Government Tells Councils To Get Spending Online

In an effort to increase accountability and financial openness, local government secretary Eric Pickles MP has written to ‘slow coach councils’ warning them they have until the end of January to publish online the details of any spending over £500.

“Every council’s New Year’s resolution must be to open up their finance books to the public,” warned Pickles.

This is part of the coalition government’s efforts to ensure that councils show they have done everything they can to reduce waste, efore they cut frontline services.

Transparency Drive

In these cash strapped times for example, Cabinet Office minister Francis Maude has managed to push through cuts in Government ICT spending which has helped the coalition government make an estimated £1 billion worth of efficiency savings since May 2010.

And in an effort to drive greater transparency into local government, six months ago Pickles wrote to all councils in which he called on them to open their files on local government spending and show that waste is being eradicated. He used research from credit experts Experian to show that town halls could be wasting nearly £150 million on duplicate payments.

The transparency drive also includes councils publishing the salary details of their senior staff, as well as councillor expenses, minutes of meetings, and any useful frontline service data of interest to residents or entrepreneurs.

Local authorities have until the end of January to get all of their spending data over £500 published online in accessible formats.

Slow Coach Councils

However it seems that Pickles has a battle on his hands, as it is understood that less than half (144 councils) have already gone online.

Pickles also warned the other 200 or so councils that have yet to act, that they would face tough action from him, as well as tough questions from residents.

“New Year is traditionally a time when the country sets its goals for the year ahead. In 2011 I would like to see every council make their New Year’s resolution to cut more waste and fully open their books up to public scrutiny,” said Pickles.

“I’ve started by calling for all expenditure over £500 to be put online by the end of the month but councils should not stop there,” he added. “They should also be willing to show senior and middle management salaries, councillor expenses, job recruitment, and minutes of council meetings.”

“One hundred and forty four councils have shown they’re not afraid to be transparent and I applaud them, but that’s less than half, the slow-coach councils only have a month to go before serious questions will be asked about what they’ve got to hide,” Pickles warned.

“Openness is an essential part of a proper modern democracy,” he said. “The taxpayer has a right to see where their money is being spent, to point out waste and decide local priorities.”

Spending Clampdown

The coalition government is determined to scale back government spending. As part of its cost cutting measures around ICT for example, the government has already renegotiated contracts with large vendors by signing ‘memorandums of understanding‘ in an effort to cut costs. HP, Oracle, Microsoft, Atos Origin and Capgemini have all signed, as well as several other big name IT services firms.

Francis Maude also revealed back in July that the government would scrap hundreds of unnecessary and expensive government websites and slash the cost of the remaining sites to save millions of pounds.

The government action comes after the shocking cost of the Labour party’s botched IT projects during its period in power was exposed in an investigation by the Independent newspaper earlier this year. That investigation found that British taxpayers had been left with a bill of more than £26 billion for computer systems that either suffered severe delays or ran over budget, or that were cancelled altogether.