https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/asset_management_forum_minutes#incoming-565169
Daily Archives: 3 Oct 2014
Details of the new council transparency rules
Click to access Local_Government_Transparency_Code_2014.pdf
Here are a few things that MUST be declared. There is a handy chart at the end of the document of required and suggested disclosure.
15.The Government has not seen any evidence that publishing details about contracts entered into by local authorities would prejudice procurement exercises or the interests of commercial organisations, or breach commercial confidentiality unless specific confidentiality clauses are included in contracts. Local authorities should expect to publish details of contracts newly entered into – commercial confidentiality should not, in itself, be a reason for local authorities to not follow the provisions of this Code. Therefore, local authorities should consider inserting clauses in new contracts allowing for the disclosure of data in compliance with this Code.
17.Where information would otherwise fall within one of the exemptions from disclosure under the Freedom of Information Act 2000, the Environmental Information Regulations 2004, the Infrastructure for Spatial Information in the European Community Regulations 2009 or falls within Schedule 12A to the Local Government Act 1972 then it is at the discretion of the local authority whether or not to rely on that exemption or publish the data. Local authorities should start from the presumption of openness and disclosure of information, and not rely on exemptions to withhold information unless absolutely necessary.
30.Local authorities must publish details of all land and building assets including:
all service and office properties occupied or controlled by user bodies, both freehold and leasehold
any properties occupied or run under Private Finance Initiative contracts
all other properties they own or use, for example, hostels, laboratories,
investment properties and depots
garages unless rented as part of a housing tenancy agreement
surplus, sublet or vacant properties
undeveloped land
serviced or temporary offices where contractual or actual occupation exceeds three months, and
all future commitments, for example under an agreement for lease, from when the contractual commitment is made.
Parking account
36.Local authorities must publish on their website, or place a link on their website to this data if published elsewhere:
a breakdown of income and expenditure on the authority’s parking account26, 27. The breakdown of income must include details of revenue collected from on- street parking, off-street parking and Penalty Charge Notices, and
a breakdown of how the authority has spent a surplus on its parking account
Knowle relocation and the new transparency rules – trouble ahead?
According to the Department, the Code will require councils to publish udetails of contracts and all land and building assets “they are sitting on” as well as subsidies given to trade unions including so-called ‘facility time’.
Local Government Minister Kris Hopkins said: “Greater power for local government must go hand in hand with greater local transparency and local accountability. Therefore it is only right we give council tax payers the data they deserve to play a bigger role in local democracy.
“This new wave of town hall transparency will empower armchair auditors right across the land to expose municipal waste and ensure councils are making the sensible savings necessary to freeze council tax and protect frontline services.
“For instance, opening up parking profits to the eyes of local democracy will protect residents from the risk of being treated as cash cows by trigger-happy town hall traffic wardens and expose councils using parking policies in an unlawful way.”
In response Cllr Peter Fleming, Chair of the Local Government Association’s Improvement and Innovation Board, warned that bringing forward the deadline for publishing the required information would only add strain and burden to local authorities faced with major cuts to their funding.
“Councils now need a firm commitment that they will receive adequate funding to cover these new expectations,” he demanded.
Cllr Fleming insisted that the sector was already the most open and transparent part of the public sector.
Councils already published information on budgets and revenues, performance, salaries, assets and annual parking reports, he pointed out. “This allows residents to democratically hold them to account and helps drive innovation and efficiencies.”
Cllr Fleming added that the LGA had recently launched its LG Inform online public tool, which is designed to make it easier for councils to generate and publish reports about how their services are performing.
How the public can influence planning matters
Feniton hits the (flooding) headlines yet again thanks to Wain Homes
Government announces new rules on council transparency
But, as usual, it doesn’t announce sanctions for councils such as ours that ignore them.
But it should make it easier for the people facing increases of 330% on their residents parking to scrutinise the numbers.
