Room151 Quarterly magazine: Issue 2 preview

Issue 2 of Room151 Quarterly will be landing on desks next week – here’s a taste of what you’ll find inside.

Interview: Rob Whiteman talks to Gavin Hinks…
“I haven’t met a leader of a council or a leading politician that objects to being accountable for the decisions that they make; they believe very passionately in their communities and decisions that they’re taking. But they do expect that the system of local government is itself respected and treated fairly.”

Richard Harbord on council credit risk…
“Today we have moved on from the situation where there is any recognisable or reliable ranking of authorities.  A welter of performance data is available, but this is time-intensive to evaluate and there is a lack of conformity from authority to authority.”

Agent 151 on local government pay…
“In recent times it has been fashionable in some quarters to characterise council workers as a bunch of feckless, work-shy overpaid bureaucrats with pointless jobs. Eric Pickles, as the minister responsible for local government, has, for some reason known only to him, done his best to reinforce this image, aided and abetted by lazy journalists whose stock-in-trade is the propagation of entertaining stereotypes.”

Chris Buss on innovation…
“Much has been spoken and written since 2010 about the public sector finding new ways of providing services (in reality code for cheaper ways of providing services) because the country as a whole cannot afford the public services that it previously enjoyed at the price it was paying. Or, in layman’s terms, the cost of services exceeds the amount of tax raised.”

Alex Colyer on business rates appeals…
“The capacity of the Valuation Office Agency (VOA) to process appeals, many of which have been in the system since 2010, and can of course date back even further, is creating more uncertainty in our financial planning than any other line of business.”

Stephan Van Arendsen on LGPS asset allocation…
“Why would a tax raising body that is 80% funded, with a strong covenant and 20-year recovery plan, have the same investment strategy, and take the same level of investment risk, as a private sector company that has a seven-year contract with a local authority and was set up with a 100% funding level?”

Ian O’Donnell on fighting fraud…
“Due to funding cuts, local authorities are being forced to make tough decisions, and funding more investigators is unlikely to take priority over essential services. The inevitable consequence will be more fraud remaining undetected or uninvestigated. Councils with integrated counter-fraud teams face an additional problem. They will have to determine who will potentially transfer to DWP with competition among investigators to remain with local councils expected to be intense.”

Jeremy Newman on the new audit horizon…
“The key element to successful audit procurement is finding ways to guarantee volumes of work to successful bidders while managing independence issues (for example, due to past consultancy work). Collective procurement by a body able to make appointments is better able to maintain volumes and competitive pressure on prices than joint procurement by bodies making their own appointments or sole procurement by each body.”