By David Williams
July 2, 2009
Conservative leader David Cameron has told council leaders he will scrap the Comprehensive Area Agreement inspection regime if he becomes prime minister.
In a speech to the Local Government Association conference today, the leader of the opposition told delegates he would cut red tape and ‘let you get on with the job’.
‘All those layers of bureaucracy that are a straitjacket on everything you do – the process targets, the CAAs, the regional strategies and plans – we’re going to scrap them all,’ he pledged.
Cameron also promised to phase out ring-fenced budgets and abolish ‘all those quangos, like the Standards Board’. He said there would be no more ‘endless, pointless, top-down, soul-sapping reorganisations that have disrupted local government for the last decade’.
But the Tory leader admitted there ‘won’t be a lot more money’, and said: ‘The extra power I want to give you is directly related to what I want in return, and that is your help in getting more for less.’
He would expect councils to help bring down the national debt and find more savings by reorganising their structures, working together more and being more innovative.
Cameron called on councils to generate new ideas and create a ‘wave of initiative’ in public services, arguing that successful private sector companies are able to provide better services for less money by rethinking the way they work.
He also stressed the importance of more transparency in local government spending. Repeating his policy that all spending over £25,000 should be published online, Cameron argued this would lead to more ‘financial discipline’.
July 2, 2009
Conservative leader David Cameron has told council leaders he will scrap the Comprehensive Area Agreement inspection regime if he becomes prime minister.
In a speech to the Local Government Association conference today, the leader of the opposition told delegates he would cut red tape and ‘let you get on with the job’.
‘All those layers of bureaucracy that are a straitjacket on everything you do – the process targets, the CAAs, the regional strategies and plans – we’re going to scrap them all,’ he pledged.
Cameron also promised to phase out ring-fenced budgets and abolish ‘all those quangos, like the Standards Board’. He said there would be no more ‘endless, pointless, top-down, soul-sapping reorganisations that have disrupted local government for the last decade’.
But the Tory leader admitted there ‘won’t be a lot more money’, and said: ‘The extra power I want to give you is directly related to what I want in return, and that is your help in getting more for less.’
He would expect councils to help bring down the national debt and find more savings by reorganising their structures, working together more and being more innovative.
Cameron called on councils to generate new ideas and create a ‘wave of initiative’ in public services, arguing that successful private sector companies are able to provide better services for less money by rethinking the way they work.
He also stressed the importance of more transparency in local government spending. Repeating his policy that all spending over £25,000 should be published online, Cameron argued this would lead to more ‘financial discipline’.
