Cut the Audit Commission
Author: Local Government Chronicle |
First in David Cameron’s quango-firing line should be the Audit Commission.
Vince Cable was right to describe the competition for stars awarded by this unelected quango as disrespectful and perverse at the Local Government Association’s annual conference earlier this month.
An instrument of the reform regime, the Audit Commission fosters compliance rather than improvement; and compliance with bad ideas to boot.
Users know public services aren’t working and have said so in the recent Place Survey. Ministers, who believe targets and performance assessments are reliable indicators of good service, think the problems is that citizens have yet to notice the ‘improvement’.