Local government minister Lee Rowley has admitted the new sector watchdog may miss some future council failures.
In his speech to the Local Government Association conference this week, levelling up secretary Michael Gove officially launched the Office for Local Government (Oflog), insisting the new body would ‘identify potential problems in councils earlier’.
Mr Gove said: ‘Problems don’t happen all at once. They were there for some time and worsened for some time.’
However, in an interview with The MJ moments after Mr Gove’s speech, Mr Rowley said Oflog would only ‘pick up some problems,’ adding: ‘I don’t know whether it will pick up absolutely everything but we hope that it should pick up some issues at an early stage that won’t necessarily translate into large-scale failure or anything like that but will just give that comparative opportunity for people to look at what’s working and what isn’t.
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