, if the zones will generate the jobs and prosperity Britain’s faltering economy desperately needs, why limit them to a few select districts? Why not apply the medicine nationwide?

The very existence of Enterprise Zones is emblematic of two worrying problems. They are an acknowledgement that Britain’s tax and regulatory environment is not ‘fit for purpose’. It is because the rest of the country can accurately be described as a ’bureaucracy zone’ that ministers are trying to create zones of enterprise in the first place. Acceptance of a problem is the first step to resolving it, so perhaps there is some room for optimism here. The second problem the zones highlight offers less hope for optimists: the ‘Whitehall knows best’ dirigisme.

Bureaucrats have chosen particular small strips of the country where they believe enterprise should occur. What makes them think they know best where businesses should locate? In many of those areas they have also selected particular industries which they have judged to be of a suitable ‘strategic fit’ for the area. Why has the Government not learned from the mistakes of the 1970s, still thinking it can, let alone should, ‘pick winners’? These distortions provide incentives for companies to relocate into the zones and reclassify themselves to match bureaucratic definitions in order to qualify for the financial advantages. The Government have introduced rules to prevent this happening but business will attempt to find flaws they can exploit. More complexity in the form of schemes, zones and regulations is the opposite of what Britain’s already gargantuan tax code needs.

Ministers have also decided that ‘superfast broadband’ is of strategic economic importance, much in the same way as they thought ownership of such commanding heights of the economy as British Telecom was in the 1970s. Inevitably, taxpayers’ pockets have been put on notice as ministers have decided that, “if necessary”, our money will be spent on providing the economic Miracle Gro if the businesses benefitting don’t think it’s worth their own money. Dominique Lazanski explained how the Government should promote broadband yesterday on The Commentator.

If the Coalition really wants to stimulate growth there is plenty they can do. On taxes they could cut Corporate Tax, abolish National Insurance and scrap the 50p rate. On regulation they could end Sunday trading restrictions, simplify the planning system nationwide and scale back quangos like the Health & Safety Executive. What isn’t going to do very much good are little centrally-chosen zones for officially-approved sectors, who get welcome  but inadequate relief from the tax and bureaucracy the rest of the country will still have to endure and yet more wasteful government spending  on ‘superfast broadband’.

Enterprise Zones highlight problems the rest of us will still face

Aug 18th, 2011
by Rory Meakin.
Comments are off for this post

The Department for Communities and Local Government yesterday announced eleven new Enterprise Zones in England designed to boost economic growth after disappointing recent jobs, inflation and growth data.

The current Enterprise Zones scheme was launched in March this year with the first zones covering sections of Liverpool, Manchester, Nottingham and London. The zones provide a 5-year break from Business Rates for new and incoming firms, departmental help to develop simpler planning regimes, taxpayers’ money to subsidize superfast broadband and, for 25 years, local authorities will be able to retain additional Business Rate revenues which arise from growth in the zone.

Some zones will also offer more generous capital allowances (effectively, lower corporation tax bills) for plant and machinery, but only for zones which are limited to identified sectors for a limited number of companies with a ‘manufacturing focus’.

The current scheme attempts to recreate the success of the London Docklands Development Corporation, one of the zones set up in a similar scheme in the 1980s by Michael Heseltine, which helped turn the run down, derelict London docks into the gleaming towers of financial commerce they are today. But while they share the same name as their Thatcherite predecessors, the new Enterprise Zones are notably different in some respects. Both boast relief from Business Rates, advantageous capital allowances for Corporation Tax and a streamlined planning regime. However, the new scheme has chosen areas more likely to respond to the policies and generate jobs and prosperity – it’s important to remember that while the Docklands was a success, the other zones were much less successful. Alexandra Jones, of the Centre for Cities, said:

They are locating the new zones in areas where there is a realistic chance of producing growth, rather than focusing on reviving rundown areas which weren’t realistically going to produce new jobs.

Councils will also be able to keep additional revenues from Business Rates in the zones instead of the money going straight to the Treasury. This will mean councils as organisations will directly benefit from development and enterprise. Currently, development often only appears to mean complaints and disruption in the eyes of short-sighted officials. It’s not all good news, however.

While the original zones often benefitted from planning deregulation that took planning decisions outside the remit of the local authority, the new scheme merely points out an existing power already available to councils -Local Development Orders – and encourages them to be used. And while the Business Rates exemption will be set at 100 per cent, it will only last for 5 years instead of 10. Finally, the generous capital allowances in the original scheme have been significantly weakened in order to comply with EU law. The new allowances are limited to just £55,000 per year and apply only in schemes where the local authority has chosen to limit the zone to specific economic sectors, such as the “Newquay Aerohub Zone”, which only applies to companies deemed to be in the aerospace sector.

