Warning sounded on quangos’ accountability

Unelected quangos give local people little say over what they do and some are failing to provide value for money for the taxpayer, an LGA report has found.

The study warns that many quangos are closed to the public, have responsibilities which overlap with other public bodies, yet spend billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money each year.

The LGA says that all the nondepartmental public bodies included in the study have a higher proportion of staff on salaries over £100,000 than local government.

Quangos are responsible for spending £43bn of public money annually. Researchers scored 11 of these organisations on their accountability, value for money and openness, using information provided by the quangos themselves, in order to inform the ongoing debate on the future of public services.

Each of the organisations were rated as red, amber or green on all three categories according to their performance, with red indicating a serious problem, amber meaning there is a cause for concern and green being satisfactory.

Four quangos, including the Learning and Skills Council and regional development agencies, were rated red for value for money while six scored red on accountability. The quangos scored best on openness with nine rated green and two being scored amber.

Early findings from the 13 Total Place pilot projects, which are analysing all the public money spent in a local area, has found that in one area as many as 49 different organisations spend taxpayers’ money.

Cllr Margaret Eaton, chairman of the LGA, said: “There are a huge number of quangos spending a vast amount of public money and running large numbers of public services. Only a tiny proportion of public money spent in each area is under the control of locally elected people.

“The quangos we looked at in our report all cover work that councils already do. We think the time is right for a thorough look at the way the public sector is organised to make sure every penny of public money is working as hard as possible for hard pressed families who deserve the very best services at the lowest
possible cost.

“Councils are elected by local people and run by people who live in the towns and villages they serve. That makes them well placed to make sure that people get the very best value for money.”

Download the full report from www.lga.gov.uk/quangoreport