By Lucy Phillips
12 April 2011
Councils tick an average of 12.6 million boxes every year to satisfy Whitehall red tape, according to the Local Government Association.
Research published yesterday by the LGA identified 43,000 different pieces of information an average single-tier authority needs to give central government every year.
Some of this reporting to Whitehall requires entering tens of thousands of individual facts, covering, for example, every school pupil or household benefit recipient, taking the total number of data items to more than 12 million.
The LGA is calling for the burden to be slashed, estimating that it costs each council £1.8m a year in staff time and other resources to collate and report the information.
LGA chair Baroness Margaret Eaton said: ‘The time-consuming and costly burden of collecting
and reporting data into the black hole of Whitehall bureaucracy is simply
unsustainable. The local government workforce will be reduced by 140,000 posts
this year in order to save money for frontline services.
'That reduction in staff needs to be matched, if not bettered, by a reduction in the box-ticking demands being placed on councils, so staff can focus their energy on delivering the more than 700 local services residents want and need.’
The Department for Communities and Local Government is due to publish a new Single Data List shortly, stipulating all the data government expects local authorities to provide.
Responding to the LGA research, local government minister Bob Neill said: ‘For too long, council staff have worked to the whims of Whitehall, waiting for the next data demand to increase their workload. This government is committed to reducing red tape, which holds councils back, and to giving them more freedoms and flexibilities.
‘Since May, we have ended 37 separate data collections, including some big surveys. However, more needs to be done. The Single Data List will catalogue for the first time all of central government departments’ must-have data requirements for the coming year. If it’s not on the list, we won’t be asking for it.’
