Howard vows to slash local government red tape
The Conservative Party leader has pledged that a Conservative government would immediately scrap a number of local government administrative duties.
Speaking to the Local Government Association’s (LGA) annual conference, Mr Howard said: “The next Conservative government will cut back the financial, administrative and auditing regulation that today weighs down local government.
“We will increase significantly the discretion of local councils to spend the money they receive by way of grant. We will allow councils greater freedom to set their own priorities.
“I can announce today that we will immediately abolish Best Value and the Comprehensive Performance Assessments, which take up so much valuable staff time, cost so much and interfere so greatly in the day-to-day work of local councils.
“We will be consulting on what should take their place. But whatever we decide, we believe that councillors should debate the record of their council. And the voters should decide whether it is good, bad or indifferent.”
Mr Howard said that since Labour’s victory in 1997, “the stream of targets, directives and regulations from the centre has become a flood. Ministers claim that the best way to make local government effective is to tell it in increasing detail what it can and cannot do. But that creates far more problems than it solves.
“So much discretion has been taken away from local government”
“Labour’s “new localism” has turned out to be simply a set of new plans, new legislation, new guidance, new financial controls and bidding systems and new inspectorates – the Surveillance Commission, the Supporting People Inspection Team, the Best Value Inspections and a whole host of others.”
He promised: “Under the Conservatives, I want to have genuine local government, close to the people who elect you, able to deliver on the promises that you make to them.”
