Draft Local Authorities' Plans and Strategies (Disapplication) (England) Order 2005
Second Standing Committee on Delegated Legislation
Monday 17 January 2005
[Janet Anderson in the Chair]
Draft Local Authorities' Plans and Strategies (Disapplication) (England)
Order 2005
4.30 pm
The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (Phil Hope): I beg to move,
That the Committee has considered the draft Local Authorities' Plans and Strategies (Disapplication) (England) Order 2005.
The order disapplies seven statutory plan requirements for authorities that are rated as excellent under the comprehensive performance assessment. It was introduced by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister following consultation with external stakeholders and Departments that have responsibility for legislation that is amended by the order. It was laid before both Houses between 30 June and 8 November 2004, along with documents containing an explanation of the policy proposals and details of the consultation.
No representations were received during that period. Some slight changes were made subsequently to the draft order following amendments to the Children Bill and discussions with counsel to the Chairman of Committees in another place, resulting in the draft order that is now before the House. The changes were fully discussed with Departments in the lead on the relevant legislation, which I shall explain shortly.
It might be helpful to the Committee if I summarise the background and purpose of the order. It is part of a package of freedoms and flexibilities for excellent local authorities. In our White Paper, ''Strong local leadership—quality public services'', published in December 2001, the Government announced their intentions to increase councils' room for action, giving them the powers and freedom that they need to innovate and shape services in ways that respond to and meet local needs.
Among other things, the White Paper highlighted that the plethora of central controls had at times become counter-productive, with councils having to produce 66 separate plans and strategies. We promised to cut by 50 per cent. the number of plans for all authorities and to provide further cuts for the highest performing authorities identified under the comprehensive performance assessment. Cross-departmental agreement was reached subsequently in November 2002 to cut further the separate number of plans by 75 per cent. and to reduce to the absolute minimum those that excellent authorities would need to produce.
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The reduction in plans has been facilitated by various means. Some plans have now been subsumed within wider overarching strategies and Departments are using other mechanisms for monitoring authorities' performances and assessing funding bids. Other plans have been removed under recent Acts of Parliament. For example, the majority of plans for children and young people's social services and education will be removed on commencement of the Children Act 2004. That will repeal seven statutory plans, including the adoption services plan, which was in the previous draft of the order and has now been removed, and remove several non-statutory plan requirements for all children services authorities. It will introduce an overarching children and young people's plan. Excellent authorities will not be required to produce the plan.
It is not always possible, however, to find a convenient Bill as a means to remove a plan that authorities are obliged to prepare because of a requirement under primary legislation. So when it had been agreed to remove certain other statutory plans, the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister thought it appropriate to use the powers under section 6 of the Local Government Act 2000 to do so, hence the present order.
The order applies to local authorities categorised as excellent under the comprehensive performance assessment by an order under section 99(4) of the Local Government Act 2003. It disapplies seven separate obligations to prepare, produce or publish, as the case may be, the plans and strategies that I shall set out. The obligations relate to the publication of homelessness strategies, required under the Homelessness Act 2002; submission of home energy conservation reports, required under the Home Energy Conservation Act 1995; preparation of youth justice plans, required by the Crime and Disorder Act 1998; preparation and publication of rights of way improvement plans, required under the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000; preparation of local transport plans and bus strategies, required under the Transport Act 2000; and preparation of plans for air quality, required under the Environment Act 1995.
I strongly emphasise that the order does not remove the requirement for excellent local authorities to continue to plan effectively in those areas with their partners, but it provides flexibility for them to plan in a way that suits their purposes, allowing them to focus on local priorities. Indeed, exempted authorities may continue to produce plans or strategies under statutory processes as if they were not exempted, if they choose to do so.
The order also provides transitional periods for authorities that cease to be rated excellent under the comprehensive performance assessment. Those authorities will have at least a year to try to recover their ''excellent'' rating before the various statutory plan requirements apply once more. In most cases, statutory guidance or timetables will inform them when the next plan should be finalised or submitted to Government. Those transitional arrangements are
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among the changes made to the order following consultation, and they have been agreed by the relevant Departments.