As well as Newquay, there is also the Alconbury Airfield Zone, the Discovery Park in Sandwich, the Science Vale Enterprise Zone, the MIRA Technology Park and, with the most entertaining name of them all, the Humber Estuary Renewable Energy Super Cluster. All of these new zones will focus on economic activity in particular categories which thoughtful officials have decided is of greater economic importance than the prosperity businesses in other sectors might have provided.

They will no doubt help some economic activity relocate and will even result in actual marginal growth. The problem is that some of what’s good about them is just an exhortation to councils to do what they should be doing anyway. The rest of what’s good isn’t nearly good enough and should be applied nationally and across the whole economy. As JP Floru pointed out in this deliciously absurdist parody for the Adam Smith Institute, if the zones will generate the jobs and prosperity Britain’s faltering economy desperately needs, why limit them to a few select districts? Why not apply the medicine nationwide?

The very existence of Enterprise Zones is emblematic of two worrying problems. They are an acknowledgement that Britain’s tax and regulatory environment is not ‘fit for purpose’. It is because the rest of the country can accurately be described as a ’bureaucracy zone’ that ministers are trying to create zones of enterprise in the first place. Acceptance of a problem is the first step to resolving it, so perhaps there is some room for optimism here. The second problem the zones highlight offers less hope for optimists: the ‘Whitehall knows best’ dirigisme.

Bureaucrats have chosen particular small strips of the country where they believe enterprise should occur. What makes them think they know best where businesses should locate? In many of those areas they have also selected particular industries which they have judged to be of a suitable ‘strategic fit’ for the area. Why has the Government not learned from the mistakes of the 1970s, still thinking it can, let alone should, ‘pick winners’? These distortions provide incentives for companies to relocate into the zones and reclassify themselves to match bureaucratic definitions in order to qualify for the financial advantages. The Government have introduced rules to prevent this happening but business will attempt to find flaws they can exploit. More complexity in the form of schemes, zones and regulations is the opposite of what Britain’s already gargantuan tax code needs.

Ministers have also decided that ‘superfast broadband’ is of strategic economic importance, much in the same way as they thought ownership of such commanding heights of the economy as British Telecom was in the 1970s. Inevitably, taxpayers’ pockets have been put on notice as ministers have decided that, “if necessary”, our money will be spent on providing the economic Miracle Gro if the businesses benefitting don’t think it’s worth their own money. Dominique Lazanski explained how the Government should promote broadband yesterday on The Commentator.

If the Coalition really wants to stimulate growth there is plenty they can do. On taxes they could cut Corporate Tax, abolish National Insurance and scrap the 50p rate. On regulation they could end Sunday trading restrictions, simplify the planning system nationwide and scale back quangos like the Health & Safety Executive. What isn’t going to do very much good are little centrally-chosen zones for officially-approved sectors, who get welcome  but inadequate relief from the tax and bureaucracy the rest of the country will still have to endure and yet more wasteful government spending  on ‘superfast broadband’.

DCLG are right to urge local authorities to publish asset registers

Aug 5th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
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The Department for Communities and Local Government has published a list of all assets owned by more than 600 public sector bodies. Many are schools, health centres and leisure centres as you would expect, but what is more astonishing is the sheer number that are shops, theatres, golf clubs, hotels, stables and even football clubs. A map released by DCLG shows where more than 180,000 assets worth more than £385bn are located. More than two thirds of these assets are held by councils, which emphases how important is it that all councils publish their assets register so residents can use it alongside new powers in the Localism Bill to get better value and engage in local decisions. Perhaps what is more disappointing is that councils do not publish this information themselves and the task has fallen to a central government department, as it so often has.

Listed in the disclosure are over 130 cafes and restaurants; more than 100 pubs; 60 theatres; over 40 hotels, 3 of which are Holiday Inns; 20 cinemas and an airport. Estimates show annual running costs top £25bn each year and the backlog of maintenance costs exceeds £40bn. All public bodies must first make their asset registers available to the public which will help them to use them more efficiently. Our Research Director John O’Connell wrote in his weekly ConHome column about the benefits of having this information made public: “A report by the Westminster Sustainable Business Forum (WSBF), led by Matthew Hancock MP, made a range of recommendations about local government estate management, including reducing asset lists by 20-30 per cent and handing control of property management to one central department in the council. It makes clear that although the money gained from sales is a one off, the reductions in running costs gained by merging services into fewer buildings will save money in the longer term too.”

