Examination of Witnesses (Questions 40
- 59)
TUESDAY 25 JANUARY 2000
MS INES
NEWMAN AND
MR DAVID
SPENCER
40. You do not have an opinion?
(Mr Spencer) No.
41. Finally, your Local Government Information
Unit, do you think they are as strong an Audit Commission in doing
the audits on National Health Services bodies as they are on local
government? Do you perceive that local government is treated differently
from the National Health Services?
(Ms Newman) We do not cover the National Health Service
in detail. We are a local government organisation first and foremost,
although we are looking now much more at relationships between
local government and the Health Service. I think our concern across
the whole, particularly as Best Value progresses, is that people
are treated equally. There is a concern there that the various
inspection regimes do not treat completely equally the different
organisations when you contract out. Best Value does not apply
to contracted out organisations. We have not got expertise in
the National Health Service.
42. Do you see there to be a future difficulty
about the Audit Commission looking at Best Value and the Audit
Commission looking at Value For Money? As you know, the Audit
Commission are setting up an inspectorate on Best Value. Do you
see a conflict between those two inspectorates within the Audit
Commission?
(Mr Spencer) I think there is a difficulty
of role there in inspecting other public bodies who are not subject
to the duty of Best Value in strict terms—particularly in
the sense that what central government wants to see is greater
collaboration between public bodies, the joined up service delivery
where if there were to be a different approach that it took in
relation to local government and the Health Service I think that
would be perceived as a problem. With the overall delivery of
Best Value services involving both the Health Service and local
government, which is entirely conceivable, if those two bodies
were being handled somewhat differently I think that would create
a difficulty for local government in reconciling how it was being
judged.
Mr Brake
43. My local authority in its submission has
commented that Sutton Council "has a general concern about
the large number of inspection regimes now operating in local
government", and then cites a long list of different organisations
involved in this. Do you think that all of these inspectorates
should be amalgamated into a single organisation?
(Mr Spencer) I think ideally, yes. The problem there
is, currently different inspectorates seem to give value for different
reasons in the way they approach their inspection role. To choose
between them or to say there should be a new body, the concern
would be about whether that was able to take on the best aspects
of all the existing inspection bodies.
44. We recently had an inquiry with the Environment
Agency that has been through that process. Do you have any view
as to which organisation should take the lead if this were to
transpire and a single organisation were to be established out
of OFSTED and the other inspectorates?
(Ms Newman) I do not think it is an issue of which
should take a lead. I think it is more which of the different
strengths would seek to dominate the agenda. I think OFSTED, for
example, has changed over its period of time. In its first round
of inspection it was very much a tick-box approach. It is gradually
evolving and developing very much more and starting to give better
feedback on its inspection regime. The Audit Commission hopefully
has learned from that process and will go into that and has different
strengths. Social Services has some very formal legalistic functions
it has to carry out. I do not think we are into saying one organisation
is better than the other. We would be looking much more to developing
an inspectorate regime that was beneficial to local authorities,
and that supported them in their work, rather than was negative
and just spent a lot of money on doing inspections that were not
seen to be that useful in terms of outcomes for the local authority.
45. Could I just ask whether the majority view
on local authorities is that there should be a single inspectorate,
do you know?
(Mr Spencer) No, we have not asked the question.
Mr Olner
46. I will ask a question as a result of your
answer to Mr Brake about OFSTED. Are you really telling me that
the Local Government Information Unit are very happy about the
way some of these inspections are carried on, where they do not
differentiate between an area of deprivation and an area of wealth?
(Ms Newman) There are two questions. I think the answer
is that we are concerned. There has not been enough of the Audit
Commission Best Value Inspectorate to finally judge, but we are
waiting to see how that comes out. They are in a pilot stage and,
to some extent, we will know a bit more later on down the line.
Our concern is that it does not end up with someone going in there
with a set of boxes which they tick—you did: satisfactory;
good; not so good—and they then give feedback in fairly
negative terms to the local authority. Our concern is that the
inspectorate supports the local authority in its overall objectives
for Best Value and takes into account—we have already made
these representations on the Best Value guidance—issues
of equity and equality. It is not just efficiency, it has to take
into account the overall objectives of the local authority and
what it is trying to achieve. Does that answer the question?
Mr Brake
47. Have you made an assessment of the cost
of Best Value to local authorities?
(Mr Spencer) It is a virtually impossible thing to
arrive at it seems to us. The guidance that has been given in
very broad terms is in the average authority receiving an average
number of inspections the effect will be neutral financially.
The big unknown in that equation is how much inspection is envisaged.
This is particularly the case where, for the purposes of Best
Value reviews, an authority will have split a service into a number
of different reviews and whether or not the Commission is doing
a one for one inspection or looking at the whole of the service
following a number of reviews. If you take the former scenario,
you could arrive at something like between four and six times
as much inspection as is being envisaged in the headline figures
that are coming out. Therefore, a number of authorities are thinking
that it has been under-estimated how much inspection will be required
and the cost will be greater than has been anticipated.
48. What, if anything, has been allocated in
the Revenue Support Grant to cover the costs?
(Mr Spencer) I am afraid we cannot answer that because
neither of us are experts in local government finance.
Mrs Ellman
49. Do you think that it is possible for local
government to monitor itself?