The order was the subject of a consultation carried out between November 2003 and January 2004. We received 74 responses to the consultation, including from the Local Government Association. There were replies from 22 excellent local authorities, 12 other local authorities and 40 other organisations or individuals. Most local authorities, and the LGA, supported the proposals. Several excellent authorities noted that the proposals demonstrated increased trust between central and local government. They welcomed the freedom to plan in a non-prescriptive manner that focused on local priorities and cut out wasteful bureaucratic activity. Their concerns centred on the limited impact of the proposals if prescriptive practices imposed by central Government, such as the linking of funding to plans and centrally imposed targets, remained. Some asked that authorities that wished to continue to produce plans within the statutory format be given power to do so.
In contrast, most non-local authority respondents were not in favour of the proposals. There was some acknowledgement that the cumulative plan burden on local authorities had been too great, but these respondents did not want the specific requirements in which they had an interest to be disapplied. Several respondents were concerned that exempted authorities would not continue to consult or plan for services for which statutory plan duties were removed. Others were concerned that information vital for their own or Government purposes could be lost. There was also some concern that services would lose out, in terms of local priority and funding, if plan requirements were removed.
Our response to the consultation is important. The Government have made it clear from the outset of plan rationalisation that removing requirements to produce written plans for central Government should in no way detract from the importance of effective planning for the delivery of services. We still expect authorities to consult with partners and ensure the participation of the public and service users. The removal of statutory plan requirements simply gives authorities and their partners more flexibility to decide how they go about the process.
As a result of responses to the consultation, we made a number of changes to the order. I have already mentioned the addition of transitional arrangements and the removal of the adoption services plan. To clear up any uncertainty, in response to concerns about ongoing consultation on improving rights of way, we have also added a requirement on authorities not producing a rights of way improvement plan to consult the bodies listed in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000 when formulating their rights of way improvement policies.
To sum up, we trust excellent authorities to plan well for all services, and are sure that the freedom to do so without obligatory adherence to prescribed
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frameworks will only assist them in that process and reduce unnecessary burdens on them. I commend the order to the Committee.
4.39 pm
Mr. Mark Prisk (Hertford and Stortford) (Con): I welcome you to the Chair, Mrs. Anderson, and look forward to benefiting from your firm but fair guidance as we consider the order. I apologise to the Committee on behalf of my hon. Friend the Member for Brentwood and Ongar (Mr. Pickles), who, sadly, is indisposed. We therefore have a diminished shadow spokesman team, but I nevertheless hope to raise some of the questions that our constituents will have about the order.
As I understand it, this is not the first edition of the order. In December, the Joint Committee on Statutory Instruments considered a prior edition in which, I believe, there was an erroneous article 7. We are today considering a different version. Will the Minister say when the corrected copies were made available to the House? I know that the statement about the correction is dated 10 January, but it would be helpful if he could tell us exactly when the corrected copies were made available to Members.
The order will remove from councils that the Minister described as rated as excellent under the comprehensive assessment the requirement to produce seven statutory plans or strategies. The Minister has mentioned all of those, and they include matters such as homelessness, home energy and transport. If the order is considered on its own merits and in isolation, such a reduction in bureaucracy should be welcomed, and my party does welcome it. However, when considering the whole picture it is fair to say that the order fails to fulfil promises made by the Government on the issue to councils in general, and those excellent councils referred to directly by the CPA.
It is true that there have been other measures, and the Minister referred to them. In 2002, however, we were told that the Government would remove
''all current plan requirements placed directly on councils from 2003-04 onwards.''
That statement of 26 November 2002 went on to say that the Government would introduce a three-year inspection holiday for all the best authorities. The order fails to deliver on both counts. It removes statutory plans in seven instances, and does so for excellent councils, but given that there are 12 separate inspection regimes, each of which has produced a raft of different plans, strategies, checks and standards, the order barely scratches the surface. One can only conclude that there is a lot of talk, but inconsiderable action.
The cumulative burden of the order will not be sufficient. It will not lift the costs with which local government is currently struggling. I should like to quote an independent source, the Local Government Association, which is perhaps the most authoritative source in this case. Its December 2004 report, ''Inspection—how does it perform?'', states:
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''Nearly two-thirds of local authorities believe that the costs of inspection greatly outweigh the benefits . . . The burden of inspection is increased by the lack of co-ordination and co-operation between the different inspectorates.''
Indeed, the total direct and indirect costs of those inspection regimes amounted to more than £1 billion in 2002. That is not a partisan view, but that of the Joseph Rowntree Foundation and the Local Government Information Unit. Costs were £1 billion in 2002 and Members will know that during the past two years there has been a significant increase in inspection regimes. Will the Minister tell us why the Department decided not to implement the promises that it made in 2002?