More on those IT partnerships
After news that EDDC is spearheading an IT parthership with Exeter and Teignbridge,we reported on the fiasco in Somerset when an IT partnership went spectacularly wrong here:
Following on from this is this critique which could equally be applied to the Skypark vanity project:
Mutual incentives?
The Somerset report says each side in an outsourcing relationship needs to be motivated by similar incentives. But can that ever happen? Councils exist to provide good public services as cheaply as possible. Suppliers exist to make as much money as possible. There can only be similar incentives if a council is so inefficient that there’s enough spare cash to cover council savings and the supplier’s profits. If there isn’t the spare cash, the council, in its enthusiasm to do something different by outsourcing, can simply fictionalise the figures for benefits and potential savings.
This creative (and legal) exercise is perfectly possible given the depth of the conjecture needed to project costs and savings over 6 years or more. Part-time councillors who are considering a big outsourcing contract have the time only to glance at summary documents or the preferred supplier’s Powerpoint slides. They are unlikely to spot the assumptions that pervade the formalised legal language.
During such a pre-contract exercise, the most sceptical councillors are often excluded from internal scrutiny, and the disinterested ones who are admitted into the inner chamber can find their heads swimming in a supplier-inspired language that either swathes uncertainty in the business jargon of near certainty or obscures reality in opaque legalese.
How are these lay councillors to get at the truth? Do they have the time?
Big outsourcing deals between councils and suppliers are inherently flawed, as this Somerset report indicates. Too many such deals have ended badly for council taxpayers as Dexter Whitfield’s investigations have shown.
But still some councils sign huge outsourcing deals. Their leading officials and councillors say they took lessons from failed contracts around the country into account. But what does that mean? If a deal is inherently flawed, perhaps because of diverging incentives, it is inherently flawed.
The disaster that is Southwest One could be a priceless jewel in the public sector’s display case if it serves to deter councillors and officials signing further large-scale council outsourcing deals.
When you click on the link to Dexter Whitfield’s investigations, you get this interesting comment:
The number of PPP strategic partnerships has increased 35% in just two years with 18 additional contracts valued at £8bn. 60 contracts are currently operating, four were terminated and one completed the contract term, but was not renewed. A further two are being terminated in 2014. Strategic partnerships originated in ICT and corporate services, but have extended into planning, education, police, fire and rescue and property services. The failure rate is very high – nearly 1 in 4 contracts are either terminated, reduce scope as services are brought back in-house, and/or suffer major financial and operational problems. Savings, new business and new jobs targets continue to be illusive.
Audit Commission invites councils to help “armchair auditors” to interpret their accounts
Transparency of council information
The government has announced grants to various councils to enable them to encourage the wider use of their data in the public realm, in an effort to ensure that councils are more transparent.
Amongst the grants is one for Derby City Council for the “Provision of comprehensive, high quality, up-to-date information on local authority owned land and property assets
A grant for Hampshire County Council for the “Development of a schema and open source tool to enable collating and publishing of linkable planning data”
Needless to say, East Devon District Council doesn’t appear in the list!
http://www.local.gov.uk/local-transparency/-/journal_content/56/10180/3926733/ARTICLE
Left hand and right hand out of sync again – this time on community hospitals
.…. The NHS chief executive will outline new models of care amid warnings of critical shortages of family doctors and fears that the NHS could not cope with a bad winter. Mr Stevens will suggest that GP practices could open in hospitals, especially in urban areas, where doctors are spread too thinly between a number of traditional local practices. In other areas, family doctors could band together to run expanded community hospitals, employing hospital consultants and other staff and offering extra services, such as scans, outpatient chemotherapy and dialysis.
The plan follows indications earlier this year that Mr Stevens wants to see a bigger role for “cottage”, community and local district general hospitals.
He will say that there will be no national blueprint, but that towns, cities and rural communities should find models which work for their populations, and ensure services work around the patient.
East Devon Watch 