20 June 2003
The Audit Commission will take a more 'risk-sensitive' approach to inspections while Comprehensive Performance Assessments will 'focus on things that really matter', its new chief executive said this week.
In an interview with Public Finance, Steve Bundred, the current executive director of the Improvement and Development Agency, said the commission would be 'taking a fresh approach' to the next round of CPAs, due in 2006.
Bundred, who is due to take up his new post on September 1, said it was too early to say what this new approach was likely to be, but he gave strong indications that the CPA process could be streamlined.
He has described the system as 'labour intensive' and said this week that strategic regulation and risk-sensitive inspections 'mean minimising bureaucracy'. He added that he agreed with the commission's chair, James Strachan, on the government's overdependence on targets and inspections and said he was, like Strachan, an advocate of deregulation.
The focus of the CPA may also change during Bundred's tenure on to 'things that matter'. He said the current process, while robust, 'wasn't perfect and failed to capture everything that local authorities do'.
He is understood to be concerned about taking into account council activities outside of service-specific departments, such as their economic and social impact on communities.
Bundred's move, less than six months after he joined the IDA, stunned local government. He confirmed that the commission had approached him after failing to find a candidate for the £200,000-a-year post at its first attempt.
'I have always been attracted to the post but didn't think I could go for it because the timing was wrong. I had been at the IDA a matter of months. But I was eventually persuaded that it was the right thing to do,' he told PF.
He said leaving the IDA now is less problematic, having set a clear direction for the agency. 'By the time I leave, the important things will be done – the expansion of the agency and the business planning.'
He said local government had generally been supportive, despite the Conservatives on the Local Government Association dubbing him a 'Tony's Crony'. Bundred was a member of the Greater London Council in the 1980s as well as a former councillor in Islington. He was also a special adviser to Eric Varley, the secretary of state for energy in the 1974 Labour government.
Bundred's departure leaves a hiatus at the IDA, but he said there would be a 'tight timescale' to appoint a successor.
PFjun2003
