The Conservative government handed ‘fundamentally flawed’ data about local councils to a Murdoch-owned newspaper for publication just days before this month’s local elections. By our Town Hall reporter, KEN LEE
Manipulative: under Michael Gove, Oflog is less a watchdog, more a political poodle
If Jason Perry, Croydon’s part-time Mayor, had any hopes that Oflog, supposedly the new regulator for local government, might help sort out the financial debacle that the council has suffered, he is likely to be very disappointed.
Michael Gove played party political games ahead of the local elections earlier this month, with his Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities providing his former employers at Murdoch-owned The Times with Oflog data in the form of local authority “league tables”, showing that the new watchdog is a mere poodle for national politicians (Gove’s stunt didn’t work, with the Tories still getting a shellacking at the polls, and Andy Street losing the West Midlands mayoralty).
Mayor Perry had said that he hoped that Oflog could “help strengthen local government accountability” and punish those who bankrupt councils. Two years into his term of office, and piss-poor Perry has failed to deliver on his promise to bring local Labour politicians and former senior council staff to justice for crashing the council’s finances.
That kind of local government accountability was dismantled a decade ago by Gove’s predecessor, “Big” Eric Pickles, when he got rid of the District Auditor and began a free-for-all at Town Halls up and down the country.
Oflog has not been set up to be an independent regulator.
Instead, a briefing from Gove’s department about Oflog data, then misrepresented by The Times, has led to local government officials expressing frustrations at dealing with a highly politicised additional tier of government.
Shaun Davies, the chair of the Local Government Association, says the pre-election news story has underlined councils’ concerns about Oflog’s role and “the lack of progress made in establishing Oflog as an independent body”.
Councillor Davies, the Labour leader of Telford and Wrekin Council, said, “All political groups and politicians at the Local Government Association have, since the inception of Oflog, been constructive in our approach whilst also highlighting our concerns about the currency of data, choice of metrics and the potential for data to be used in a way which is not helpful in providing the public with an accurate picture of the state of local government.
“Our warnings about the use of data and Oflog’s ability to advise and brief the media about what the data does and doesn’t show have now come to pass.
“The fact that this happened during the pre-election period when the ability for councils to adequately respond is curtailed has made this situation worse.”
It is not the first time that Gove and DLUHC have played fast and loose with their public duties and information at election time.
Peddling Tory propaganda: how a Murdoch-owned newspaper pushed out partisan material provided by the Tory government during election ‘purdah’
In late 2021 and early 2022, what were supposed to be quarterly reports from the government-appointed “improvement panel” into Croydon Council’s performance were withheld before local elections, to avoid providing any ammunition to the Labour incumbents at the Town Hall that showed they were acting more responsibly.
Davies said that this year, while he conceded that the league table of councils’ performance was compiled by a media organisation (meaning The Times), the LGA was “very concerned that neither Oflog, nor DLUHC, stepped in swiftly to correct inaccuracies and misleading content”.
He claimed that the method used by The Times to compile these indicators into a league table was “fundamentally flawed”.
Davies said, “For example, awarding average scores to councils who don’t deliver a particular service automatically rates them higher than half of the councils that do deliver those services.”
In case you were wondering, The Times league tables placed Croydon 305th out of 317 local authorities, below Southwark and Lambeth, for example, but ahead of worst-performing Nottingham, Liverpool and Birmingham city councils (all in a state of financial distress) and Tory-controlled Harrow.
And in a nod to the sensitivities of the publication period, in the week of the local elections, Murdoch’s newspaper’s website helpfully provided a link to an online tool for residents to find where their nearest polling station could be found…
Data on Croydon published by Oflog is not much updated since May 2022, when Perry surprised many – including himself – by winning the borough’s mayoral election. DLUHC is still waiting to have comprehensive comparable data for all councils.
Croydon’s 2022 data does underline just how dysfunctional the council had been when run by Labour. There is also more recent planning department performance data up to December 2023 that shows little progress on improving Croydon Council’s appalling planning department.
The only way is up?: Croydon’s woeful 305th ranking in the Times tables. Note the ‘helpful’ link for readers to find their polling stations
Looking at Oflog’s published data on Croydon, of the 38 public interest reports issued by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman in the year to April 2023, an extraordinary number covered Croydon. There were four reports on adult social services, children’s social services and housing, covering part of the time that Labour was in power.
Croydon was well over twice worse than the average for local authority complaints per 100,000 population upheld by the Ombudsman in the 2021-2022 council year that Labour was last in power.
Even before interest rates rose, 16% of the core spending power that Croydon Council had was being spent on interest payments. Money spent on loan interest is money not spent on hard-pressed services.
Total debt was almost five times Croydon’s annual spending – entirely unsustainable. The England and Wales local government average ratio of total debt to annual spend in 2021-2022 was 226%.
No improvement: little has got better in Croydon under Mayor Jason Perry
The percentage of Labour-run Croydon non-main A roads needing maintenance was approaching four times the local government average, with 11% of such Croydon roads needing attention.
The basket case which is Croydon council’s planning department was a mess under Labour, with the percentage of both major (77.5%) and non-major (72.5%) planning applications decided within the deadline well below the national average. The majority of London councils score at a rate of 91.9% to 100%.
Some DLHUC government data on Croydon planning department performance up to December 2023 shows very modest progress, with the council’s planning department being helped by a significant drop off in applications, probably as much because developers have just given up on Croydon. But then stopping development was, after all, one of Perry’s election promises.
Since July 2022, the council’s planning committee has been chaired by Perry’s Conservative councillor colleague, Michael Neal. Of 43 major planning applications to consider, with all their prospects for extra jobs and housing, only nine were decided within the legal deadline for consideration.
Read more: Perry pleads poverty when he has more Council Tax than ever
Read more: Croydon put in special measures: ‘Worst of all possible worlds’
Read more: Council forced to issue 3rd bankruptcy notice in just two years
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ROTTEN BOROUGH AWARDS: In January 2024, Croydon was named among the country’s rottenest boroughs for a SEVENTH successive year in the annual round-up of civic cock-ups in Private Eye magazine
