Recommendation 17

The Department published its plans for funding simplification in Summer 2023. The plan covers the whole of government and aims to simplify the number of separate funding streams available to local authorities.42 The Department told us it has introduced several practical and concrete ways to make the system more responsive and flexible with plans to reduce the burden of data collection on local authorities. The Department told us it has quarterly or half-yearly monitoring which gives it an ‘absolute ton of data’ and that it is collecting 400 indicators across 13 funds – which it said was too many.43 The Department explained the ‘pathfinder simplification pilots’ to us by telling us that it is testing how having one set of data, one delivery timescale and one payment schedule helps local authorities.44