Since 2014 we have been developing and refining the idea of “local Public Accounts Committees” (LPACs) – new bodies, well-placed to review and oversee the value for money of public services across a “place”, following the public pound rather than being focused on the accountability arrangements of individual institutions. Since then, the idea has been picked up and developed by a variety of other organisations, and by Government, which in the English Devolution White Paper in December promised to “explore” it further.
Over the years we have carried out our own work to refine the model – most recently by publishing a working paper in March.
Our ideas around LPACs have centred on two things – the tasks that need to be performed, and our argument as to why an LPAC is the right body or structure to do it.
The task relates to the inherent challenge of governance across a place, rather than governance focused on an institution. There is a job of work needed to convene, to manage relationships, to manage competing priorities and find common ground. Mayors are important players in this work – research we carried out with the law firm Trowers & Hamlins recently highlighted that Mayors have a vital role to play across the area they serve, a role that goes beyond what their statutory powers might cover or what (currently) their devolution deals might lay out. But Mayors are – for the moment – one partner amongst many, needing to negotiate with a range of others. The reason why an LPAC felt like an appropriate body to scrutinise this work is that it would be institutionally neutral – it would be separate and independent, working across the whole place in an environment where many different partners need to work together to articulate and then deliver against a variety of common aims.
The White Paper, published in December 2024, presents a slightly different picture for Mayoral authority. Government now envisages Mayors being at the centre of the public service reform agenda – leading and driving policymaking, and decision-making, across the whole place, rather than just having a role in convening. The Mayor won’t be in charge of everything but we can see – in moves to provide for Mayors to chair ICBs, for example – the emergence of a model that gives them much more formal power.
This shifts somewhat the needs for accountability. There are still important duties to be carried out on the governance of place – but the Mayor will be more central to how the place is governed, overall. The need for the “institutional neutrality” that was central to our conception of the LPAC model is less urgently needed.
This is one thing that has caused us to reflect on our approach – and to shift our thinking about LPACs in general.
Another driver has been the wider scrutiny that the idea has been receiving, especially since the White Paper was published. While many have been enthusiastic a large number of people have been sceptical – especially current scrutiny professionals and scrutiny councillors in combined authorities themselves. A few objections come up repeatedly – that it has the potential to duplicate the role of combined authority overview and scrutiny, that it would be bureaucratically cumbersome to establish a wholly new body independent of a CA to do this work, and that securing a wide range of people to sit on these committees would be a challenge.
The central tasks, however – looking at how partners are working across a whole place, ensuring that priorities are (where necessary aligned) and that value for money can be properly reviewed – are still important. The IfG has made arguments for the establishment of similar “devolved public accounts committees” – recent work by IPPR North has sketched out a model of “mayoral accountability committees”, that would see a more muscular approach to Mayoral accountability essentially supplanting the overview and scrutiny function. In his work, John Denham (formerly Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, now a Professor at the University of Southampton) has recently been trying to articulate more of a whole-system approach to Mayoral accountability that takes account of the need to look at governance holistically, and in doing so sees LPACs (or something like them) as central.
We think it’s likely that the approach needed is one that recognises and articulates these roles – but that explicitly places responsibility for delivering them to a combined authority’s overview and scrutiny function. A wider responsibility for governance across the place is less problematic where the Mayor has an explicit, ongoing role to lead and direct decision-making across the place, certainly in the context of Government’s stated intentions on public service reform. Building and supporting the already-existing overview and scrutiny function – with more explicit partnership powers, with some form of guarantee over independent resourcing and support, potentially with more explicit links to Local Accounting Officers and with a membership that places elected councillors in the driving seat while also giving other local non-executives a role – formal or informal – in that process.
Importantly, steps taken here need to acknowledge that – alongside a stronger place-based role for overview and scrutiny at combined authority level – there is a need to look at other changes to the governance settlement that, collectively, strengthen the ability of the system to self-govern – giving local people, and Government, the assurance needed that meaningful devolution can be embedded in England.
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