The Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government needs to get a better grip on overseeing Local Enterprise Partnerships, according to the Public Accounts Committee. A report published by the committee this week said that notably, the section 151 officer of Cambridgeshire County Council signed off on Greater Cambridgeshire Greater Peterborough (GCGP) LEP’s assurance framework without checking all of its supporting documentation. The report said: “LEPs are non-statutory organisations and are often private companies. This limits how the government can intervene in their operations. In the case of GCGP LEP, the department moved straight away to the ‘nuclear’ option of withholding funds, which meant the area missed out on over £12m pounds of investment in 2017.”
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Conrad Hall: a central/local tension is the cause of the financial crisis – not funding
The local government financial crisis has not been caused by a lack of funding: that’s just a symptom of the inherent conflict of having independent local authorities within a highly centralised state, argues Conrad Hall.
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