Memorandum by West Sussex County Council
(BOP 09)
West Sussex County Council has been a party
to the response made by the County Councils Network (CCN) and
endorses the broad thrust of their response—in particular,
that increased freedom and flexibility for local government would
be an important step towards delivering improved services in a
more cost-effective way, and streamlining central control would
allow national politicians to focus more strongly on key priorities.
WSCC supports the emphasis in the CCN response
on improving the coherence, responsiveness and, therefore, effectiveness
of services to meet local residents' needs by:
— developing a framework for a mature discussion
between central government and local authorities on the balance
to be achieved between national standardisation of services and
the need for local variation to take account of differing local
contexts;
— reducing the extent, and inflexibility
of, national accountability measures;
— highlighting the key role that local
government should have in helping to shape service delivery by
other public sector agencies, and the potential damage to this
role if parallel and separate democratic structures are established
for particular agencies (for example, the police);
— supporting moves towards Council control
over a broader range of revenue-raising options, and towards greater
transparency and consistency in the mechanisms whereby central
funding is allocated to local authorities;
— maintaining, and preferably enhancing,
the accountability of locally elected Councillors for regional
planning; and
— challenging moves by central government
to remove local planning from local democratic control.
In addition, we would highlight the following
points of detail:
THE BALANCE
BETWEEN LOCAL
AND NATIONAL
ACCOUNTABILITY
1. While the CAA proposals do address some
of the weaknesses of the discredited CPA system, we still have
major reservations about how effective CAA will be in achieving
its objectives, and about the burden of cost that the exercise
will continue to place on local authorities. We have a particular
concern that, with the advent of a new inspectorate for adult
social care, any new assessment framework should be fully integrated
with, and not duplicate, the CAA process.
2. While we also welcome the reduction of
the national indicator set, we still regard NIs to be insufficiently
flexible, and in some cases to be measuring the wrong things—thereby
potentially distorting priorities to improve service for our customers.
For example, the new NI set for Adults' Services continue to focus
too much on activity rather than outcomes.
THE RELATIONSHIP
BETWEEN LOCAL
AND CENTRAL
GOVERNMENT
3. While there have been improvements to
the ways government "field forces" interact with local
government, there are still too many such interactions which add
very little value and which incur significant costs in terms of
officer time. An obvious example would be the DCSF-sponsored national
strategies which appear to be having little impact on raising
standards, particularly in primary schools. The considerable amount
of funding that goes into these agencies could be much better
spent much closer to front line service delivery;
4. There continues to be a flow of ad hoc
initiatives by central government, for example in the area of
community safety, that require local authorities to bid for funding
at very short notice. These bids often require detailed involvement
of partner agencies, and it is impossible to secure their engagement
in the time available.
FINANCIAL AUTONOMY
5. When funding is granted, it often comes
with so many strings attached that the flexibility to fit in with
local arrangements becomes impossible. An example of this was
a grant for collecting assault data from hospital A&E departments.
The outcomes of this project could have been achieved efficiently
and effectively at one of our hospitals using an existing agency
who were experienced in the collection of this data. However,
their involvement was excluded by the terms of the grant, which
resulted in a 12-month delay to delivering the service and significant
additional cost as other staff had to be trained to take on the
work. As a result of this experience we will not be engaging with
central government in achieving these outcomes in other hospitals.
September 2008
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