None – Remember Owl waits a couple of weeks before listing planning applications. Experience has shown that changes are sometimes made to the list during the following week. We get a more complete list by waiting.

Are you all keeping up? – Owl

No 10 partying in lockdown: who enjoyed what and when

Rowena Mason www.theguardian.com

15 May 2020

Sources told the Guardian there was a “wine and pizza” party in the Downing Street garden and inside No 10 during the first lockdown when socialising was banned. It is understood to have taken place after a press conference, and was described as having had a celebratory feel with drinking late into the evening. After No 10 denied this, a photograph was obtained by the Guardian showing Boris Johnson, his wife and two officials at a table with wine and cheese, with another 15 officials in the rest of the garden with wine bottles visible. No 10 says Johnson had been having a work meeting and went up to his flat with his family just after 7pm that evening.

20 May 2020

Dominic Cummings lifted the lid on a May gathering in the Downing Street garden, with invites to a “social distanced drinks”, which is believed to have been organised by the civil servant Martin Reynolds. No 10 has not denied that Johnson and his wife attended, with reports of food on tables and drinking. Restrictions on social mixing were still in place at this point.

13 November – Boris and Carrie Johnson flat party

This is the date that Johnson’s chief adviser, Cummings, and communications director, Lee Cain, left their roles. Sources have reported loud music and sounds of a party coming from the flat occupied by Johnson and his wife on this date. Cummings has alleged there had been “other flat parties” and suggested the pair’s “bubble” policy should be investigated. Asked if a party went ahead in his flat on 13 November, Johnson said: “No.”

27 November – Downing Street leaving do

While England was still in the grip of its second national lockdown, a leaving do was organised in No 10 – said to have been for Cleo Watson, a former aide to Cummings. A source told the Guardian that Johnson had personally attended and given a speech, remarking on how full with people the room was, before leaving to continue working.

10 December – Gavin Williamson’s staff party

When London was in tier 2, which only allowed socialising in groups of six outside, the then education secretary, Gavin Williamson, threw a party in his Whitehall department. The most senior civil servant in the department, Susan Acland-Hood, attended and admitted that there had been a “work-related” gathering hosted in the canteen. She did not dispute people had been drinking wine, and appeared to blame Williamson for instigating the event. She recalled he had wanted to “say a few words” to thank staff after a difficult year.

17 December

A quiz was held for members of the private office of Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, who was originally meant to be investigating the reports of parties in No 10. Invitations were sent out titled “Christmas Party!” and about 15 people were thought to be in attendance over Zoom. Responding to the claims, a government spokesperson said it was a virtual quiz with a small number of people from the office taking part from their desks. “The cabinet secretary played no part in the event, but walked through the team’s office on the way to his own office. No outside guests or other staff were invited or present. This lasted for an hour and drinks and snacks were bought by those attending. He also spoke briefly to staff in the office before leaving.”

18 December 2020 – Downing Street Christmas party

A party was held in No 10 when London was in tier 3 restrictions, which banned social events, according to multiple sources after the Daily Mirror first broke the story. Several dozen people – a mix of civil servants and political staff – reportedly attended and were told to bring “secret Santa” presents, with cheese and wine laid on. While Johnson’s spokesperson insisted no rules had been broken and then denied any party took place, a video filmed four days after the event was published by ITV. The leaked footage showed Allegra Stratton, the prime minister’s then aide, rehearsing for televised press conferences and laughing and joking with aides about a party on 18 December. Stratton all but confirmed the event had taken place by laughing it off as a “business meeting” but added: “It was not socially distanced.”

15 December 2020 – a festive No 10 quiz

A Christmas quiz was also organised for No 10 staff, with invitations emailed to everyone who worked in the building. Some guests were said to have dialled in by Zoom but others apparently attended in person and sat in groups of six, some wearing Christmas jumpers. A photograph later emerged in the Mirror of the prime minister taking part.

25 December 2020 – Christmas Day socialising

The prime minister’s “bubble” has come under scrutiny before, after his spokesperson did not deny that Nimco Ali, a close friend of Carrie Johnson, stayed with them over Christmas. One of the explanations offered was that Ali was considered part of the Johnsons’ childcare bubble. However, under the rules, the arrangement was meant to be purely for a second household to look after children, with the adults not meant to be socialising.

