The Local Government Association has compiled a banned list of the 200 worst uses of jargon by its members. Ms Eaton of the LGA said: "Why do we have to have 'coterminous, stakeholder engagement' when we could just 'talk to people' instead?"

This outbreak of common sense hasn't gone down well with all officers and the Labour group are said to be unhappy that voters may at last find out what they have been getting up to with their money. However, Reading Borough Council has pledged to remove the offending gobblegook from their reports and documents as part of this year's budget cutting exercise and has said that this alone could halve the amount of paper used and shorten scrutiny meetings by 90 minutes.

The 'banned' words:

Across-the-piece, Actioned, Advocate, Agencies, Ambassador, Area based, Area focused, Autonomous, Baseline, Beacon, Benchmarking, Best Practice, Blue sky thinking, Bottom-Up, CAAs, Can do culture, Capabilities, Capacity, Capacity building, Cascading, Cautiously welcome, Challenge, Champion, Citizen empowerment, Client, Cohesive communities, Cohesiveness, Collaboration, Commissioning, Community engagement, Compact, Conditionality, Consensual, Contestability, Contextual, Core developments, Core Message, Core principles, Core Value, Coterminosity, Coterminous, Cross-cutting, Cross-fertilisation, Customer, Democratic legitimacy, Democratic mandate, Dialogue, Direction of travel, Distorts spending priorities, Double devolution, Downstream, Early Win, Edge-fit, Embedded, Empowerment, Enabler, Engagement, Engaging users, Enhance, Evidence Base, Exemplar, External challenge, Facilitate, Fast-Track, Flex, Flexibilities and Freedoms, Framework, Fulcrum, Functionality, Funding streams, Gateway review, Going forward, Good practice, Governance, Guidelines, Holistic, Holistic governance, Horizon scanning, Improvement levers, Incentivising, Income streams, Indicators, Initiative, Innovative capacity, Inspectorates, Interdepartmental, Interface, Iteration, Joined up, Joint working, LAAs, Level playing field, Lever, Leverage, Localities, Lowlights, MAAs, Mainstreaming, Management capacity, Meaningful consultation, Meaningful dialogue, Mechanisms, Menu of Options, Multi-agency, Multidisciplinary, Municipalities, Network model, Normalising, Outcomes, Outcomes, Output, Outsourced, Overarching, Paradigm, Parameter, Participatory, Partnership working, Partnerships, Pathfinder, Peer challenge, Performance Network, Place shaping, Pooled budgets, Pooled resources, Pooled risk, Populace, Potentialities, Practitioners, Predictors of Beaconicity, Preventative services, Prioritization, Priority, Proactive, Process driven, Procure, Procurement, Promulgate, Proportionality, Protocol, Provider vehicles, Quantum, Quick hit, Quick win, Rationalisation, Rebaselining, Reconfigured, Resource allocation, Revenue Streams, Risk based, Robust, Scaled-back, Scoping, Sector wise, Seedbed, Self-aggrandizement, Service users, Shared priority, Shell developments, Signpost, Single conversations, Single point of contact, Situational, Slippage, Social contracts, Social exclusion, Spatial, Stakeholder, Step change, Strategic, Strategic priorities, Streamlined, Sub-regional, Subsidiarity, Sustainable, Sustainable communities, Symposium ­­, Synergies, Systematics, Taxonomy, Tested for Soundness, Thematic, Thinking outside of the box, Third sector, Toolkit, Top-down, Trajectory, Tranche, Transactional, Transformational, Transparency, Upstream, Upward trend, Utilise, Value-added, Vision ­, Visionary, Welcome, Wellbeing, Worklessness,