Source · Select Committees · Public Administration and Constitutional Affairs Committee
Recommendation 2
2
Accepted
Paragraph: 27
Publish a detailed prospectus and dedicated webpage for Places for Growth and Plan for London.
Recommendation
Publishing details of the rationale and success criteria for a major programme is essential for public transparency and assisting parliamentary scrutiny. This is not only a democratic good in itself; by exposing the justifications for their interventions to scrutiny, departments can hope to strengthen the design of their policies and gain greater public confidence in their decisions. In future, whenever the Cabinet Office launches a named programme, it should publish a prospectus document in advance of its operation, setting out details including the programme’s rationale, key objectives, and evaluation plan. It should additionally maintain a dedicated webpage on GOV. UK, on which it periodically publishes updated metrics of progress, as well as other corporate announcements related to the programme. Retrospectively, the Cabinet Office should, alongside the response to this report, publish this information, both for Places for Growth and for its Plan for London, on a dedicated GOV.UK webpage, and commit to updating it with metrics of progress at regular intervals, at least annually. In publishing this information, the Cabinet Office should clearly show how Places for Growth and the Plan for London fit together.
Government Response Summary
The Government will publish relevant programme documentation for Places for Growth and the Plan for London, and will refresh the appropriate pages to ensure that purpose, objectives, critical success factors and performance against these are included.
Paragraph Reference:
27
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The Government will publish relevant programme documentation for Places for Growth and the Plan for London. The Government recognises the value of capturing the purpose, objectives and critical success factors at the outset of major programmes and Places for Growth welcomes the recommendation to make programme documentation publicly available to enable better scrutiny. The Cabinet Office is keen to ensure transparency and Minister Barclay and Minister Rees-Mogg both previously wrote to the Committee in order to provide details about Places for Growth ambition and targets. The Places for Growth Programme is a pillar of the Modernisation and Reform (M&R) agenda and as such is represented by the M&R page on Gov.uk. Details of the Programme’s rationale and objectives are set out in the Declaration on Government Reform, which is hosted on the related Gov.uk page. The Programme is also referred to in the Government Property Strategy, also published on Gov.uk. The Government will refresh the appropriate pages to ensure that purpose, objectives, critical success factors and performance against these for the Places for Growth Programme and the related Plan for London are included.