Government Backtracks on Local Council Transparency

I should have know it was too good to be true. Less than a week after Cameron repeated an earlier pledge that from January 2011, all local government spending over £500 would be available online, his government has climbed down and offered secretive councils like Newham a convenient loophole.

Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has quietly announced that he will no longer introduce legislation to force local authorities to open their books, but only 'encourage' them to do so. This is rather different to 'requiring' them to become more transparent, as the government's coalition agreement promised.

In a shamelessly populist article in the Daily Telegraph, Pickles has instead focused on the issue of the bloated salaries of senior council staff - but this information is far less important than knowing how councils spend our money on front line services and much is already in the public domain. For example, we have known since October 2008 that the chief executive of Newham council, Joe Duckworth, receives a record salary of £240,000, double what his predecessor Dave Burbage was paid. This is already confirmed online by the council.

What we don't yet know is specific information on opaque areas of council expenditure - such as how Newham accounts for the funding it received for 'Preventing Violent Extremism' over the last year, for example.

The Local Government Association will be delighted by this U-turn by Pickles - its "open and comprehensive offer from local government to the new coalition government" announced on Thursday makes no mention of greater transparency.

All in all, it looks like we are back to using the Freedom of Information Act for the foreseeable future.