Bankruptcies happen gradually, then suddenly, an Ernest Hemingway character famously deadpans in The Sun Also Rises. Yet the aftermath of insolvency can play out painfully slowly, as observers of Carillion’s collapse, four years ago this week, can testify.

Jasper Jolly www.theguardian.com 

Carillion had its fingers in a lot of pies, to the point where it is difficult to explain what its main business was: was it construction, or something woollier like “support services”? Cleaning and maintenance are crucial to almost any business, but they are also shockingly easy to outsource to complex and faceless conglomerates. That complexity extended to accounts built on the directors’ “increasingly fantastical figures”. To borrow the Queen’s question about the credit crunch, why did nobody notice?

Carillion’s crash was so severe that it has sparked years of navel-gazing by accountants and their regulators. The latest chapter will open on Monday, when a tribunal in London will look at allegations that KPMG, a former partner at the auditor and certain current and former employees issued “false and misleading information and/or documents” to the regulator, the Financial Reporting Council (FRC). KPMG declined to comment ahead of the tribunal.

KPMG self-reported the latest problems, which relate to information handed over during standard FRC inspections of audits of Carillion and Regenersis, a London-listed IT company later renamed Blancco. The regulator will not allege misconduct in the audits, nor that the financial statements were imperfectly prepared, but the tribunal will probably shine more unwelcome light on a profession that has taken a beating ever since the global financial crisis.

The existence of a dominant “Big Four” is not usually a good sign in any industry. Safe to say that Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC have all had their scandals (try Autonomy, NMC Health, Conviviality and BHS respectively) in recent years. Smaller hangers-on such as Grant Thornton have also had their moments (Patisserie Valerie and Sports Direct).

The FRC and the broader audit profession have also been in the proverbial dock in recent years. At one point there were no fewer than five separate “Whither auditing?” inquiries, and the government is close to publishing a set of reforms to audit and corporate governance that it hopes will make it much harder for balance-sheet black holes to slip past auditors unnoticed. The FRC will be replaced by a new Audit, Reporting and Governance Authority, probably in 2023.

However, recent reports suggested that business lobbyists had got their claws into the reforms, watering down some more controversial elements in favour of a “business-friendly” regime fit for a wheeler-dealer post-Brexit Britain. Gone, according to the Financial Times, will be proposals to make directors personally oversee financial reporting controls; this will be demoted instead to the corporate governance code. The code sets the standards, but companies can opt out as they see fit.

There are other options for seeking accountability. This week’s tribunal is one of three investigations the FRC is still running on the Carillion collapse – there is another into KPMG’s audit itself, as well as one into the company’s former directors. The government’s Official Receiver has filed a claim form suggesting that it could seek damages of as much as £1bn from KPMG for audit negligence. (KPMG has promised to contest any claim, though none has yet arrived.)

Yet industry sources suggest that readers don’t hold their breath for a payout on that scale. The Carillion fallout keeps coming – but we will have to wait even longer for answers on why it happened, and how we can avoid a repeat.

Homeowners will still be able to object to individual planning applications after the government confirmed a U-turn on reforms to the system.

Melissa York www.thetimes.co.uk 

Ministers had planned to replace the planning application process with a zonal system and mandatory housebuilding targets, stripping homeowners of their right to object.

The Times reported in September that the shake-up of planning laws was to be abandoned after a backlash from voters and Conservative MPs in southern England. A change of approach from the government, however, was contained in a submission to the Lords built environment committee.

In the report it said: “There will be a continuing role for public consultation as part of the planning application process. Even where the broad principle of development is agreed . . . all the details would still need to be consulted on with communities and statutory consultees, and approved by officers or committees where appropriate.”

The government’s submission added: “Our reforms will give communities a greater voice from the start of the planning process . . . We also want to see more democratic accountability, with communities having a more meaningful say on the development schemes which affect them, not less.”

In response to the move, Tom Fyans, director of campaigns at the countryside charity the CPRE, said: “It appears the government now genuinely understands the need for local communities to have a powerful voice in planning decisions. These are encouraging signs that suggest a fundamental change of approach when it comes to determining what gets built where.”

