London Assembly Wants To Quash Quangos

By london_ken Last edited 231 months ago
London Assembly Wants To Quash Quangos

This Is Local London reports that the London Assembly is set to ask Londoners for their views on where responsibility for aspects of London life should lie.

The report quotes a member of the Assembly, Darren Johnson, thus:

We are in a ridiculous situation where we are supposed to have devolution but the budget and power of the Government Office for London is growing and growing and growing.

It should be the directly elected London authority that is actually making decisions about London.

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London's councils can breathe a sigh of relief, however, as the Assembly has, apart from the Government Office for London, sexier targets in its sights. These include the Housing Corporation, the Environment Agency and English Heritage.

Now, we're all for London having more control of its own destiny and budget but does it make sense for the Assembly to seek to usurp what are, after all, national organisations? Let's imagine a situation where regional assemblies over England decide to pursue the same line as London, and the national agencies are broken up so as to devolve power to local decision-makers. What happens next? Londonist bets you we'd start to see calls for 'joined-up thinking' with national coordination to prevent duplication of spending or conflicting decisions cancelling each other out.

We await the Assembly's proposals, and more importantly its reasoning behind them, with bated breath.

Last Updated 16 December 2004