01 April 2004
The Local Government Association has launched a review of the Improvement and Development Agency as part of its programme to scrutinise its central bodies.
The organisation announced this week that it was appointing PricewaterhouseCoopers and the local government department of Warwick Business School to conduct the review, the first since the IDA was set up in 1999.
The LGA examines the operations of all the bodies funded through top-sliced revenue support grant every five years.
LGA chief executive Sir Brian Briscoe told Public Finance the review would examine how efficiently the IDA works and whether it needed to take on any new functions.
He said: 'The IDA manages a lot more resources than it used to, so we need to ask some questions. Is it focusing on the right things, does it manage its resources efficiently, does it attack problems effectively, are its management and governance arrangements adequate?'
In the past year, the IDA has undergone a major expansion, taking on more than 100 new staff, and former senior Treasury mandarin Lucy de Groot has taken over as executive director.
Briscoe said the review was unlikely to question the benefit of having a body devoted to promoting improvement. But he did not rule out the possibility that it could be the prelude to substantial change.
These exercises have in the past prompted major overhauls: the IDA was formed after the Local Government Management Board underwent the same process.
PFapr2004