There are huge savings for councils to make, whether through selling off assets or running them more wisely, helping to provide the best possible value for money to taxpayers and contribute to lowering council tax.

FiReControl project money up in smoke

Jul 1st, 2011
by Emma Boon.
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Remember the last government’s grand plans for regional FiReControl centres? If not let me jog your memory, they were the ones with no staff but luxury £6,000 Brasilia coffee machines.

The idea was to replace 46 fire control rooms in England with nine purpose-built regional centres. The Coalition Government scrapped the project at the end of last year to prevent further loss of taxpayers’ money. It had taken seven years and the NAO has today confirmed that £469 million had been wasted on the project.

One problem was that local fire and rescue services didn’t support the plans from day one.  Add the obligatory expensive and badly managed IT contract into the mix along with lashings of oversights then boil vigorously for seven years… and voila, you’ve wasted almost £500 million!

No computer system was ever delivered. The report lays the blame squarely at the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) for rushing in at the start of the project and then mismanaging “the IT contractor’s performance and delivery”. The NAO must be sick and tired of repeating this phrase in their reports. How many times need they say it before politicians and civil servants finally do something about it?

“Poorly managed consultants” also get a mention. Amyas Morse, head of the NAO, said “essential checks and balances in the early stages of the project were ineffective”.

This costly failure has an expensive legacy. Eight of the new control centres remain empty but taxpayers are still forking out for rent bills and security for these ghost-offices. One in the West Midlands is costing £1.4 million a year to sit empty, according to the Birmingham Post, and the Government is tied into paying rent on the centres for years to come. Worse still they’re paying rent at way over the market rates. A property expert tells me the government agreed to lease the London Fire Control centre in Merton (where rents are about £15 per square foot) for the sort of price per square foot that hedge funds pay for their offices in Mayfair.

The NAO says DCLG is now trying to minimise the future cost of the project by subsidising fire and rescue services to use the buildings. However, all that is certain in the future of these buildings is that taxpayers are still bearing the cost.

Weekly bin collections sent to landfill

Jun 14th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
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Eric Pickles, the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, guaranteed all councils would return to weekly waste collections when the Government was formed,  as over the previous years many had switched to fortnightly collections. But it’s over 12 months since the Coalition Agreement was signed and the situation on the ground is actually worse; 13 more councils have switched to fortnightly collections than have switched the other way.

Back then Eric Pickles claimed “It’s a basic right for every Englishman and woman to be able to put the remnants of their chicken tikka masala in their bin without having to wait two weeks for it to be collected.” Saying that was clearly not enough to persuade councils to revert to a weekly collection of residual waste so there was talk that further measures, most likely some form of incentive, were needed.

We are right to expect them once a week

The ‘Waste Review’ will be announced today and the Government will not force councils to collect rubbish weekly. Instead they will refocus their efforts to make the UK a “zero waste” country. This is one battle Eric Pickles has lost, but many taxpayers will lose out too. Council tax has almost doubled over the last decade but taxpayers aren’t getting such a basic service cut. As the Telegraph noted in their Leader article yesterday morning, the collection of waste is the most basic of council tasks, one of the main reasons we pay council tax. Since the 1875 Public Health act, residents have been required to put their waste into a “movable receptacle” which the local authorities should empty each week. John Redwood reiterates this point, noting that many people do not use the majority of their council services. They may not have children in local schools or receive social security or patronise local leisure facilities; but one service they will use is their bin collection service. That makes a combination of less regular, less convenient bin collections and rising council tax bills particularly hard to stomach.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies produced a report on environmental taxes as part of the Mirrlees Review. They argue that the taxes imposed on waste disposal outweigh the social costs that they inflict in the first place. They found that:

“The UK landfill tax was one of the first explicit environmental taxes introduced in this country, initially set at rates reflecting best estimates of the costs involved. However, subsequent large increases in the rate, and the introduction of the Landfill Allowance Trading Scheme, appear designed to ensure compliance with EU targets on landfill reduction. These targets look too stringent to be justified by the environmental costs.”

If government really want to help councils they should tackle the EU landfill directive

Those landfill taxes make it much harder for councils to keep offering weekly collections.  Councils are being forced into rationing waste collection by overly simplistic and inflexible EU targets, rather than genuine local environmental concerns.  Complaints that this is about central government interfering in local decisions therefore miss the point. We don’t have a level playing field at the moment with heavy handed intervention not just from Whitehall, but from Brussels.

