EPPING: 'Customers' left baffled in council jargon increase (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

EPPING: 'Customers' left baffled in council jargon increase

8:00am Friday 1st April 2011 in News By Tom Porter

TWO years after it promised more straight talking, the council is bombarding its 'customers' with more nonsense and jargon than ever before.

In 2009 the Local Government Association published a list of 200 words which it wanted banned from all business and council documents.

The list includes words such as 'menu of options' for choices, 'lowlights' instead of worst bits, and 'holistic governance', for which The Guardian failed to find a definition.

Eppping Forest District Council leader Di Collins said at the time: “We want as much plain English as possible” and promised to do better.

However, a quick search on Epping District Council's websites revealed that there has been an increase in the number of blacklisted terms in use and the website abounds with terms such as 'customer charters,' 'baseline information' and 'benchmarking services.'

Whereas in 2009 the word 'actioned' appeared 87 times, this is year it appears 120 times, two years ago the word 'conditionality' appeared 52 times, this year it appears 80 times.

This year Di Collins said: "I have not heard of the LGA list.

“I would not consider this issue a top priority. We have more important and difficult things to think about.

“Of course I think it is important that people try to make themselves clear in council publications.”