Speaking at the Local Government Association's annual conference today, Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove announced the launch of the Office for Local Government.
In response Cllr Georgia Gould, Chair of London Councils, said:
“London boroughs are committed to continually improving our services for local people. We passionately believe that our residents, communities and businesses deserve the best.
“A decade of funding cuts to local government, increased demand, a smaller workforce and increased centralisation have made delivering local services ever-more challenging and complex.
"Despite these challenges local government has strong practice around transparent peer reviews led by the LGA and peer support functions in London that have driven consistent improvement in children services.
"We believe Oflog has the potential to work with the sector to continue to improve local public services. In particular, we see potential in its role in developing accessible and standardised data which will allow meaningful comparisons and enable the sharing of best practice as well as highlighting areas for improvement.
"This has to be through working alongside councils that deliver services so data and insights are meaningful for the public and enable change. The first tranche of metrics have been decided centrally without local context and consequently have limited value in driving local improvement.
“We welcome conversations with Oflog about how we can work more closely together in future. London Councils is committed to working positively with Oflog over the coming years to co-design performance measures and data sets that could form an important part of a drive to improve the quality of local services for all of our residents, communities and businesses.”
ENDS