Too Much Red Tape Costing Us in The UK
Throughout England and Wales central government requests for data from local authorities are costing close to £6 million annually. According to a new report, this equates to almost 50% of the earnings of an additional trading standards or environmental health officer for each council.
The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) produced a report, which identified the load given to local authorities such as licensing and trading standards and environmental health services, due to the extra administrative work involved in producing the data.
The Local Better Regulation Office has joined forces with local and national regulators to highlight this issue and to identify ways to make the local regulatory system more productive.
The LBRO is also working to cut the amount of documents to be filled out and the questions therein, eliminating duplicate requests, promoting the use of common wording and also to develop a uniformed data sharing protocol in a bid to lessen the burden placed on local councils.
The report found that councils had to send back just about 140 forms and in some case the same form a couple of times. These forms were used by 22 central bodies to ask for over 15,000 pieces of information.
Although 50% of the requested information was noted in the report as being compulsory and there was a large amount of duplicate questions asked. CIPFA also found that the bulk of the requests were directed at the environmental health services of the local authority (63%), while the Trading standards services is responsible the rest
Now that this data is available, the LBRO will look at what the central bodies uses the information for.
This report has revealed a lot of cracks in the way services are rendered. The current system uses a lot of resources, leading to inefficiency. There needs to be continuous improvement in the way that regulatory services are made available across the UK and they also need to seize any available opportunities. It is obvious that the government must play an important role in changing this situation. The question is will they do what is necessary and if so when?
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