08 February 2008
Local authorities in Wales are to receive extra funding in return for signing up to achieving minimum standards in the main public services from 2009, Andrew Davies has told Public Finance.
Wales's minister for finance and public service delivery said the Welsh Assembly Government was in talks with councils to agree a small set of targets covering the main local services.
In return for meeting these service objectives, to be set out in 'improvement agreements' signed by each council, authorities will receive payments from a pot of new money earmarked by the Cardiff administration.
Davies told PF the aim was to tackle the 'unacceptably wide variations' in performance that still persist between councils, by offering them a tangible incentive to improve their services.
'We are in discussions with the Welsh Local Government Association at the moment over what the minimum standards will be for certain key areas,' he said. 'The Cabinet has agreed to this new approach, and we're hoping to test it out in the coming financial year [2008/09] and then roll it out the year after.'
The proposed improvement agreements mark a departure from the previous approach to public service reform taken by the Assembly Government, which has eschewed the top-down, target-driven tactics that have provoked such controversy in England.
But earlier on February 6 Davies, addressing a CIPFA-sponsored conference of public sector finance directors in Cardiff, said that the government had a duty to close the gap in performance between councils.
'Rather than being comfortable with a postcode lottery, we should all be striving to drive standards and service quality up,' he said.
'There is merit in having services tailored to local needs but only if those services, wherever they may be delivered, are of at least minimum quality, and hopefully above that.'
For full coverage of the conference, see next week's issue
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