Give us freedom and well give you Gershon

15 Sep 05
Local government leaders threw down a challenge to ministers this week, volunteering to take on a range of tough new responsibilities in exchange for greater freedom from central regulation.

16 September 2005

Local government leaders threw down a challenge to ministers this week, volunteering to take on a range of tough new responsibilities in exchange for greater freedom from central regulation.

A new Local Government Association manifesto – The next four years – published on September 14 calls for a timetable for rolling back the tide of Whitehall micro-management that is hampering public service improvement.

Speaking to Public Finance before the launch, LGA chair Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart said there was now widespread agreement that the uniquely centralised system of government in England was stifling innovation and holding up improvement.

He said it was time for council leaders and ministers to be bold and work out a deal that would transform performance.

'Local government will commit to further improvements, we'll commit to a devolution programme ourselves, releasing powers down to community level, and we'll commit to more efficiency savings. But we do need to make progress on the deregulation agenda,' he said.

Bruce-Lockhart added that, as the economy slowed down, it was incumbent on both central and local government to spend the public's money more wisely and replace the costly Comprehensive Performance Assessment with an independently assessed improvement framework.

'The burden of regulation is increasing and what on earth is it all for? It genuinely is wasting money,' he said.

Given local government's strong performance on generating efficiency savings, the LGA manifesto suggests it takes on responsibility for the wider efficiency programme.

Bruce-Lockhart said massive savings could be achieved if councils were given the go-ahead to rationalise back-office functions across the whole public sector. 'Finance officers estimate £60m of savings in the wider public sector in Kent alone, over £3bn a year if replicated across England.'

The document also includes the oft-repeated call for a sustainable system of local government finance.

'We need the Lyons review to bring forward a workable formula for local finance reform and we need early government action to put it into effect,' Bruce-Lockhart said.

PFsep2005

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