Corruption in Local Government

Who gets bribed and why

G.W. Jones

Publicity about recent allegations and convictions has suggested that local government is riddled with corruption. Corruption is, in fact, immeasurable, since no one will admit to being a criminal, and the clever crooks are never caught. Three sets of statistics, however, give some indication of the incidence of corruption over the last few years.

(i) In 1964 district auditors reported 41 frauds in local government, which resulted in 32 officers ceasing to hold office and 27 prosecutions. In 1972 the figures were respectively: 100, 77 and 28. Between these dates 553 frauds were reported, 405 officers were sacked, and there were 213 prosecutions.

(ii) Under Lord Randolph Churchill's Public Bodies Corrupt Practices Act, 1889, which makes the giving and taking of bribes offences, in 1964 one person was prosecuted and found guilty, as was the case in 1972. Between these dates fifteen persons were found guilty.

(iii) Under section 76 of the Local Government Act, 1933, which provides that if a member of a local authority has a direct or indirect pecuniary interest in any matter he must declare it at the earliest opportunity and abstain from speaking or voting on any proposal affecting it, in 1964 two people were prosecuted and found guilty, and in 1972 none. Between these dates seven persons were found guilty.

These figures are minute when the scope for corruption in local government is borne in mind. About 40,000 councillors and nearly 2 million employees are responsible for annual current expenditure of £7,000 million and capital expenditure of £2,000 million. They award valuable contracts, undertake huge construction projects, and above all determine how land is used.

A survey of dishonest practices in local government over the last fifteen years reveals a wide range of villains amonk councillors and officials. Both chief officers and junior staff, and chairmen of committees and backbenchers, even mayors, have engaged in a variety of nefarious activities, some obvious and some ingenious. Such a catalogue of venality is no proof that local government is full of graft. Its detection is a sign of the vigilance of local government whose general high standards result in disproportionate publicity for the rare offender.

The most common cases can be grouped into six categories: • (i) Officials through whose hands cash actually passes and is diverted into their own pockets. This group includes counter clerks dealing directly with the public, sellers of welfare foods, car park attendants, collectors of money from meters, and wardens of old people's and children's homes, who steal the money of the inmates.

(ii) Officials and councillors who use public property for their personal requirements. This group includes those who misuse the STD phone system, filch from the'stationery store, rob from building sites, have council staff repair their property, and use official vehicles for private outings. One chief constable used the Special Expenses Fund, set up to pay informants, for his own personal entertaining. (iii) Officials and councillors who make false claims for expenses. This group includes those who inflate their travel and subsistence expenses, make excessive claims for overtime, bonus payments, and work actually carried out, and councillors who claim to have suffered a loss of earnings whilst on council business, although they suffered less or not at all, or were unemployed or on a fixed salary.

(iv) Officials and councillors who take local authority discretionary decisions in return for ' a `kick-back,' commission or favour, or for their own advantage. This group includes housing inspectors who suggest firms to tenants for repairs or fittings like grates; officials responsible for improvement grants who suggest the grant will be available only if an approved firm is chosen to do the work; those in charge of allocating council houses, who seek a favour, monetary or sexual, from applicants, or grant tenancies to workers at their own business; and those who allocate smallholdings for an inducement.

These first four categories are small fry. The next two are in the big league where the rewards are gigantic.

(v) Officials and councillors who award contracts for bribes. The palm-greasing can take the form of actual payments, the retention of the services of the individual as a "consultant" or "public relations adviser," and the provision of lavish hospitality, holidays, miscellaneous gifts and prostitutes. The building industry appears most involved: building contractors, plasterers, electrical, heating and ventilation engineers, plumbers, painters and decorators, hirers of earth moving plant, and architects have been implicated. Councillors and officials have pushed contracts their way, have leaked to the firms how much a committee would allow for the contract, have divided contracts into small lots, which a single official could then allocate, and have deliberately overpriced the contracts so as to provide a generous surplus for themselves.

(vi) Officials and councillors who take decisions about land use for bribes. The corrupt methods are the same as with (v), and the interests most involved are property speculators, builders and development companies. They want advance information about plots on which building would be allowed and a favourable reception for their planning applications. The shortage of development land, its soaring cost and the power of local authorities to put millions of pounds on to land values by a grant of planning permission make this field the most profitable.

In a number of towns bribes over applications for petrol filling stations have been revealed. Suspicion is frequently aroused about the siting of car parks and bus stops, which affect the interests of nearby traders.

Improper influence has also been used to remove property from a proposed compulsory purchase order. On many councils and indeed, planning and building committees sit a number of members with property interests. Although they may declare their interests and abstain from the proceedings when matters affecting them crop up there is always the suspicion that they have some involvement, or that they are in some secret collusion either with friends on the council and committee or with the developers.

Just by being a member of the council and planning committee, it has been calculated,

gives someone with interests in property an 18 months advantage over his competitors who are not: for instance estate agents can be better briefed and give their clients better informed advice about property values. . Another disturbing development is when a

member of the staff of a planning department resigns from a local authority and appears a few weeks later as the employee of a propert company whom he has probably fully in formed about the development plans of hi previous boss.

There is no single solution for corruption in local government. The temptations are allur ing, and human nature is often frail. But Bri. tish local government today has a high reply tation: it is cleaner than in the nineteenth century, even before the 1930s; it is cleaner than in other countries; and the majority of people still feel, despite recent advers ivied publicity, that local government is hones

The reasons for the overall good bill of health are many. Strong central controls, and s

penetrating national system of district audit. keep local authorities on their toes; system8. tic internal auditing and sophisticated finan. cial disciplines are operated by shrewd finan. cial officers of local government; a growing professionalisation of local government officials since the last quarter of the nineteenth century has raised standards, provided a code of ethics that stresses that public servants should not obtain a private advantage front their public positions, and has prevented the 'spoils' system, whereby local government employees are appointed and promoted for their political opinions, from developing and

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The emergence of competitive party politics in local government has helped curb corrup. tion. A strong opposition, with a vested interest in revealing anything descreditable, keeps the governing majority alert, and disciplined governing party is able to root out the disreputable from its own side: corruption more often occurs in councils composed overwhelmingly of one party or of backscratching oligarchies of 'independents. The committee system of taking decisions in local government also helps check corruption. Through it members can keep a close watch on the administration and on each other: corruption more often occurs when one man or a pair are responsible for a particular decision or process. Public exposure and discredit, the loss of standing and a job, fines and imprisonment, must also deter some from corrupt practices, and one valuable consequence of recent publicity is that it must really frighten s number of councillors and officials.

Complacency about the future would be misplaced. Councillors and officials in the nevi system of local government to come into operation in April 1974 will face greater temptations than today. The stakes will he higher in the larger authorities spending more and interfering more with private interests. Private business, feeling the cold wind of economic depression, will be eager to win favours from local government, and local authorities will be engaged closer with private enterprise, in property development for instance, where fortunes can be made. At thin very time so-called reformers are urging local government to cut down its committees, to delegate more to officers and to put decisionS more into the hands of single individuals.

The Maud Committee on Local Government in 1967 found a high standard of honesty in councils and were convinced that the overwhelming majority of elected members were upright. The chairman of that committee, now Lord Redcliffe-Maud, has been asked by the Prime Minister to investigate " the conduct of both members and officers in tuations where there is, or could be, a conflict between their position in local government and their private interests." It is unlikely ott the evidence so far available that the chairman can alter his earlier verdict.

G. W. Jones is Senior Lecturer in Political Science at the London School of Economics and Political Science