13 June 2003
Critical inspection reports can undermine local government's attempts to improve services, the outspoken director of finance at the London Borough of Hackney said at the CIPFA conference at Harrogate on June 11.
Anna Klonowski said ministers wanted 'warts and all' reports, but they were viewed as damning by local media and taxpayers, and the resulting hostility hit staff morale. 'When they report, regulators forget that leadership is essential to run a service and that a service has to have good people in it.' A poor report could lead to the exodus of key staff and make it impossible to recruit suitable successors, while those left behind were demoralised.
'Reputation management is vitally important because of its impact on morale,' Klonowski said.
She accused regulators of insisting that councils met performance standards while having none for their own work.
She also questioned the value for money of inspections, costing £550m a year. 'That is 1.5 times Hackney's budget and excludes invisible costs like the time we spend on inspections,' she said.
But Klonowski said she would retract her criticisms if an inspection team would 'come to a tenants' association meeting in Hackney, explain what they do and what it costs, and at the end the tenants cheer'.
This was condemned as a 'trite and superficial' way of judging the usefulness of inspection by Bob Black, auditor general for Scotland. He said auditors both oversaw the use of public money and sought out barriers to best practice.
PFjun2003
