Council leaders "unconvinced" by DCLG efforts to reduce reporting

Town hall chiefs have said they are “unconvinced” by the government’s commitment to reducing the reporting burden on local authorities.

In its response to a Department for Communities and Local Government consultation, the Local Government Association submitted a list of returns that it suggested could be immediately removed and/or urgently reviewed with a view to removal or radical streamlining.

The list included a range of new data requirements that council leaders want removed, such as:

• The percentage of local authority budgets delegated to local decision-making
• Spending held in community budgets
• Spending on infrastructure via the Community Infrastructure Levy
• The number of neighbourhood plans (and the number of people involved)
• The number of new mutuals and cooperatives created by local authorities to deliver public services.

The LGA said it welcomed the creation of a single data list and the government’s commitment to publish a reduced list for April 2011 which contained only the minimum of central government data needs.

However, it expressed serious concerns whether this would be possible in the time available. The LGA said the draft list was not comprehensive and contained insufficient information, adding that the timescale for the review was unrealistic.

“In conclusion we do not believe the current process is capable of delivering a comprehensive and significantly reduced list of the data demands government places on councils,” the response said.

Cllr David Parsons, chairman of the LGA’s improvement board, said: “Councils cannot afford to waste money and staff hours collecting and reporting information which disappears into a black hole of central government bureaucracy. We’ve heard positive noises from government about reducing time consuming and costly Whitehall box-ticking but old habits die hard.”

Of the 45 data collections being rolled back, another 18 have already been announced in their place, Parsons claimed.

“We are disappointed by the scale of reductions proposed so far and remain unconvinced about the extent of the government’s ambition to minimise the reporting burden on councils,” he added. “With councils being asked to become more efficient in response to significant cuts to their budgets we need swift action rather than warm rhetoric.”

The LGA highlighted the experience of Leicestershire County Council as an example of the data burdens faced by authorities – the council reports on more than 3,000 performance data sets, which requires an estimated 92 staff and costs £3.7m each year.