29 February 2008
Local government leaders are calling for league tables and crude national comparisons to be scrapped when Comprehensive Area Assessments are introduced. They argue that the tables do nothing to foster the improvements intended by the inspection regime.
The Local Government Association made the call as it responded to the consultation on CAAs conducted by the Audit Commission and the other inspectorates. It wants an end to the current practice of giving authorities a single overall score of between zero and four.
Corin Thomson, the LGA's director for improvement and performance, told Public Finance that such rankings did little to identify what needed to change. 'The scores can act as motivators, but they don't tell you what you need to fix,' she said. 'If you just tally everything up and say to an authority “you're a three, or a four”, it doesn't tell you how to improve.'
Instead, the LGA wants the data for each of the 198 national indicators to be published in an accessible form so councils can compare their performance on a particular indicator against every other authority.
It also wants the CAA's 'direction of travel' statement, which assesses capacity to improve, to apply to the whole area rather than just the council, as proposed.
Thomson says that would present an 'incomplete picture' of local services and admits there is some concern that councils could be tarnished by other local bodies' poor performance. 'There's a risk the public will see it as a comment on the council rather than the area,' she told PF.
But the LGA has endorsed the commission's proposals to place the public's opinion of services at the heart of the CAA, although it says the methodology should be determined locally rather than nationally.
There has been long-standing concern in the sector that although services have improved substantially in recent years, the public's satisfaction with local services remains low. Including these opinions in the inspection regime could affect many councils' overall ratings.
But Thomson said local authorities had to face up to the apparent discrepancy. 'That mismatch isn't really acceptable. If improvement isn't feeding through into public opinion then we need to do something about it.'
The Audit Commission is expected to publish a response to the current round of consultation by early summer.
PFfeb2008
