Examination of Witnesses (Questions 20
- 31)
MONDAY 8 JUNE 2009
MR ROY
IRWIN AND
MR ALAN
MACDONALD
Q20 David Wright: Are there mandatory
elements that you look at or should there be mandatory elements
that you look at in every authority? Give us an impression of
how you gauge the tools of measurement, if you like.
Mr Irwin: There will be some mandatory
elements around looked-after children as an example. That will
happen with Ofsted in the lead across every place at a predictable
frequency along with some unannounced work as well. In terms of
the areas that we were looking at, we have ten themes of general
issues for looking at an area, a lens one could argue. So one
of the lenses in this context would be around housing need in
that locality in its broadest sense. What we are looking at is
what does the local strategic partnership have to say about housing
in its broadest sense, what is its community strategy around that
and what are its investments plans? We will be looking at that
in terms of their budget, their partnership arrangements and over
time, given the context of this, if we notice for example that
Supporting People issues or dealing with people who are vulnerable
in the housing setting were slipping down the pecking order but
the evidence we were gathering from other bodies, like Citizens
Advice, actually demanded that the need was rising we would be
challenging that authority about the rationale they were working
to and whether they had actually under-resourced. We are giving
them freedom to deal with issues in their own context but we are
checking back against what they said their priorities are and
then checking that they actually delivered on their priorities
and challenging them if they have missed things that are really
important.
Q21 David Wright: How does this link
in with the local area agreement process then? Presumably over
time that process will become so robust that your level of review
would diminish significantly. Is that right?
Mr Irwin: The local area agreement
looks at 35 key headline indicators. The Commission and the other
inspectorates are not required to look at just those 35. We look
at all 198 national indicators and local management information
as well if that covers an issue that we think is relevant in that
locality. For example, if somebody negotiated a local area agreement
and did not include Supporting People indicators (of which there
are two) then that is fine because it is their local agreement,
that is not a problem. However, if from the feedback from other
sources it became clear that homeless people, people leaving care
or people leaving prisons in their locality became more and more
desperate and disparate in terms of the services then we would
start to ask questions of the local authority, how they are handling
these demanding issues, irrespective of their local area agreement.
Mr MacDonald: It is interesting
in terms of fine graining because CAA provides a lighter touch;
it is a different arrangement. It is a more mature way of looking
at local authorities but undoubtedly it is the case that there
are not the same resources that are going into inspection as hitherto.
In terms of some of the fine graining issues you are talking about,
I do not think that CAA will interrogate to that level of detail.
Q22 David Wright: But it will be
your job to go back to that partnership and say that their strategy
is weak in this area and they need to improve it.
Mr MacDonald: Yes.
Mr Irwin: Yes, that is right.
Q23 David Wright: I am trying to
gauge the level of stick and carrot, if you like, in terms of
your approach.
Mr Irwin: I am not convinced that
we have many carrots but in terms of what might be seen as regulatory
judgments in the broadest sense then we will be publishing commentary
on every place and if things are going badly in an area we think
is important in terms of the evidence file suggesting that a service
area or a locality or any combination of those that things are
getting worse or are not up to a national standard, we will, in
reporting terms, report that as a red flag, ie we have serious
concerns around this area's ability to deal with this issue.
Q24 David Wright: Why do you not
have more carrots to hand out? Should you have?
Mr Irwin: The only carrot we have
got, one could argue is rewarding the reverse which is that if
somebody is doing a brilliant job around something that is difficult
and there is evidence that it is successful rather than a good
plan, then we can award a green flag but it does not have any
cash attached to it so people might not see that as quite so beneficial.
Q25 David Wright: So you get hammered
if you do badly but you get very little reward if you are doing
well. That is the danger.
Mr Irwin: It is always the danger
in any regulatory system that does not attach rewards to the regulatory
judgment.
Mr MacDonald: I do not know that
"hammered" is right either because I think what will
happen with all of the inspectorates is that there will be a kind
of common view as to how serious the problem is. If there is a
serious problem but the Audit Commission leading this process
says that there are robust plans in place to sort this problem
out, it may not even get to a red flag, it will be a concern that
has been raised. Equally I think even though green flags will
not have money attached, they will carry a certain amount of prestige
because people will want to know what is going on in other areas.
Q26 Anne Main: Can you be absolutely
sure that you are not being given a good talk when you are being
told that things are going smoothly? I have examples from my own
constituency—and I am sure other members have the same—where
people's expectations are managed in a completely inappropriate
way by being told that something is going to happen and it just
seems to take forever to happen or the reverse, being told that
it is not going to happen so there is no point in even trying.
