On behalf of its membership, the cross-party LGA regularly submits to Government
consultations, briefs parliamentarians and responds to a wide range of parliamentary inquiries. Our recent
responses to government consultations and parliamentary briefings can be found here.
The practice note includes a lot of technical detail that is primarily written for auditors and we have not previously commented on its content, or on recent consultations on changes to it. The reason we feel the need to comment this time is not because we have concerns over the approach taken by the Public Audit Forum to date, but because local audit is currently in crisis, and we would welcome any action that can be taken to help provide solutions that can alleviate the effects of the crisis.
The LGA’s recommendations for tackling urgent risks from air pollution based on the themes set out in the revised National Air Pollution Control Programme.
About the Local Government Association
The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national voice of local government. We work with councils to support, promote and improve local government.
The consultation document rightly acknowledges that the SEND is the subject of significant reform via the SEND Green paper and establishment of Integrated Care Systems (ICSs), but we are concerned that it does not acknowledge the reasons why system reform is needed.
The Mental Health and Wellbeing Plan is an important opportunity to recognise local government’s leadership role in improving the mental health and wellbeing of our communities.
The LGA believes the Emergency Evacuation Information Sharing (EEIS+) proposal could form the basis of a useful backup to the requirement for Responsible Persons to identify residents who are unable to self-evacuate and make every reasonable adjustment to ensure that they can do so, through the provision of a Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan.
We will want to work with the Government and the Regulator to ensure that there is a proportionate, risk-based approach to inspection, as well as urgent clarity on how this will be delivered and funded.
We are disappointed the Bill removes the existing requirement to designate a data protection officer. Although the proposal is now to replace this with a Senior Responsible Individual, this is a person at Senior Management Team level who would not have the time or experience to undertake much of what the data protection officer did.