Communities Secretary Eric Pickles has announced plans to abolish the remaining eight regional government offices.
This means Department for Education programmes including Sure Start, Connexions, Positive Activities for Young People and the 14 to 19 reforms will no longer be managed at regional level.
Regional performance management and support for children and young people’s services will also cease and it is widely thought Local Area Agreements could be scrapped.
Arrangements for the closures and for the transfer of any on-going functions will be made at the end of the comprehensive spending review in the autumn, so government office staff will have to wait several months to learn their fate.
Pickles claimed the abolition of the offices would reduce spending on bureaucracy, but protect frontline services.
"We should be clear. The government offices are not voices of the region in Whitehall," he said. "They have become agents of Whitehall to intervene and interfere in localities, and are a fundamental part of the ‘command and control’ apparatus of England’s over-centralised state."
Offices in the North East, North West, South West, South East, West Midlands, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands and East of England will close.
Pickles announced earlier this year that the Government Office for London would also be scrapped.
After seeing Eric Pickles on TV before the general election trying to provide a defence of his parliamentary expenses which was, at best, unconvincing and at worst, risible, I never envisaged that I should find myself in agreement with his pronouncements. But, in relation to government offices, he is right on the button. Sadly the charge he levels is significantly understated. They have been inefficient, incompetent, poor value for money.We need to find a different resting place for old war horses. Let us paraphrase Robert Browning and his poem "The Lost Leader"
"Let them never come back to us
There would be doubt, hesitation and pain
.
Pickles by name and pickled by nature - wtf why not just scrap EVERYTHING especially services to young people who should all be doing National Service anyway - oops but THAT will cost money - no problem - just charge their parents - after all they won't be living at home so parents SHOULD pay for their keep; and lets face it there will be enough 'public works' for them to do after you have scrapped all those services too . . . .
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