13 June 2003
Sir Andrew Foster has called for integrated teams of inspectors drawn from the various public sector watchdogs to be set up to make the scrutiny regime more co-ordinated and effective.
The controller of the Audit Commission, who leaves his post at the end of August, told Public Finance that a much more coherent regime was needed to ensure that inspection achieved its aim of leading to concrete improvements in public services.
He said inspectorates involved in scrutinising the delivery of services should be `required' to work in tandem in a `strategic and coherent way', citing joint review teams as an example of what he had in mind. But he stressed that he was not calling for the creation of one pan-public sector inspection body.
`Structural reorganisations waste people's time. It is much smarter to require the different inspectors to work together,' he said. `This is not about the dominance of one inspection body over another, it's about different areas of professional knowledge being brought together.'
Foster named Comprehensive Performance Assessments as a model that could be adapted to other public services. He said government ministers were enthusiastic about it and predicted that CPA-style inspections would spread throughout the sector.
Earlier, Foster told delegates at the CIPFA conference in Harrogate on June 11 that watchdogs needed to adopt a new approach that was more `proportionate to risk', focusing on under-performing organisations and showing a light touch with those performing well. Inspectors should `know when to back off', he added.
They should also ensure that the knowledge and evidence collected during inspections are relayed back to the inspected bodies. `Make sure you use that knowledge to improve services for the future.'
Foster addressed the Harrogate conference on the same day that the commission published its CPA framework for district councils, following a consultation.
The corporate assessment will draw on a Benefit Fraud Inspectorate report; diagnostic assessments of housing and public spaces; and an external audit. Authorities will be scored on ten `themes', including focus, capacity and performance management.
The two most important themes will be achievement on quality of service and of improvement: these will be worth 40% of the overall corporate assessment score.
But the Local Government Association gave the framework a cool reception. Vice-chair Sir Sandy Bruce-Lockhart said: `We would have liked the commission to have taken more account of the concerns expressed by councils who all took the trouble to respond to the consultation.'
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