Recommendation 17

We previously discussed the provision of this type of information with the Department as part of our examination of the Department’s Starter Home programme. We recognised that sensitive information should not necessarily be made public, but we asked the Department to commit to ensuring “the National Audit Office can see anything it needs 32 Qq 12 and 30, LGF0011 submission from SOLACE page 2 33 LGF0003 submission from DCN paragraph 17 34 LGF0007 submission from SIGOMA paragraph 2.16 35 LCCI comment on coronavirus grant roll-out by councils (londonchamber.co.uk) 36 Qq 82, 85; C&AG’s Report, paras 19 and 2.5 37 Q 56; letter from Jeremy Pocklington CB, Permanent Secretary Ministry of Housing, Communities & Local Government to the Committee of Public Accounts regarding exceptional financial support, dated 17 March 2021. 38 Qq 109–115; C&AG’s Report paras 2.45–2.46 and 3.22–3.23. 39 Q110; C&AG’s Report, paras 2.45–2.46 COVID-19: Local government finance 15 to” in relation to financial pressure on individual authorities. The Department agreed at the time.40 We therefore asked the Department why, given this commitment, the NAO had struggled to access this information. The Department told us that its position was that information relating to individual councils and its analysis of their financial position should remain private and confidential. It asserted that it was important that it had “a private space where we can have confidential discussions with local authorities”. The NAO explained that it understood the need for this safe space but would have liked to have had more information shared with it. The NAO regularly receives confidential and highly sensitive information, in order to support Parliamentary scrutiny, and has demonstrated it can reach sensible judgements about what is put into the public domain. We therefore asked the Department what steps it thought it could take to ensure that the NAO and Parliament were aware of the scale of risk in the sector in future.