Chair of the Office for Local Government (Oflog), Lord Morse, has said he wants to ‘set the record straight’ over a controversial interview.
Writing for The MJ, the cross-bench peer said he had been ‘wrongly portrayed’ in The Times as claiming any councils suffering financial collapse were solely due to bad management.
This had ‘annoyed and alienated colleagues in the sector’, he added.
Lord Morse wrote that, while recent cases were ‘principally’ caused by leadership, governance, management or cultural issues rather than lack of funds, issuing a Section 114 notice ‘can be caused by a complex mix of a wide range of factors’.
He added: ‘I am profoundly aware of the systemic pressures on local government.’
However, Lord Morse also said it was not Oflog’s role to express ‘a view on the adequacy or otherwise of levels of funding’.
He expressed the need for ‘a more proportionate approach to accountability and transparency’ and that Oflog was ‘working hard to allay’ worries in the sector around ‘unfair judgements’ made without context or evidence.
Despite ‘understandable scepticism and suspicion’ Lord Morse said he had seen people ‘coalesce around broad agreement to a vision for what Oflog should do’.
Read Lord Morse’s full article here.
