The Government is being urged to create a ’super audit agency’ by merging the Audit Commission and National Audit Office. The New Local Government Network, which is making the call, says that as councils are facing fewer targets and with the alignment of performance indicators, the time is right for there to be a single body for local government inspection. 

The number of parish or town councils gaining Quality Status has now reached 500 since it was launched in June 2003, following the Government’s Rural White Paper. The National Association of Local Councils has congratulated Church Stretton Town Council from Shropshire as the latest to achieve the benchmark.
The NALC believes Quality Status offers an important opportunity for power and influence to be given to communities, through neighbourhood vehicles such as parish councils. 

By Peter Kemp, Annie Irvine and Katharine Nice.
The Government plans to pay the new Local House Benefit to tenants rather than to landlords as currently. The change is designed to promote personal responsibility and empower tenants to budget for themselves, to help workless tenants to develop the skills they will need when they move into paid work and to encourage them to open bank accounts and pay their rent by standing order.