Spelman spells out regulation strategy

Author: Local Government Chronicle - Feb 3, 2010

Shadow local government secretary Caroline Spelman has given the first indication of how the future of local government regulation may look if the Conservatives win the election.

Ms Spelman restated her party’s commitment to abolishing the comprehensive area assessment - but signified support for the Audit Commission’s Oneplace website.

She was speaking at a debate on 2 February held by think tank Localis to mark the launch of its report For Good Measure: Devolving accountability for performance and assessment to local areas (LGCplus, 2 February).

"We are saying that CAA should be dismantled," she said. "I would go so far as to say that it is counterproductive."

However, later, in response to a question from the floor, she said: "The Audit Commission has seen the writing on the wall … Its new product Oneplace … costs a lot less than CAA … [it offers] another way of helpful measurement. It is worth looking at."

Ms Spelman specifically highlighted the capacity of Oneplace to collate and display existing public data to allow benchmarking.

The remarks follow allegations in The Sunday Times that the commission paid nearly £60,000 to the lobbyists to target Conservative chairman Eric Pickles, who announced the plans to scrap the CAA (LGCplus, 2 February). The commission has denied the claims. (LGCplus, 2 February).

In future the inspection system should encourage councils to focus on customers and service users not ministers, said Ms Spelman.

"We need to make sure that councils are responsive to the needs of people in their area, she said.

"Local authorities are quite able to set their own targets. If they are insufficiently ambitious, customers and service users will say that. This is where power of the ballot box comes in."

She also called on ministers to be candid about their involvement and powers when discussing local successes or failings.

"Ministers must not rush to the dispatch box to claim credit or claim to have the answer or say that they can sort things out," she said. "The key is to let best practice shed light on situations where there is poor practice."

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