Written evidence submitted by Housing
Information Ltd
I would like to submit evidence on this based on
extensive experience over many years of working with local authorities
on their strategic housing and planning functions.
The Audit Commission approach of command and control
was based on a fundamentally mistaken management model, which
hampers and hog-ties public bodies, and diverts their attentions
and energies with resource sucking, target driven, opinion based
inspections, which generally do much more harm than good. This
inspections and targets ( including PSA National Floor Targets)
aspects of the Audit Commission's work should be axed, or at very
least the AC radically reformed so that it focuses efforts to
1. explore, understand, compare and give advice on systems improvement
and embedding; 2. data, information and evidence use to underpin
policy and decisions, and 3. financial audit.
My direct experience has convinced me that much of
the wasted effort and failure to deliver in local authorities
has come about as a result of incessant upward reporting and target
setting, which stops the LA staff and members from thinking and
learning for themselves - they just push detached, summarised
and univariate information upwards for someone 'higher up ' to
decide like regions, CLG, LAAs, etc - which they then cannot do
effectively because they do not, and cannot from that perspective
- understand and appreciate it properly because they are not involved
in the work, processes and local circumstances and conditions.
I recently completed a project looking at use of
data and evidence in strategic housing and planning,
http://www.blinehousing.info/LeicsDataProject/Leicester&shire_managing&updating_data_project%202010-%20finalreport.pdf
one conclusion was that The capacity of staff to
use data to shape and guide strategy is impacted by a consistent
demand for upward reporting. This data gathered in this way is
often very generalised, averaged and one dimensional and does
not seem to lead to any effective decision making and effective,
targeted policy , but has instead been used to set targets which
are unlikely ever to be delivered.
Any attempt to re-introduce such a top down inspection
system is likely to repeat previous mistakes. You cannot do it
from there - you have to let go ! It is basically simian , not
democratic, behaviour.
January 2011
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