Reducing Corruption in local government

Proposer
andrewdwilliams
State

Accepted

Vote Score

2

Age

3067 days


andrewdwilliams

@andrewdwilliams - over 8 years ago

Taken, mostly, from a report by Transparency International. Certainly an issue that is very real and should be addressed. I welcome any other ideas or alterations to the proposals I made.

@andrewdwilliams edited manifesto/local_government.md - over 8 years ago

title: Local Government

layout: policy published: true


  • table of contents {:toc}

How do we improve and reinvigorate local government?

Transparency

Publish full minutes (or transcripts if available), audio recordings, and voting records from all local council meetings. Online publication should be performed within 24 hours. Software tools will be created to make this process simple.

Waste and Environment

The Localism Act 2011 repealed powers under The Climate Change Act 2008 which gave councils the ability to charge fine or introduce tariffs regarding household waste. Local authorities are primarily responsible for waste collection and recycling. Consequnetly, local government should have the power to issue financial discencintives (and/or incentives) to encourage recycling and effective waste collection.

The Localism Act 2011 repealed powers under The Climate Change Act 2008 which gave councils the ability to charge fine or introduce tariffs regarding household waste. Local authorities are primarily responsible for waste collection and recycling. Consequently, local government should have the power to issue financial disincentives (and/or incentives) to encourage recycling and effective waste collection.

Reducing Corruption

Inline with Transparency International's recommendations in their report Corruption in Local Government: The Mounting Risks, we will introduce the following policies:

Inquiry

We will commission an independent inquiry into the scale of corruption within the UK local government system, to be headed by a sitting judge.

The government should, following the conclusion of the independent inquiry into local government corruption, hold intermittent national corruption risk assessments every few years.

Counter-corruption

We will maintain legal protections for key anti-corruption officials within councils, such as Chief Executives and Monitoring Officers, to prevent them being targeted by corrupt officials or councillors. We will also establish an easy-to-use and confidential channel whereby whistleblowers can report suspicions of corruption and incidents.

Each local authority should have a dedicated counter-corruption official who conducts regular corruption risk assessments and liaises closely with law enforcement officials and other government bodies, such as the Local Government Ombudsman.

Auditing

We will introduce a statutory requirement for councils at district/borough level and higher to maintain an audit committee as a full committee, with a specific remit to include corruption investigations and corruption risk assessments. Also, independent auditing teams within councils must be properly resourced and sufficiently independent so that the influence of corrupt officials on their work is minimised.

Companies that carry out auditing contracts for councils will not be allowed to provide other commercial and consultancy services to the same local authority.