(Mr Spencer) Yes, it is possible, however we believe
there is a role for an external independent body to provide what
is foreseen as part of the role of inspection in Best Value in
providing that assistance to local people to make a judgment about
the performance of the authority. A lot of the decisions which
authorities arrive at will, of course, be based on a whole range
of factors. It is a question of allowing people to find a way
through that and to find their own assessment of why an authority
is doing what it is based on quite a complex range of different
factors.
50. So are you saying then that it should be
the local authority that makes the final assessment, not an outside
body?
(Mr Spencer) The people ultimately who should be making
the assessment are the local people, the recipients of the service,
the electorate. It is their judgment as to whether their authority
is performing in the way that it should be.
51. Are you saying then that you do not see
a role for an outside inspectorate or inspectorates?
(Ms Newman) No, we are not saying that. It has a role
in setting a framework for the local authority, as David was saying,
assisting the local authority in the process. I think we would
agree there is a role for an occasional visit and for feedback
from an external body on how you are performing, that would be
helpful. That is potentially a positive function. To say that
every service after every review has to be inspected by an external
body takes it to another level. I think we would agree with the
suggestion you are making that a local authority could do a lot
of the inspection.
52. I am asking the question, I am not putting
a suggestion. I am posing a question.
(Ms Newman) They should be trusted to do a lot more,
we feel, than they currently imply is trusted. We hope that will
build up over time, those are the implications within Best Value.
53. Are there any specific inspectorates which
you feel have undermined local authorities' abilities to improve
themselves or which have helped local authorities to improve themselves?
(Mr Spencer) When the Green and White Papers were
being published foreseeing the introduction of Best Value and
raising the prospect of new inspection roles, inspection of wider
functions, there was a feeling that the approach which the Social
Services Inspectorate took was a helpful one and would be welcomed
in areas wider than just Social Services, the feeling being that
they took the approach they were assisting authorities to improve.
So they were not coming in passing a cold judgment, a naming and
shaming approach, but they were positively identifying where improvements
might take place and how that might happen or, if there were not
arrangements in place sufficiently to achieve those improvements,
suggesting ways in collaboration with the local authority about
how they might occur rather than just saying "we have reached
a decision that you are failing in this and that respect".
54. How do you see the Audit Commission's role
in that context?
(Mr Spencer) We would like to see them take the same
sort of approach, that they would be willing to go into an authority
and to understand, in dialogue with the authority, the approach
that it was trying to adopt and what it was trying to achieve
and to assist it in arriving at the outcomes that approach was
designed to do rather than just going in saying "you have
not done it", saying they have failed on the processes rather
than on what the outcomes are.
55. What role would you say the Audit Commission
is playing now?
(Mr Spencer) They are not playing a role at all in
Best Value at the moment. We cannot actually judge whether that
is happening. There is some disquiet about the way the Commission
has undertaken field trials, that the Commission itself has not
been clear about what it has been going into in order to achieve
these.
56. What role do you think the Audit Commission
should play in deciding if an authority is a failing authority
or if any of its services are failing services?
(Mr Spencer) The most helpful role they can undertake
is to flag that up to people within the authority, to elected
members within the authority as well as to officers. The approach
that I believe people have found helpful within the field trials
is where they have had what I think is being called the interim
challenge, where the Commission has gone in and made its recommendations
but made them almost privately first to the authority to allow
them to take them on board to see whether both parties had understood
what the authority was trying to achieve. Somebody coming in making
an independent, uninvolved judgment on what the outcomes seem
to be but understanding what was behind it, what the priorities
were, whether it is a cross cutting or thematic approach to improvement,
to give the authority the chance to say "we have tried to
look at it from the point of view of such and such a user group",
elderly people for example, "that is why we have gone about
it in this way" if the initial judgment from the inspectors
was that it appeared to be a little bit unusual in their approach.
57. Can you envisage any circumstances where
you feel that the Audit Commission, or indeed any other inspectorate,
should judge a local authority to be failing as distinct from
a judgment by the local people in an election?
(Mr Spencer) There are going to be instances where
despite all the best planning the outcomes are not what they should
be and there is a role then for the inspectorate to say that those
outcomes are not adequate, they are not meeting particular standards.
Chairman
58. Do you think the Audit Commission is going
to do that or do you think that ministers are going to want to
be able to say "minister gets tough with a particular local
authority" and therefore slightly perverts the whole idea
of Best Value?
(Ms Newman) That is what we are trying to put across,
that the review process should be a positive process rather than
a negative process.
59. I understood that was what you were trying
to get across, I am asking do you think that ministers can be
persuaded to keep their hands off?
(Ms Newman) We feel that the Audit Commission will
be working quite closely with the Improvement and Development
Agency. We hope that increasingly there will be an understanding
that support for change and improvement is the way forward rather
than a naming and shaming approach. We are also concerned in that
review process that the Government is very keen on innovation
and trying new ideas but within that you have to have an understanding
that you are going to have failure, that risk of failure and innovation
go together. There has to be an understanding that there will
be problems every now and again. Sometimes those might be problems
because people are incompetent and things need to be changed,
sometimes they might be problems because people are trying a new
approach and it did not work or maybe it needs to be given a bit
longer to work. It is being a bit more sensitive to that as well
that we are concerned about so that they do not immediately go
in and find those performance criteria are not being met and go
into a negative view.
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