Audit Commission to save £18m by halving length of council inspections

The cutback, announced on Tuesday, will save the quango £18m by 2006.

The commission has yet to decide what the reduction will be in housing inspections, which often take around a week. The inspection of arm’s-length management organisation Derby Homes, for instance, took four inspectors nine days.

Under the comprehensive performance assessment, the commission already gives the best-performing councils inspection holidays and lighter-touch inspections. It will make the cutbacks by extending this practice and by continuing to relax inspections for councils with good housing departments and targeting resources at the poorest performers.

A spokesman for the commission said it could not say how many housing inspections would be cut back until the new timetable was finalised. Housing associations are not included in the savings figure.

The changes will lead to redundancies at the commission. However, the spokesman was unable to say how many jobs would be cut or which of the commission’s inspection areas, which include environmental services and housing, would be affected.

The cuts follow an announcement in November 2003 that the commission would reduce local government audit and inspection 20% (HT 28 November 2003, page 26). This saved £24m, including £5m of savings from inspections.

James Strachan, the chairman of the Audit Commission, said: “We promised a more widespread review and are now announcing further reductions in inspection.

“By next year, we will have halved the cost of our inspections across the public sector since 2001/2. This means savings for the taxpayer of an additional £18m, but the greater impact is in reducing the burden of regulation on front-line public services.”

Phil Davies, Derby Homes, said: “Cutting the number of days taken over inspections is a good thing as long as the Audit Commission’s self assessment regime is sharp and rigorous.”