LGA takes aim at Audit Commission
Author: Local Government Chronicle - Nov 18, 2009
The Local Government Association has called for the government to take an axe to public sector inspectors in a bid to safeguard councils’ position ahead of the impending public spending squeeze.
In a lobbying document produced in advance of the pre-Budget report, the LGA identifies potential savings of £650m from reducing the burden of inspection to a sixth of its previous level and halving the £500m annual costs from the Audit Commission, Ofsted, the Care Quality Commission and HM Inspectorate of Constabulary.
The report reserved special criticism for the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) which the LGA claims has failed to reduce costs on councils.
"The CAA was designed to reduce the burden on councils by bringing different regulatory frameworks into line," the report read. "However, the experience of most councils so far is that CAA has failed to reduce the burden, or has even increased it."
It claimed the Total Place pilot running across Leicestershire had identified annual costs of £3.6m borne by public sector bodies responding to 83 inspections during the year.
Meanwhile an analysis of the number of inspection days carried out by the Audit Commission and funding for council assessment showed the daily cost of the regulation of local authorities had more than doubled since 2004.
LGA chairman Margaret Eaton (Con), above, said the report aimed to "highlight the central control that holds councils back from really being able to make big savings, such as excessive regulation, inspection, delivery and performance monitoring".
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