Council welcomes end of costly inspections
Monday June 28, 2010
Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council has welcomed the news that councils across Britain are being freed from a series of costly ‘top down’ Government inspections.
The Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) Eric Pickles wrote to council leaders on Friday (June 25) to tell them that he has instructed the Audit Commission and five other local inspectorates to stop centrally imposed reports like the Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAA).
The move is expected to stop millions of pounds of taxpayers’ cash and thousands of officer hours being wasted, according to the DCLG.
Ministers believe that ending CAA will save the Audit Commission £10 million, and councils will also feel the financial benefit, as independent research put the average annual cost of reporting back to government at £1.8 million. In 2006 the National Audit Office estimated the overall cost of monitoring local government at £2 billion a year.
Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council called for the ‘oppressive and pointless’ CAA regime to be scrapped last year and has warmly welcomed the announcement.
Cllr Stephen Greenhalgh, H&F Council Leader, says: “I am a passionate localist and the centralised top down inspection regimes of the past hindered councils’ ability to deliver high quality local services at the lowest possible cost to the council taxpayer."
“Who cares what some Audit Commission bureaucrat sat in their ivory tower thinks of services in Hammersmith & Fulham? In all my years as council Leader I can count on one hand the number of times I have been asked what rating the Audit Commission gives the council. What is vitally important is how local people judge the services they pay for and use and in H&F residents’ satisfaction is up to an all-time high.”
H&F Council’s latest CCA assessment gave the council the top rating possible praising the authority for its strong partnership working and top quality, value for money, services. Meanwhile, figures from the Annual Residents’ Survey 2008 show that compared to the 2006 survey, overall resident satisfaction is up 6 per cent, to 59 per cent – the biggest increase in the country, which puts in the council in the top 10 authorities for residents’ satisfaction.
Secretary of State Eric Pickles said: “I have instructed Town Hall watchdogs to stop tying the hands of council workers with unnecessary red tape and paperwork. It is much more important for the public to know what their councils are doing than having thousands of hush-hush, unseen papers being sent back and forth between Whitehall bureaucrats and the Town Hall. We are already pushing power as far away from Whitehall as we can.”
H&F Council has reduced its debt mountain by £43million to £133million in recent years saving taxpayers millions in reduced debt repayments, has cut council tax by 3 per cent for four years in a row and is currently generating some of the highest residents’ approval ratings in the UK.
