02 December 2005
The new beefed-up version of the Audit Commission should be able to stop other inspectorates from poring over council services if it feels it is unnecessary, ministers are proposing.
The government's consultation paper, Inspection reform: the future of local services inspection, proposes a 'gatekeeper' function for the new local services inspectorate, which will emerge in 2008. It will bring together the functions of the Audit Commission and the local government responsibilities of the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate.
In this year's Budget, Chancellor Gordon Brown announced that the existing 11 public service inspectorates will be rationalised into four, covering local government, health and social care, education and children's services, and criminal justice.
Launching the consultation at a special CIPFA-hosted conference on November 28, local government minister Phil Woolas said the new inspectorate would be able to challenge any other if it felt there was a risk of duplication.
'Voluntary arrangements have not been sufficient to ensure that inspections have not been unco-ordinated, overlapping and over-the-top,' Woolas said. 'I am very, very confident that [the gatekeeper function] will be better than the current situation.'
As well as serving as gatekeeper for councils' inspections, the local services inspectorate should have a similar role for local partnerships, fire and rescue authorities and housing associations, the paper proposes.
Woolas said the government's aim was to make inspection more proportionate and effective.
Addressing the conference, John Foster, chief executive of Wakefield Metropolitan Borough Council, welcomed the consultation but added that inspection was just one weapon in the improvement armoury. 'Self-assessment is being recognised as an equally powerful tool, maybe even more so,' he said.
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