To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what recent steps the Government has taken to give the general public greater access to information on how their local authority is being run. (225156)

Information about the national indicators and other local area data are currently publicly available on the Floor Targets Interactive website

http://www.fti.communities.gov.uk/fti/.

This enables citizens to compare performance between local authority areas and measure progress over time.

We are also working with local government to develop more effective provision by councils of timely performance and service information to their citizens. As part of this work we will be supporting, from late 2008, a range of pilot projects in local authorities to evaluate innovative techniques to empower citizens through information provision.

In addition to this, the Audit Commission and public service inspectorates are currently consulting and trialling their proposed methodology for the new comprehensive area assessment (CAA), which will replace the current comprehensive performance assessment from April 2009.

The CAA will assess and publicly report performance against all local area agreement targets, other local priorities and all 196 indicators in the national indicator set, taking into account the experiences of local people and their satisfaction with local services. The reports, which are being designed to give the public access to information on the effectiveness of local delivery, are due to be published for the first time in November 2009.

Lastly, we are reviewing actions to give local people clearer information on councils' performance on efficiency. Under proposals out to consultation, we would require councils to include standard, simple measures of efficiency performance alongside council tax demand notices.

To ask the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government what recent steps the Government has taken to encourage local authorities to be more open to public scrutiny. (225157)

The recent Local Government White Paper—‘Communities in Control’—sets out the Governments plans to enable greater public scrutiny of local authorities. We are currently consulting on improving local accountability arrangements including strengthened powers for overview and scrutiny committees, regular public meetings for key local decision makers and petitioning schemes. This consultation closes on 30 October and we will carefully consider all the responses we receive before deciding how to implement our plans for greater scrutiny of councils.