News
Government Abolishes Audit Commission
16th August 2010
Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles has announced plans to disband the Audit Commission and refocus audit on helping local people hold councils and local public bodies to account for local spending decisions. Mr Pickles believes that the changes will pass power down to people, replace bureaucratic accountability with democratic accountability and save the taxpayer £50 million a year.
The new Government intends to take measures to radically scale back centrally imposed inspection and auditing. The audit expertise of the Commission will be moved into the private sector.
Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles said:
"The corporate centre of the Audit Commission has lost its way. Rather than being a watchdog that champions taxpayers' interests, it has become the creature of the Whitehall state."
"I want to see the Commission's auditing function become independent of Government, competing for future audit business from the public and private sector.
"These proposed changes go hand in hand with plans to create an army of armchair auditors - local people able to hold local bodies to account for the way their tax pounds are spent and what that money is delivering."
However, Labour's shadow communities secretary John Denham said the move meant taxpayers would have "no coherent information" about how much value for money their local services provided. He said:
"The Audit Commission doesn't just look at the cost but at the quality.
"Without the function of the Audit Commission there will be no-one to step in when a council is failing, as Doncaster was recently."
