Ernie Clark. Hilperton Division, Wiltshire Council.

unaccountable and expensive to run ...

Unelected quangos give local people little say over what they do and some are failing to provide value for money to the taxpayer.

A Local Government Association (LGA) study warns that many quangos are closed to the public, have responsibilities which overlap with other public bodies, yet spend billions of pounds of taxpayers' money each year.

The LGA says that all the non-departmental public bodies included in the study have a higher proportion of staff on salaries over £100,000 than local government.

Quangos are responsible for spending £43billion of public money annually. Researchers scored 11 of these organisations on their accountability, value for money and openness, using information provided by the quangos themselves, in order to inform the ongoing debate on the future of public services.

Each of the organisations were rated as red, amber or green on all three categories according to their performance, with red indicating a serious problem, amber meaning there is cause for concern and green being satisfactory.

Four quangos, including regional development agencies, were rated red for value for money while six scored red on accountability. Early findings form the 13 Total PLace pilot projects, which are analysing all the public money spent in a local area, has found that in one area as many as 49 different organisations spend taxpayers' money.

Cllr. Margaret Eaton, chairman of the LGA, said "Only a tiny proportion of public money spent in each area is under the control of locally elected people. Councils are elected by local people and run by people who live in the towns and villages they serve. That makes them well placed to make sure that people get the very best value for money".

For the full report click here.