Adios Audit Commission‏

Pickles has made no secret of his distaste for the Audit Commission. Even before the ink was dry on the Con Dem coalition Pickles had made great play of the Audit Commission being found to have used their public funds on lobbyists to argue for their own preservation. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/7945123/Eric-Pickles-interview-slimming-down-the-public-sector.html

I have some sympathy for Pickles distaste but the decision to scrap the Commission is a fine example of throwing the baby out with the bathwater. In recent years the Audit Commission had become highly politicised.

From a core job of ensuring public money was well spent and transparency maintained we have seen the Commission doing the bidding for new labour ideas of plurality in public sector provision. They were allowed to go unchallenged as report after report propped up the new labour orthodoxy of private sector delivery of public services. They supported the so far unproven assumptions that competition in public services would deliver savings.

Towards the fag end of their own administration, in the form of their then CEO Steve Bundred, they were quick to jump on the bandwagon of public sector spending cuts. It was simply not the business of a public sector CEO to do this.

Not everyone or every division within the Audit Commission was entirely new labour. Some excellent reports exposed the myths but the people behind them struggled to get genuine research out into the public domain. ‘For better for worse’ exposed the myth of savings from ‘public/private partnerships’ in the delivery of public service contracts. ‘Positively charged’ showing how far the public sector had to rely upon additional charges to the public was a timely indictment of council tax but these reports were classically too little too late.

Pickles has reacted with glee to what he views as the slaying of the new labour machine. He is wrong. The Audit Commission needed to be culled back and brought into play as a genuine independent body of audit and analysis ensuring that we know how much is being spent and on what. That would inform value for money judgements. The Tories replacement of councils simply publishing spending on their local websites is delusional and will not inform value for money judgements locally, regionally or nationally.

My fear now is that the Con Dems will recreate a version of the Audit Commission to do the bidding for them. A further politicisation of the civil service. Maude has already indicated he doesn’t want to see in-house teams delivering public services. We could yet see the return of the old DETR compulsory competitive tendering team. It‘s may be a case that Pickles hasn’t yet got the balls to say that?

Anna Rose

Footnote: Pickles row with the Audit Commission centred on his Daily Mail supported campaign to go back to weekly bin collections. The Audit Commission had issued guidance to councils to introduce alternate weekly collections. The truth of the matter is that if councils can’t send rubbish to landfill they need to recycle more. The only sure and affordable way to increase recycling without upping council tax is to introduce, as councils have done across the country, alternate weekly collections. Normal bins are collected one week and the next week recyclates. This is still a weekly service it is just different rubbish being collected on alternative weeks.

This briefing by APSE shows that councils have actually improved bin collection services, contained costs, increased recycling, reduced landfill and therefore kept down payments on landfill tax to central government. Pickles naïve little bin war threatens to undo this good work, increase costs to councils and therefore council tax payers and put back carbon reduction commitments at a time when councils are working towards waste to energy schemes. So much for Cameron’s green credentials if he lets Pickles get away with this one! http://www.apse.org.uk/briefings/10/10-13%20%20Refuse%20collection%20performance%20information%20and%20future%20focus%20for%20the%20service%20.pdf