Public sector to publish expenses

Local government / 20 September 2010

The coalition government wants to see off claims of dodgy expenses, so they’re putting them all online, says Rodney Jack

Money and accountability are the two main reasons for the coalition government’s introduction of measures ‘to rip off [the] cloak of secrecy’ surrounding local authority expenses.

Following the long-running MPs’ expenses revelations, the Secretary of State is asking councils in England and Wales to publish, from January 2011, all items of spending above £500 as well as local government contracts and tender documents.

So far 28 local authorities have put their expenditure online. Some such as Waverley Borough Council have deployed an online transparency platform, spotlightonspend, providing residents and business ratepayers with access to how it spends its annual resources.

For Paul Wenham, strategic director for resources at Waverley Borough Council, transparency ensures that all the council’s activities are customer focused and provide good value for money.

“To this end our website is well developed and provides the information that the Secretary of State is requesting,” he says of the council’s current and ongoing plans. “We are committed to making it easier for residents to see how we spend our money within the organisation and on external partners and suppliers. We were one of the first authorities to publish this data and we endorse the Secretary of State's proposals.”

Making things clear

Northamptonshire County Council has similarly taken up the baton. Its leader Jim Harker is delighted that the Government shares its own ‘ambition and drive’ to increase transparency.

It publishes all expenditure over £500 on its website to add to its work in publishing salaries and expenses of senior managers. In June it published all spend in the Health and Adult Social Services directorate and other parts of the council will publish in the coming months.

Transparency is a good thing, but if we are not very careful we will see the overblown regulatory industry, that inspects all aspects of the public service, morph into a new transparency bureaucracy – that’s not a response government ministers planned for.

David Clark, Director general, Solace

It is also a test bed for other councils to explore how such work could be rolled out nationally.

While the moves within the transparency agenda are welcome and well intentioned in this time of austerity, it raises the spectre of the law of unintended consequences, says David Clark, the director general of Solace, the body that represents chief executives and senior managers in local government.

The law of unintended consequences suggests that any intervention may or may not have the intended result, but will inevitably have unanticipated outcomes. Sometimes, these outcomes are positive as is the case with transparency in local government, which indications suggest is a well received initiative.

Solace publishes templates on its websites to help local authorities spell out the pay, expenses and duties of both officers and councillors. They have been the most downloaded documents on the site in the past six months, according to the communications head, Graham Taylor.

Yet, sometimes outcomes are negative - as local authorities are finding in practice. Solace says it has been advocating the publication of salaries for some years, but it was only late in the day that the last government came to understand the importance of such a move, Taylor claims.

Explanation is key

“Solace was concerned that the information on salaries should not be published without chiefs detailing what they do alongside what they are paid,” says Taylor. “Eric Pickles said last week that he didn’t know what chief executives did so why should we expect people in the street to know?

“What is now clear is that the Government is endeavouring to do two things. On the one hand they wish to see local authorities make cuts in the order of 25% - they are expecting chief executives to manage this process. On the other hand they say chiefs do ‘non jobs’. These stances contradict each other,” he says.

How far chief executives and senior managers would like transparency and accountability to develop is an area for further discussion. However, Taylor points to the recent publication of results from Birmingham council of research on what is becoming a bugbear: answering freedom of information requests.

This showed that these requests cost Birmingham council taxpayers £800,000 a year. “You can’t but wonder about how some of this money could have been better spent on the services that local government is here to provide for vulnerable people in our communities,” Taylor concludes.

“Transparency is a good thing,” says Clark. “But if we are not very careful we will see the overblown regulatory industry, that inspects all aspects of the public service, morph into a new transparency bureaucracy – that’s not a response government ministers planned for.”