Alice Hood

The Audit Commission will be scrapped, Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles announced this afternoon. The Commission is an independent watchdog charged with auditing and supporting local councils to ensure that they deliver effective, value for money services.  In a move set to raise plenty of questions (and eyebrows) the audit functions of the Commission will be moved to the private sector. Its research activities will simply cease. In the statement, Eric Pickles said,

“I want to see the commission’s auditing function become independent of Government, competing for future audit business from the public and private sector. These proposed changes go hand in hand with plans to create an army of armchair auditors – local people able to hold local bodies to account for the way their tax pounds are spent and what that money is delivering.”