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Jargon-busters at work

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

The body that represents the U.K.’s local authorities has told its members to stop using management buzzwords, saying they confuse people and prevent residents from understanding what local governments actually 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 wanted councils to 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.” He asked: “Why do we have to have ‘coterminous, stakeholder engagement’ when we could just ‘talk to people’ instead?” — AP

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