Eric Pickles

Audit Commission: the watchdog that didn’t bark

1 July 2011 | David Walker

The Audit Commission is still holding back in responding to the consultation on its own demise. Criticising the government’s plans could be tantamount to attacking localism and the Big Society Read more

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Fight or flight?

29 June 2011 | Judy Hirst

Easy councils. Remember them? They were meant to be the no-frills, low-budget authorities that supplied only the most residual services – and outsourced everything that wasn’t nailed down. Read more

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Perils of privatising public audit

3 June 2011 | David Walker

Plans to effectively privatise the Audit Commission are destined to fail. Within five years we can expect something not dissimilar from district audit being recreated Read more

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Why finance needs to be in the cockpit, by Alan Finch

4 May 2011 | Alan Finch

This is not the time for a fallout in the accountancy profession. The current financial climate requires everyone to work together to fly through the economic turbulence and ensure a safe landing Read more...

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From red tape to mouldy sausages, by Heather Wakefield

25 April 2011 | Heather Wakefield

Happy Easter Monday! Apart from being the day of the Easter egg hangover, it is also Eric Pickles’ chosen deadline for his consultation on statutory duties – part of the government’s big drive to ‘get rid of red tape’. Strange day for a deadline and – even stranger – the CLG web site says nothing at all about it today.  But now that the consultation is apparently closed, let’s hope that those of you contemplating a response to the statutory duties review managed to submit yesterday, in between cream eggs. Read more...

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Whither local audit? Nobody knows, by David Walker

5 April 2011 | David Walker

Thanks to the NLGN, the ACCA and Baker Tilly accountants– with Clive Betts’ Commons CLG committee due to weigh in soonish – a public debate about the future of local audit has more or less taken off this spring. But conceptually and strategically, things are as confused as they have been since last summer when the government announced the abolition of the Audit Commission on a whim and a prayer. Read more...

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No fair shares for chief executives, by Heather Wakefield

31 March 2011 | Heather Wakefield

Among the Big Ideas on cost saving from the Communities and Local Government Secretary are council mergers and sharing of chief executives and offices. So ‘Eric Pickles wants neighbouring councils to share chief executives’ ran the headline in the Birmingham Post (21 October 2010). ‘We expect you start merging your departments and having joint offices in order to protect those frontline services’, the Secretary of State told councils in the West Midlands. Read more...

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Guided localism vs central diktat, by Karen Day

10 March 2011 | Karen Day

The local government secretary must be a happy man this week. The overwhelming majority of councils in England have decided to freeze their council tax precepts this year, leading to the lowest increase in history. Read more...

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Charity cuts: do as I say… By John Perry

9 March 2011 | John Perry

Eric Pickles’ announcement on 1 March that councils will be in trouble if their cuts target the voluntary sector started a debate about whether councils are guilty or not.  This is presumably what the communities secretary wanted when he accused local authorities of being ‘high-minded’, not listening to the sector and failing to give voluntary bodies proper notice of any cuts affecting them. Read more...

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Public enemies within, by David Walker

7 March 2011 | David Walker

I’ve a question for Sir Bob Kerslake, the permanent secretary at Communities and Local Government. Are you now or have you ever been one of ‘the bureaucrats in government departments who concoct ridiculous rules and regulations that make life impossible’? Read more...

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