Kelly pledges shift from top-down to trusting

6 Jul 06
The tangle of performance indicators and reporting requirements that are throttling local government will be swept away following a wide-ranging review being set up to slash red tape in the sector, Ruth Kelly pledged this week.

07 July 2006

The tangle of performance indicators and reporting requirements that are throttling local government will be swept away following a wide-ranging review being set up to slash red tape in the sector, Ruth Kelly pledged this week.

The communities and local government secretary, giving her maiden speech to the Local Government Association's annual conference in Bournemouth on July 5, said the time had come for a radical shift from a 'top-down state' to a 'trusting state', in recognition that local authorities had risen to the government's challenge to improve.

A high-level task force, to be chaired by Telford and Wrekin Council chief executive Michael Frater will sift through the plethora of almost 600 items of performance information that councils have to submit to an array of government departments and inspectorates.

Research commissioned from PricewaterhouseCoopers and published by Kelly to coincide with her speech found that 80% of councils' performance reporting is information required by Whitehall, while just 20% is for the direct benefit of residents.

The study also concluded that these requirements cost authorities on average £1.8m a year to comply with them.

Kelly said it was time for Whitehall ministries to realise that 'their job is to set clear frameworks for delivery and reporting, not to interfere and micro-manage' local public services.

But she hinted that other departments remained to be convinced of the merits of deregulation, telling local government it would have to prove itself worthy of greater responsibility.

'There will be others less confident of the ambition that we share and our ability to deliver it,' Kelly told delegates, and vowed to 'prove the sceptics wrong'.

She sought to allay suspicions among some delegates that her promises would not yield tangible results. 'I guess you have heard some of this vision before and are asking: “is it for real this time?”.

Well, I'm clear that it is.' Kelly also used her speech to promise a 'radical' white paper in the autumn that would deliver significant deregulation and a devolution of power and responsibilities to the appropriate level.

Kelly defended the centralising target-driven approach the government had introduced after 1997 as necessary to tackle underperformance. But she argued there was now a growing realisation that the limits of that approach had been reached.

'The increased confidence and improved performance of local authorities is changing the climate of opinion in Whitehall and creating a new interest in working with local authorities.'

Frater, speaking to Public Finance after Kelly announced he would chair the task force, said he intended to work systematically through all the reporting requirements faced by local government and assess the necessity of each one.

He was offered the appointment only last Friday and has yet to appoint his team, but said he planned to get to work 'within a matter of weeks' and produce an initial report later this year.

The task force is believed to have the backing of the Treasury and the Strategy Unit at Number 10.

Frater said his intention was to get government departments and regulators to 'distil the essence of the reporting requirements so that we're left only with the ones that really matter'. But he conceded that: 'We'll have to be pretty careful that the ones we recommend should be kept are the ones that are important to the secretaries of state.'

Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, chair of the LGA, told PF that, while Kelly's proposals were a 'good firm step in the right direction', it would be crucial to get explicit crossgovernment support for them. 'The prime minister's support is fundamental to this. The time has gone for small steps, we need brave, bold reform. We'll find out now if the government really means it.'

He also warned that cutting through the red tape was just one element of a reform package that also had to embrace the devolution of broad new powers to authorities in a number of areas, such as transport, housing and planning, and a rebalancing of funding.

'In the white paper there needs to be an absolutely clear commitment that Sir Michael Lyons' recommendations will be taken forward,' Bruce-Lockhart said. But he confirmed that so far no such commitment had been given by ministers.

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