Audit Commission housing staff in bid to salvage jobs as organisation is scrapped
Shocked inspectors mount rescue mission
Audit Commission staff could set up an independent consultancy to carry out housing inspections following the quango’s shock abolition.
Communitites secretary Eric Pickles announced last Friday that he would scrap the commission, which has 2,000 staff, from 2012/13. He said the move would save £50 million.
Ministers are now working with commission bosses, major accountancy firms and local government on a new ‘decentralised’ system, which will see the commission’s audit practice transferred to the private sector. They are considering a number of options for the transfer including a John Lewis-style mutual company.
Audit represents 70 to 80 per cent of the commission’s business, but inspection, which is dominated by housing, could also pass to a separate organisation run by current staff.
A source close to the commission said: ‘The mutual model is mainly on the audit side. There are other options involving housing inspection: staff could create some sort of consultancy.’
Michael O’Higgins, chair of the commission, said he had held meetings with private sector firms in the months prior to Friday’s shock announcement to discuss the possibility of transferring some of the organisation’s audit function to save staff from redundancies.
He said a number of firms involved had since contacted him to confirm they were still interested.
In a letter to Eric Pickles this week, Mr O’Higgins reiterated his enthusiasm for a staff buy-out. He wrote: ‘We noted with great interest your suggestion of an employee buy-out to form a mutual organisation and will pursue this avenue energetically.’
Accountancy firms and housing consultancies have stated an interest in taking on audit and inspection roles.
Paul Woolston, government and public sector assurance leader at PricewaterhouseCoopers, said the commission’s dominance of local authority audits was seen as ‘unsustainable, given the vibrant and competitive private sector marketplace’.
‘It is quite likely that a new regime will see a reduction in fees and an improvement in quality, not least because the public sector is increasingly demanding advisers who have both public and private sector experience, something the commission always struggled to provide.’
Greg Campbell, director of consultancy firm Campbell Tickell, said: ‘If there was a performance-related function, we would have a look at it as we have an established track record in working on inspections and assisting housing providers in preparing for inspection.’
Audit Commission abolition
“By blocking this massive [£240,000] salary for the Audit Commission [chief executive], I want to send a signal to councils that they too can stop paying ridiculous sums to chief executives.”
June 2010
“This feather-bedded quango should not be using our money trying to save expensive, box-ticking regulation which is simply not working.”
January 2010
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Readers' comments (17)
Junior | 20/08/2010 10:30 am
Pickles is picked.
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Anonymous | 20/08/2010 11:04 am
Well the Regulators are all but gone, no wonder landlords are paying lip service to tenants and residents- tenant/resident groups have no real power - its gone, along with the dream of increased tenant management organisations. Tenants and residents groups and federations have no power, no money and some have even lost their premises, have that many hoops to jump through its unreal - true involvement and capacity building to TMO's is a myth. How many tenant groups have supported transfer to find their power base all but gone.
Broadsword.
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Anonymous | 20/08/2010 11:28 am
Hmmm - - so if a landlord pays the new privatised outfit to do an "inspection" - - will they hire them again if they get a very critical report? I.e. would the new outfit have an incentive to tell RSLs what they want to hear ?
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Anonymous | 20/08/2010 12:25 pm
It seems very cleat that the current housing strategy of this government is to blame the last Labour one for not tackling the scourge on society that is being a tenant.
Tenants of private landlords have no hope of having their landlord monitored or regulated = no accountability for tenants
Tenants of social landlords now have either no external inspection of their landlords or a private one which of course means a non-critical inspection = no accountability for tenants
TSA removed = no accountability for tenants
Unregulated PSL landlords charging 60% more than regulated PSLs and social landlords = fault of tenants
Decimation of CLS (legal aid) franchises = far less chance of recourse for tenants
Priced out of working due to high PSL rents = blame on 'workshy' tenants
You now have less people living with you as you have brought them tp and they have flown the nest as in every other civil society = tenants being castigated again
I could go on with many more examples but does anyone see a pattern emerging here?
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Chris | 20/08/2010 12:30 pm
Anon - you are so right. If we were able to rid the world of tenants then peace and harmony would be enjoyed by all. None of us would have to pay any tax as every penny collected is spent on tenants. It was even tenants fault that the government has spent over £1Trillion on wars since the invasion of Iraq, which we all know was to evict a sitting tenant who thought they had a right to life tenancy.
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Junior | 20/08/2010 12:45 pm
Nice one Christopher Webb
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Anonymous | 20/08/2010 1:08 pm
The AC employed 44 public relations officials to tell the world the good news.
I would have thought one would have been extravagant.
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Eric Marshall | 20/08/2010 8:43 pm
Who is this Anonymous, not a tenant I bet, more likley to be a PL ripping off the goverment for every penny he can get from HB/LHA any other ideas.
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jean beuscher | 20/08/2010 11:49 pm
Am I correct in having read somewhere that Mr Pickles had said that the Audit Commission " were not fit for purpose " ?
So maybe it's not just their alleged extravagances that the Coalition have been concerned with ?
We must all remember that each Council pays Invoices raised by the Audit Commission for Audit Fees which the Commission charges for the services of it's District Auditors , whether these are Employees of the Commission , or employed by Private Firms .
If they do not do the job properly , does the Electorate have a remedy ? JB
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| 21/08/2010 8:11 am
What's all this codswallop about loosing "accountability to tenants" in the abolition of the TSA and AC. There never was any "accountability to tenants" with these quangos. Tenants could not phone up the TSA and lodge a complaint. They were not a regulator in the watchdog sense of the word. TSA scrapped all the old HC standards in favour of "locally agreed" standards. Whatever they are. Whatever the HA wants in practise. Total waste of money. No "accountability to tenants". Got that?
AC existed to impose top down regulation based on left wing political dogma. Trying to force fortnightly rubbish collections on councils solely due to the influence of the econuts within NuLab. Never mind the rats eh? Trying to force translation of documents into bizarre third world languages. Doesn't happen anywhere else in the world, why should it happen here? If I live in France and want a document from the French State, guess what, it's written in French. If can't read French that's my problem and not a problem from the French State to solve at their expense.
AC inspections were always subject to political interference. My very obviously two star ALMO bleated, moaned, pulled strings and appealed to get a three star rating. It finally managed it. It still isnt a three star ALMO. It's a two star ALMO who gamed the system on appeal to get an extra star. Are it's performance indicators in terms of VFM similar to real (ie non-appealed) three star ALMOs. No. So what was the point of this inspection again?
Abolition of the AC was long overdue; they were just another arm of the NuLab polit bureau and will not be missed. Another corker from Pickles.
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