Our Director Matthew Sinclair was on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme this morning saying that local people should decide the priorities for their local area. The EU, with their onerous directives, don’t have UK taxpayers in mind and establish draconian top-down targets. Massive landfill taxes directly hurt local authorities, instead of allowing them to decide the best policies for their residents. This pressure breeds bizarre responses, such as councils requiring residents to sort rubbish into nine bins, which we looked at in recent research . If councils believe that central intervention in waste policy isn’t localist, then they should be asking the Government to take on the EU Landfill Directive.

Matthew Sinclair also appeared on the BBC News Channel this morning, you can watch it here

Union predicts an apocalypse: a tad over the top?

May 6th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
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“Dead bodies could start piling up, strip clubs could be set up on any street corner and vulnerable children could be left without care”.

What does this chilling sequence of words describe? The strap-line of a bad action movie, perhaps? No. This is the scenario envisaged by Unison if the Government goes ahead with proposals to remove a series of statutory duties on councils.

Coming soon to a street corner near you?

Back in March I blogged on DCLG’s planned review of the hundreds of statutory duties placed on local government. Many of them exist as a result of centuries old Acts of Parliament and are no longer really necessary. Many of the newer ones are equally unnecessary. Conforming to them inevitably costs councils and thus taxpayers millions of pounds each year. Removing some of them could help reduce unnecessary burdens on local authorities and enable them to decide for themselves what they regard as necessary areas of spending.  As this article on Public Service explains, DCLG has invited all local authorities “to suggest which are unnecessary burdens that could be repealed.” It will help unlock big areas of spending in which councillors and council staff could root out waste before cutting back on frontline services.

A good example is our report on Unnecessary Jobs. We looked at Diversity and Climate Change Officers. They are employed to carry out tasks that councils have to perform because of central legislation. Of course, responses to these requirements varied wildly, but essentially these posts were created mainly because councils thought they had to create them.

But the response from the unions, to what is an important debate, is one that beggars belief. Predictions of an apocalypse help no-one and in the long-term could actually harm their members interests, as councils will have less freedom to try and find genuine efficiencies and waste to cut.

The proposals could bring long overdue changes to local government so it’s disappointing that Unison have reacted so mindlessly to them.

**Update**

Even the LGA agree with us:

LGA chair Baroness Margaret Eaton said: ‘The elimination of statutory guidance notes and a root-and-branch prune of unnecessary duties would not only ease the costly red-tape burden being placed on local authorities, it would help government departments avoid unnecessary policy work, saving them up to £1.5bn each year.’

Eaton added:

‘The government has an opportunity to completely revise the existing culture of excessive bureaucratic oversight. We are not seeking to abolish the statutory duty to provide core services and protect the vulnerable. However, some of the duties currently placed on town halls are perverse, unnecessary and run contrary to localism. Bossy guidance telling councils how to collect rent, costly duplication in the collection and reporting of data, and confusing and contradictory policy guidance increase the administrative burden and make it harder for councils to deliver the services people want in the way they want them.’

It is encouraging that the LGA are taking a common-sense approach to this. It is a great pity the unions have not done the same!

DCLG announce review of statutory duties placed on local government

Mar 10th, 2011
by Chris Daniel.
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Ever found yourself dealing with employees from your council and having no idea what they actually do? Well, they could be carrying out one of 1,294 statutory duties that parliament imposes on local authorities. This week the Department for Communities and Local Government (DGLG) has announced it will perform a review of these duties, which in many cases are the result of centuries old Acts of Parliament and are no longer really necessary. Of course, conforming to them tends to cost taxpayers money.

Amazingly, DCLG acknowledge it is in no way comprehensive. Inevitably within such a huge list of duties some are necessary to perform essential functions, but surely there are many that are now surplus to requirements? DCLG are asking for your help to establish a comprehensive list of any statutory duties that are no longer necessary, which you can do here. As we outlined in our Unnecessary Jobs report last year, these statutory duties spawn whole new departments in council workforces too, such as diversity officers and climate change officers. Another problem is that councils respond differently to the same edicts – Birmingham had 28 Diversity Officers on the list while Leeds made do with just 11. Some had none whatsoever and shared the duties among existing staff.

This is an encouraging measure from the DCLG; let’s hope it removes many of the tiresome, onerous and ultimately expensive requirements Whitehall place on local authorities. Of course, this must be completed with clarity and transparency, as Glyn Gaskarth of the Local Government information Unit points out.  He states “Every councillor must be able to find out, easily, exactly what the council is legally required to do. The public must be able to access such information in a clear and accessible format. We should constantly be asking ourselves if each regulation is necessary and if the law’s requirements can be met by less bureaucratic means.”

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