John McGuinness
Ceist:226 Mr. McGuinness asked the Minister for the Environment and Local Government if he has any proposals whereby the operations of each local authority can be made more accountable. [8651/01]
Written Answers. - Local Government Renewal.
Local authorities are independent bodies, democratically elected and accountable to their local electorate. As part of the ongoing programme of local government renewal, the Government is promoting a strengthened local government system which is democratically based and working in partnership with the community it serves, in line with the constitutional recognition of local government adopted by the people in 1999.
The promotion of a more accountable local government system is a key objective of the renewal programme. Measures to achieve this objective include the introduction of strategic policy committees to enhance the policy making role of the elected member and to develop community and sectoral participation in local policy making; the establishment of broadly representative and inclusive county city development boards led by local government, which will, inter alia, give the community and the local social partners a role in bringing about the more coherent deliv ery of public sector and local development services at local level; an efficiency agenda involving the development of modern financial management and accounting systems to provide simplified, transparent and comparable data; value for money and new audit initiatives; the development of customer action plans; new corporate plans in local authorities to improve local authority strategic management and operations; an initiatives fund of £15 million to support innovation and best practice; modernisation of human resources policies and introduction of performance management; a new emphasis on area committees and delivery of services at local level and the application of the Freedom of Information Act to local authorities from October 1998.
The Local Government Bill currently before the House includes statutory provisions to underpin initiatives already under way. In addition, it makes provision for further measures to make local government more accountable. These include a new ethics framework for elected members and staff; strengthened rights of access to local authority meetings; proposals for directly elected mayors-chairs in cities and counties, who are accountable to the council and to the community; proposals for a salary type payment to councillors to enable them to carry out their policy making role and ensure accountability; and the abolition of the dual mandate will also result in a greater focus on local authority matters by local authority members.