June 22, 2008	Sunday	Jamadi-us-Sani 17, 1429

LONDON: British bureaucrats have been warned: no more synergies, stakeholders or sustainable communities.

The body that represents the country’s local authorities has told its members to stop using management buzzwords, saying they confuse people and prevent residents from understanding what local governments do.

The Local Government Association, whose members include hundreds of district, town and county councils in England and Wales, on Friday sent out a list of 100 “non-words” that it said officials should avoid if they want to be understood.

The list includes the popular but vague term “empowerment”; “coterminosity”, a situation in which two organisations oversee the same geographical area; and “synergies”, combinations in which the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Officials were told to ditch the term “revenue stream” for income, as well as the imprecise “sustainable communities”. The association also said councils should stop referring to local residents as “customers” or “stakeholders”.

The association’s chair, Simon Milton, said officials should not “hide behind impenetrable jargon and phrases”.

“Why do we have to have ‘coterminous, stakeholder engagement’ when we could just ‘talk to people’ instead?” he said.

The association sent its letter after reports that one town council had told staff to use the term “thought showers” instead of “brainstorming”.—AP