Scrap the CAA to revive democracy
Author: Tom Shakespeare, eGov Monitor |
Scrapping the inspection and the target culture in local government would improve performance and would save money in the process says the Director of Policy, Localis as he explores their latest report ‘For Good Measure’.
These are two conclusions from our recent Localis report ‘For Good Measure’, in which we outline a range of policy options for a radically different system to measure performance, drive improvements and revive democracy at the local level.
We suggest that there are three key strands to improving the system of performance and assessment. Firstly, we must understand performance before setting targets. Secondly, local accountability is the most effective method of ensuring that the state is responsive to local needs. And thirdly, a peer led system of support for catastrophic failure is more effective than the centralised interventionist one.
In the current system, local performance management is undermined by the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA), overseen by the Audit Commission. This means that local government performance is accountable to central government rather than local people. But why does it matter?
The short answer is that central control leads to local government delivering on sub-optimal central targets. There are numerous examples at the local level of where targets have led to dramatically worse outcomes. I recall an article in the Guardian last year which talked about how the ‘decent homes’ programme in Portsmouth has led to work being carried out based on functional specialisms such as ’empty properties’ and ‘tenant repairs’. This meant that resources were not allocated based on public demand, but rather through arbitrary silos which wasted resources and delivered worse outcomes for residents.
Nevertheless, proponents of the status quo would argue that a centralist approach can work so long as better measures are used. This is not true.
Under central command and control, measures inevitably lead to targets, and targets will almost always distort the whole system because they pay no attention to the differing needs and idiosyncrasies of different places. It is precisely because of the lack of flexibility that so much waste is created.
In short, the current system not only makes local government accountable to the wrong people and does a bad job at measuring performance, but it actually wastes huge sums of money and leads to sub-optimal outcomes for residents too. Therefore is there any reason to keep the current system? Probably not.
But would scrapping the whole inspection system miraculously improve performance? Also, probably not. What is required is a system which addresses the problems outlined above ? paying due respect to process and accountability as well as having a mechanism to support failing areas.
The first step is relatively straight forward. Local government should take control of its own performance metrics and use them to understand the system, then drive improvements. There would be no limit on the measures used, and councils will rightly be accountable for the measures they select to local residents. As good commercial practice, councils should also carry out a regular audit of finances and performance.
The second step is more complicated as it requires improving the relationship between local government and citizens. In the report we talk at length about the vital importance of public access to information to drive this agenda. The masses of public information offer an enormous potential to dramatically improve the relationship between the state and the citizen. As history testifies, access to information has often been the driver in major revolutions in society, from the Gutenberg press to the rise of the internet. The potential is for more people to use access to information to hold government to account or to take direct action to solve local issues.
If only things were that simple. There are numerous complex cultural and economic reasons why people rationally do not engage with this information, or actually take an interest in local government at all. Reducing these barriers to engagement should rightly be the role of local government.
But our report departs from the current government’s ’empowerment, engagement and involvement’ agenda. Any initiative should be clear about to what end it will lead. Whether it is to create better services, a stronger democracy or greater levels of community ownership, every initiative should be critically assessed. We suggest that providing funding and support to third parties to convert raw information into something locally relevant is a good start, but this should be bolstered by providing opportunities for residents to act on what the information tells them.
The third step is to create a mechanism to ensure that where catastrophic failure occurs, central government does not need to intervene. This would operate through peer support, where existing representatives of the local government community step in to provide assistance and advice to make improvements.
The final step is a more general point relevant to the debate about localism. With increases in local accountability, and people looking to councils to respond more to their needs than central government, we need a mechanism in place to ensure that powers are devolved to the local level so that services can be more responsive to the demands and wishes of local people. Accountability without the ability to change those things over which councils are held to account both damages performance and potentially undermines the public’s acceptance of localism.
If all of these changes were implemented it is our view that the groundwork will be laid for a much better political system. There will be more democratic involvement, better local outcomes, better services and significant efficiency savings too. These are all vital steps towards what Cameron has termed the ‘Small State, Big Society’ vision for government. There are a number of obstacles going forward, but the catastrophic failure of the current system and the potential gains of our approach mean that there is absolutely nothing to lose. We can only hope that a government of any colour can take on board this message, and takes the radical steps needed to put the governance of Britain back on track.