05 July 2002
As delegates gathered in Bournemouth for the Local Government Association's annual conference, its leaders warned that the CPA proposals needed a substantial overhaul if the new system were to have any chance of being accepted by authorities.
Neither was there much aid and comfort from Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, newly appointed supremo of local government. In his keynote speech to the conference on July 3, he dismissed as 'nonsense' many of the criticisms of the CPA.
Earlier, LGA chair Jeremy Beecham, in a thinly veiled attack on current plans, had predicted the CPA was doomed to failure unless it could 'command the full respect of councils up and down the country'. The general assembly of the LGA on July 2 made clear that so far the CPA had failed to do so.
Delegates overwhelmingly passed a motion attacking the government's CPA plans for being forced through too quickly and for failing to reduce the burden placed on authorities by the demands of inspection.
The motion, tabled by Portsmouth City Council, attracted strong cross-party backing. Its emphatic support reflects the widespread suspicion that central government is dragging its heels on delivering the 'freedoms and flexibilities' and light-touch inspection regime for high-performing councils, as promised in last December's white paper.
Beecham used his address to the assembly to spell out why the CPA had been given such a rocky ride. In it, he hit out at ministers' continuing reliance on prescription from Whitehall as a way of controlling authorities' performance.
'The obsession with measurement and targetry remains palpable. Across government there are more targets than the Pentagon established during the cold war,' he told delegates.
'Too many ministers and civil servants remain wedded to the notion of national prescription backed up by detailed guidance and regulation and an army of inspectors.'
The sharp rise in the proportion of council funding delivered through ring-fenced grants, from 4.5% to 14.5%, since Labour won office in 1997 also provoked Beecham's ire. Greater powers to raise funds and determine spending priorities are among the freedoms councils are most keen to secure.
But Beecham wryly observed that the one target ministers had failed to set was for a reduction in ring-fencing, and he made clear that he held out little hope of the situation changing as a result of the current spending negotiations. 'My guess is that the Spending Review will not deliver the purge of ring-fenced funding we all want to see.'
But he appealed to the government to make significant new money available in the Spending Review, due later this month, to fund the improvement programme for councils, warning that it was 'crucially important' to boosting performance. Otherwise, he said, the CPA system would 'rapidly lose credibility' among authorities.
Beecham ended his speech by urging the government to 'break free from the command and control system' which, he said, was 'at best capable of producing limited results in the short term, but cannot secure delivery across the board of either national or local aspirations'.
But Beecham's plea fell on deaf ears, as the deputy prime minister, who addressed the opening session of the conference, largely ignored or rejected the LGA's concerns.
Prescott, giving his first major speech on local government since regaining the portfolio five weeks ago, made no apology for the CPA, saying it would be a 'rigorous' system of monitoring. 'The quality of service provision can and should be measured,' he added.
Prescott flatly rejected criticisms that councils were being overloaded with performance plans and targets. 'We in central government do not ask any more of you than we ask of ourselves. We all have targets to meet, and as democrats, and as politicians seeking the support of the electorate, we should all welcome that,' he said.
The deputy prime minister, who was jeered by some delegates for refusing to take questions after his speech, gave no indication of when the promised freedoms and flexibilities for authorities would materialise, nor any further hints on what form they would take.
He gave a veiled warning to authorities not to expect substantial new funding to emerge from the Spending Review, telling delegates that funding had increased by 20% in real terms since 1997.
'Everyone cannot have everything they want, tough decisions need to be taken. It's called politics,' he said.
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