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 Audit Commission to be scrapped
The official watchdog responsible for ensuring local councils in England deliver value for money is to be scrapped, it was announced today. The official watchdog responsible for ensuring local councils in England deliver value for money is to be scrapped, it was announced today. The Audit Commission paid the price for a stormy three-month relationship with the new coalition Government. Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles said it had "lost its way" and would be disbanded. Councils and other bodies covered by the commission will be free to appoint their own auditors, while the National Audit Office - the Whitehall spending watchdog - will oversee the audit regime. The commission's in-house practice will be moved into the private sector - possibly through a management buy-out or as a staff-owned mutual. "The corporate centre of the Audit Commission has lost its way. Rather than being a watchdog that champions taxpayers' interests, it has become the creature of the Whitehall state," Mr Pickles said in a statement. "We need to redress this balance. Audit should remain to ensure taxpayers' money is properly spent, but this can be done in a competitive environment, drawing on professional audit expertise across the country." The announcement had been due to be made tomorrow but was brought forward after details leaked out. In a leaked email to staff, the commission's chief executive Eugene Sullivan said he was "surprised" at the decision. "The decision has been taken without any consultation with the commission on the principles involved, especially that of the independent appointment of auditors," he was reported to have written. "The independence of audit, its disinterested pursuit of good value in public spending, its custodianship of best practice in financial management; these are not to be lightly cast aside." Commission chairman Michael O'Higgins insisted it had already been considering moving some of the audit practice into the private sector and had opened talks with a number of leading audit firms. However he rejected Mr Pickles's criticisms of the commission's record, saying that it had saved £600 million through its national fraud initiative alone. "The quality of local government has improved radically in the last 10 years under the performance regime that we have run," he said. The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) estimates that the changes - which are due to come into effect in 2012-13 - will save £50 million. However, the commission appears to have paid the price for a difficult relationship with Mr Pickles dating to the time when the Conservatives were still in opposition. In the early weeks of the coalition Government it clashed with Mr Pickles over the appointment of a new chief executive on a proposed salary of £240,000, which he vetoed. Aides to the Communities Secretary also blamed the commission for trying to push councils towards fortnightly bin collections - something Mr Pickles fiercely opposed in opposition. The last straw appears to have been when it was said that the commission tried to resist plans requiring all DCLG bodies to publish details of all items of expenditure over £500, only for it to be disclosed that it spent £8,000 on an event at Newmarket race course. Labour MP Clive Betts, chairman of the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee, said: "I think there is a suspicion around that there is a political motive here." Shadow communities secretary John Denham said the commission needed "reform, not abolition". "This is a determined attempt to ensure that taxpayers have no information about the value for money for local services. The Audit Commission doesn't just look at the cost but at the quality," he said. "Without the function of the Audit Commission there will be no-one to step in when a council is failing, as Doncaster was recently. This move by the Government shows they are only interested in the cost of everything, the value of nothing." Source: 24dash.com
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