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NEWS
Passport Office loses agency status
Her Majesty’s Passport Office (HMPO) has lost its agency status and been brought into the Home Office.
The move will make it directly accountable to ministers, after a summer of chaos when the backlog of passport applications reached nearly 550,000. That has been cut to 80,000.
The PCS union said the Home Office must address staffing shortages, pay, and outsourcing.
DfE names Education Commissioner for Birmingham
Sir Mike Tomlinson has been appointed Education Commissioner
to oversee
Birmingham’s schools following the Trojan Horse scandal. His work will feed into the wider review of Birmingham’s governance that Sir Bob Kerslake began in September.
Education secretary Nicky Morgan MP said: “With his strong track record in local government and education he is the right person
to ensure all children
in Birmingham receive the education they deserve so they can reach their potential and go on to build a better future.”
Manchester should lead local authority devolution
Greater Manchester should get total control over all its public spending and an elected mayor as a ‘blueprint’ area for further devolution of budgets and powers, according to a think tank.
The study, ‘Devo Max – Devo Manc: Place-based public services’, from centre-right think tank ResPublica, says the city’s combined authority should get new legal powers to ensure joined-up government, as well as powers over taxation.
ResPublica founder and report co-author Phillip Blond said: “This is a blueprint for independence for cities in England.”
8 | public sector executive Oct/Nov 14
More than £200m has been paid in grants to three councils for waste management projects in the last 15 years, even though key facilities have yet to be built.
The Public Accounts Committee (PAC) said that “lax” and “poorly drafted” Private Finance Initiative (PFI) funding agreements, signed off under the Labour government to support the building of local authority waste processing plants, have failed to deliver value.
Funding agreements with Surrey and with Herefordshire and Worcestershire councils signed by the old Department
for Environment, Transport and the Regions, meant central government started paying grants to the local authorities as soon as the contractors began to deliver waste management services rather than waste management assets.
As a result, £124m has been paid to Surrey County Council since 1999 although a new waste management facility is not due to be operational until 2016-17.
Herefordshire and Worcestershire councils received £84.5m although the contractor could not secure the necessary funding for a new recycling plant after
While the current government had succeeded in reducing the taxpayer’s exposure in both cases, PAC said Defra’s handling of a separate contract with Norfolk County Council in 2012 had been “poor”.
PAC chair Margaret Hodge MP said: “It’s scandalous that taxpayers in Norfolk have been left in the lurch and landed with a bill of around £33.7m because the department withdrew its funding for the Norfolk waste plant in October 2013.”
A government spokesperson said: “Defra’s responsibility
is
to ensure public money is used appropriately and we were very clear in the timely advice we provided to these PFI projects as the National Audit Office has previously recognised.
“Due to factors at local level these projects could not proceed as planned.”
Wales’ minister for public services, Leighton Andrews AM, has
explained his plans
to modernise and merge local authorities in Wales in a speech to Assembly members.
Welsh government urges councils to merge voluntarily
© Ben Birchall, PA Wire
The Welsh government wants fundamental and lasting change with new voluntarily merged councils by April 2018.
The report from the Commission on Public Service Governance and Delivery, published earlier this year, recommended mergers between councils and a reduction in numbers from the current 22 to 10 or 12.
Andrews said that the report was “sobering” and “provides
a compelling case for change”. He said: “Continuing to provide services in the current configuration – salami-slicing more efficiencies and cutting services in isolation – is not sustainable.
“We cannot continue to operate with 22 local authorities.
“There will be change, voluntary or not, and I am offering a unique opportunity willing.”
to those who are
MPs criticise ‘scandalous’ PFI schemes for failing waste projects
it struggled to get planning permission. The councils ultimately decided to build and finance the project itself, outside the scope of PFI.
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