Pickles scraps CAA

Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Eric Pickles has today written to council leaders to tell them that he has instructed the Audit Commission and five other local inspectorates to stop Comprehensive Area Assessments (CAA).

This takes forward a coalition government pledge to end the local services inspection regime developed by the Audit Commission and other public sector watchdogs.

Ministers believe ending CAA will save the Audit Commission £10 million and cut significant inspection costs for councils. In 2006 the National Audit Office estimated the overall cost of monitoring local government at £2 billion a year.

Communities and Local Government Secretary, Eric Pickles said:

"In the face of the nation's £156bn deficit, Central Government needs to stop the costly top-down monitoring that is engulfing councils and start trusting them to do what is right locally.

"Today I have instructed Town Hall watchdogs to stop tying the hands of council workers with unnecessary red tape and paperwork.

"It is much more important for the public to know what their councils are doing than having thousands of hush-hush, unseen papers being sent back and forth between Whitehall bureaucrats and the Town Hall.

"We are already pushing power as far away from Whitehall as we can and calling on councils to throw open their books to create much more cost effective and efficient local public services."