The project, which will be jointly run by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Cabinet Office, aims to identify and evaluate consent regimes - where councils need to ask Government permission to take key decisions on local issues - with a view to reducing burdens on local authorities. Local Government Minister Phil Woolas said: "Today's project is one of many initiatives being taken forward by the Government to identify bureaucratic burdens, unnecessary processes and paperwork which can hamper the delivery of front-line services.
"The project represents a significant step, not just in understanding the current issues faced by councils but also in identifying the practical steps we can take to alleviate them. We want to help local authority staff to get on with what they need to be doing - delivering services."
John Hutton, Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, who will oversee the project alongside Phil Woolas, said: "This is an important project in the Government's drive to reduce burdens on frontline staff and improve public services. The current consent regime process can cause delays in Council decision-making in areas such as housing and planning. By streamlining consent regimes we will empower staff to make decisions locally which will result in faster service delivery to the public."
Today's announcement builds on the ODPM's wider agenda of giving councils further freedoms to deliver better public services, and the Cabinet Office's work through the Better Regulation Executive to reduce the overall administrative burden on public sector workers.
The 2001 Local Government Paper "Strong Local Leadership - Quality Public Services" committed to cutting bureaucracy placed on local authorities through reducing plan requirements, area-based initiatives, consent regimes and other unnecessary administration. This was implemented through a programme of freedoms and flexibilities for upper tier local authorities announced in November 2002, and extended to districts in November 2003.
Significant freedoms for councils have been introduced by the Government, with even greater freedoms for top performing councils.
These include:
- The ability to borrow for capital investment without central government consent, as long as they can afford to service the debt, under the new prudential borrowing system;
- The deregulation of 63 consent powers up to February 2005; - A reduction in the number of inspection days by over one-third. The number of inspections undertaken has also reduced by almost fifty per cent compared with 2001-2002 levels;
- A 75% reduction in the number of plans councils are required to produce.
The initiative is one of a series of "Making a Difference projects" taken forward by the Cabinet Office Better Regulation Executive (BRE) in partnership with other Whitehall departments. The projects aim to deliver tangible results that make a real difference to the work of front-line service deliverers, through working with front-line staff and with stakeholders (eg. Government departments, agencies and outside bodies) to implement better regulation, identify bureaucratic burdens and remove unnecessary processes and paperwork. Their reports then detail specific outcomes and agreed changes that will be made.
Quelle: Publictechnology, 13.07.2005
