Audit Commission plans pared down role

21 Jul 10
The Audit Commission is planning to cut its costs by 30% and focus on supporting self-inspection in local government
By David Williams

21 July 2010

The Audit Commission is planning to cut its costs by 30% and focus on supporting self-inspection in local government – but has warned that some public bodies risk ‘financial non-viability’ as funding is cut.

Gareth Davies, the commission’s managing director for local government, said this morning that the inspectorate could provide advice, analysis and expertise to help councils make savings and increase productivity.

Speaking at the launch of a New Local Government Network report into the future of inspection, Davies said: ‘Spending reductions create some new risks, and understanding those is going to be central to the job of our auditors because organisations are already, in some parts of public services, close to financial non-viability and that’s going to accelerate very quickly.’

Saying the commission would cut its own costs by 30% over the coming years, he outlined the role the body could play now its inspection regime, the Comprehensive Area Assessment, has been scrapped by the coalition government.

Davies said the commission could still support self-inspection and peer review in the local government sector. He outlined plans to share expertise and analysis, and help councils to make savings and increase productivity.

He added that the commission’s annual letters on organisations it audits could be made more accessible to the public, allowing people to hold councils to account over their financial management.

The commission will also scrap its flagship Oneplace website, Davies revealed. The site, which publishes the results of the CAA in a format designed to be easy for the general public to interpret, was launched with great fanfare last December.

David Parsons, chair of the Local Government Association’s improvement board, made strikingly similar recommendations for the commission’s role.

The inspectorate’s role could be confined to four tasks, he said. These were: independent financial audit; regulatory inspections of schools and care homes; more comprehensive inspections of struggling authorities; and sharing intelligence of councils’ performance.

He said the LGA had raised self-assessment and peer review plans with ministers, and ‘things have been moving apace’.

Parsons acknowledged that centralised inspection had improved performance initially, but argued: ‘It has done its job.’

The NLGN’s report, Throughthe looking glass, also recommended more self-assessment in the local government sector, along with citizens being given more information on spending, with a right to petition the LGA if services fail.

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