The Lords report warned that ministers would not hit their target of building 300,000 new homes a year unless they stopped dithering over planning reforms. The cross-party committee said that uncertainty and delays in overhauling the system had had a “chilling effect” on housebuilding.

Baroness Neville-Rolfe, chairwoman of the committee, said: “The most important aspect in terms of housing supply is planning. Frankly all the twisting and turning over reform has had a chilling effect, creating uncertainty for housebuilders and planners.

“The government needs to bite the bullet and actually build housing of all types and tenures.”

The report said: “The challenges facing the housing market have been well documented: too many people are living in expensive, unsuitable, poor-quality homes. To address these complex challenges in the long term it is necessary to increase housing supply now.”

Local councils should be forced to come up with a plan for their area, Neville-Rolfe said, as more than half do not have an up-to-date strategy for building more homes.

Help to Buy, the government’s flagship homeownership scheme, is criticised for pushing up prices. The £29 billion cost of the scheme would “be better spent on increasing housing supply”, the committee said.

The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities said: “We share the ambition to reform the planning system to meet the demand for more high-quality homes and create a fairer housing market. We delivered more than 216,000 homes in England in 2020-21, well above the 186,500 forecast for the whole of the UK, and are investing a further £12 billion in affordable housing over the next five years.”

Ministers and officials are spending billions of pounds on projects that are never properly evaluated, according to the head of the National Audit Office.

Oliver Wright www.thetimes.co.uk 

Gareth Davies says that too often the government has not learnt from its failures and has “little information” on “what difference is made by the billions of pounds being spent”.

In an article for The Times Davies, who took over at the spending watchdog in May 2019, says that he was concerned to see that lessons that might have helped the government to deal with Covid had not been learnt.

He says there is little evidence that things have improved even though it has “never been more important that the government makes the right choices” after the pandemic.

Recent research by the National Audit Office (NAO) found that only 8 per cent of big government projects had robust evaluation plans in place.

“Prior to the pandemic the government did take forward many lessons from the simulation exercises it undertook to prepare for potential pandemics,” Davies writes. “However, it did not act on some warnings that would have helped it prepare for a pandemic like Covid-19.”

He adds: “What we have found by auditing government’s work is that many of the interventions carried out by government are either not evaluated robustly or not evaluated at all. This means government is not learning from its successes or failures, and has little information in most policy areas on what difference is made by the billions of pounds being spent.”

Davies cites the Kickstart Scheme, launched amid much fanfare last year to fund employers to create high-quality six-month work placements for people aged 16-24. He says that the Department for Work and Pensions had “limited assurance over the quality of the work placements created by the scheme”, or whether the jobs created “would have existed anyway”.

“Without having done more during the scheme’s operation to monitor what kinds of jobs and training employers are providing in practice, the department will find it much harder to deliver a robust estimate of the scheme’s long-term impact,” he writes.

Davies also says that there are no consequences for failure or not robustly assessing projects and pulling the plug on those that are not performing. “The incentives to evaluate and learn what works and why must be stronger than the instinct to avoid evaluating in case it uncovers bad results,” he writes. “At present public bodies face limited consequences if they do not evaluate their work. This needs to be addressed.”

When Michael Gove was Cabinet Office minister, he pledged to set up an internal Whitehall unit to assess all government projects against their aspirations and pull the plug on those that were not performing well.

“There can be a tendency in government where you get ‘vanity of authorship’, ” Gove said. “It is, ‘I launched this programme and I’ll defend it come what may’. We want people to know that the government is not simply trumpeting the fact that x amount of money has been spent on a new scheme but we go back to citizens and say: ‘This is what we tried. This worked. This didn’t work. This was the basis on which we acted.’ ”

However, Gove has since moved on to levelling up and housing and there have been no more announcements about the proposed evaluation unit.

 

A very unsatisfactory non-answer to Simon Jupp’s question – Owl

Simon Jupp Conservative, East Devon

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, when he plans to announce the successful local authority bids in the third tranche of the Active Travel Fund.

• Hansard source(Citation: HC Deb, 7 January 2022, cW)

Trudy Harrison Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)

The Department intends to make an announcement on this matter very shortly