People who are vulnerable will give up and I am just wondering
whether you are absolutely sure that you have enough user input
into this to make sure what you are being told is the reality
on the ground.
Mr Irwin: In terms of what we
have done so far in terms of the inspections, we have always made
sure we talk to users separately from the providers and the commissioning
body. We actually have a user of services, not from that area
but from elsewhere, as part of the team. That has been the arrangement
we have had in place up until last year. In terms of CAA, which
is not an inspection event (although we can commission the inspection)
part of our work is to try to get a view from users of services
locally around a range of services. There is a danger in having
really well-presented documentation that says how wonderful everything
is and some of it will be true. Our job is to work out where it
is true and where it can be evidenced from other sources and where
it is not true and where we need to do further work.
Q27 Anne Main: There are mental health
issues and you talked about people being disparate and desperate,
but people who are vulnerable or socially excluded or with mental
health issues, are you absolutely certain you are getting that
feedback correctly?
Mr MacDonald: In the Probation
Inspectorate we have a concentration on the actual cases so whenever
we go to an area we are looking at a substantial number of cases
so we will be able to see the sort of level of accommodation and
other related need and we will triangulate that with other sources
of evidence.
Q28 Anne Main: Who is flagging up
the cases to you? I am thinking about adults with autism for example
(which is something I am quite involved in) who are not even counted
in this.
Mr MacDonald: One of the other
responsibilities I have is looking at youth offending inspections
and we find that there are a lot of children with autism, a range
of learning disabilities and so on. I think that one of the things
Supporting People could do better is that probation areas quite
often have been people representing the views of youth offender
services and either youth offender services should be directly
represented or probation probably needs to do more for that younger
age range to make sure that range of particular needs is properly
catered for. Obviously that fits into the agendas of groups like
the Care Quality Commission as well.
Q29 Sir Paul Beresford: We have just
had a report from this Committee on the balance of power. One
of the complaints local authorities had is that this government
and its agents sit on top of them, check them, inspect them, send
out performance targets, ask them to fill in forms, ask them for
information, et cetera. You have just talked about 198
inspections Surely the red flags and green flags, if an authority
is shown to be competent—you will know from other areas
that they are likely to be—should you not just back off?
It is expensive to do all of this.
Mr Irwin: The 198 relates to the
number of national indicators set by government which has been
part of a negotiated settlement between central government and
the Local Government Association. We are just using that because
it is available material; we have not set any of those things.
You are quite right, once you have covered a locality under CAA
and it is proficient around a particular area of work, then we
would not spend any time looking at those things, provided we
were reassured they were keeping on top of their game. That is
one of the reasons why we are not doing the same thing everywhere
because some people are clearly excellent at various things including
Supporting People. It would be a misuse of resources for us to
then continue to reassess somebody who is already excellent about
something. We try to work it so that we only actually focus on
the areas that seem to be either stuck at or below an acceptable
standard or actually in reverse and deteriorating. If somebody
is good at Supporting People or education or whatever then very
little attention will be given to those areas because they are
good at it.
Q30 Mr Betts: It is early days in
the process but do you have any concerns on the ground about services
that were previously ring-fenced under Supporting People that
are now not being delivered? Are you getting concerns on the ground
about this?
Mr Irwin: We are getting concerns
about services to particular vulnerable groups that have not been
funded under SP and continue not to be funded under SP, in other
words we have not yet picked up a change because of the ring-fence
arrangements. What we are picking up is that the concerns we may
have had previously are ongoing. We are picking up that kind of
consistency around excluded groups, whether they be travellers
or people suffering from HIV or domestic violence. Those things
were an important issue under SP when it was ring-fenced and it
is still an important issue now.
Mr MacDonald: It may be also that
the Third Sector will suffer in terms of some of its small projects
that have funding for a couple of years or so but what happens
after that? Workers will wonder where they will go. It is not
having that certainty to plan over time which might be one of
the consequences.
Q31 Chair: Do you think the Compact
with the service sector is in place and operating effectively
in most areas or not?
Mr Irwin: I think in the context
of Supporting People it has not been an issue that we have picked
up as either being a negative or a positive. In other words, it
has not been material in many of our pieces of work, which does
not mean in a broader sense that it was not useful, we just do
not think we have seen it as being either a pro or a con in the
context of arranging Supporting People.
Mr MacDonald: I think it could
be further developed. I suspect the bigger sector organisations—the
Nacros and so on—who know how to bid for funds and resources
will be better placed than smaller projects. In the accommodation
world there are a lot of smaller initiatives in local areas and
it may be that local authorities need to think how they can help
those small Third Sector organisations play their part.
Chair: Thank you very much indeed.
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