Westminster leader demands "foundation" status for top-performing councils

The leader of Westminster Council has called on the government to give top-performing local authorities “foundation” status, with control over business rates and freedom from government inspections.

Calling for an end to the “stranglehold” that civil servants have on local authority spending, Cllr Colin Barrow said the best councils should be given powers in the Decentralisation Bill to deliver services “as they see fit”, and not be subject to repeated inspections from Ofsted and the Care Quality Commission.

Speaking at the Royal Commonwealth Society, Barrow said: “It seems to me that civil servants view local government as, at best, a body never to be trusted and, at worst, wasteful and incompetent – fit only to empty bins and issue parking permits.

“This is despite the fact that councils have proved themselves to be the most efficient body in government with £3bn of savings between 2004 and 2007.”

He added that local authorities could do “so much more if we weren’t strangled by increasing centralisation and onerous inspections which hamper our ability to innovate and deliver savings to local taxpayers”.

Barrow pointed to the fact that Westminster contributes £1.2bn in business rates to the national economy, but receives only 12% to invest locally. “Meanwhile, nationally set fees and charges, for example in planning and licensing, mean that we can’t recover our costs,” he added.

“If we had legislation to permit us to set our charges locally to gain full-cost recovery, we would have saved £2.8m in 2009/10.”