Publishing a on the future of public service inspection, NLGN warns that wholesale abolition of assessment regimes could risk “throwing the baby out with the bathwater” and instead suggests that inspections of key services should move to a ‘risk-based’ weighted approach that would offer intensive support to underperforming councils but much more infrequent and lighter inspection to those performing well.

Having only been in place since 2009, CAA has been criticised for being too expensive and overly burdensome. A number of local authorities have publicly announced that they will limit the amount of time afforded to collating data for the inspectorate. Government plans to scrap CAA may lead to local authorities only being held to account through elections and through more transparent listing of their spending and decision making.

Under NLGN’s model, citizens would be encouraged to take a greater role in service provision and in holding their public services to account. They would be able to petition the LGA if they feel that the quality of a specific local service is declining or is not up-to-standards and if the internal procedure of the council or service is not satisfactory. Citizens would also be given access to more transparent information on how council money is spent, as a means of strengthening local democracy, and be invited to act as “bare-foot” assessors of local services.

The report also points towards a redefined role for the Audit Commission, which would focus more on financial auditing functions and on being a gate-keeper for other inspectorates such as OFSTED and the Care Quality Commission.

The local government family, led by the LGA, would take on a greater role in supporting underperforming councils and providing peer-led reviews.

Author of the report and NLGN Researcher Olivier Roth said:

“Each year local authorities spend around £150 billion of public money and it is therefore fundamental how we assess our public services and allow citizens a fair voice in monitoring them. We should enhance the role that citizens can play in holding their local public services to account through transparency and increased citizen engagement. Transparency and clear accountability must sit at the heart of the response, so that citizens have the necessary tools with which to hold elected politicians and officials to account. Effective assessment can underpin local democracy.

“One of the lessons of CAA is that adversarial and external inspections can only take improvement so far. For improvement to be real and lasting, it has to be embraced by the organisation attempting to improve. It is local government that possesses the experience, the skills and the mindset to identify possible improvements, and to find the right solutions to enable them. The assessment process should be owned by the local government family, as it possesses the required democratic legitimacy, buy in, and know-how needed to implement real and substantial changes.”

At the report launch, Cllr David Parsons praised the report as “a timely contribution to the debate on the future of audit and inspection.” Gareth Davies affirmed the report’s thesis that “independent local audit is fundamentally important” and Dr. Ita O’Donovan declared that we need to be “much more imaginative at the local level” as we decide upon the future of audit and assessment.

NLGN’s latest paper, Making Sense of Entitlement, argues that the use of entitlements and guarantees to citizens replicates many of the problems of traditional performance targets and restricts the ability of services to focus on the needs of their local communities. It concludes that users would benefit and better outcomes could be achieved more efficiently if public services were subject to less central instruction, as long as the necessary safeguards of transparency, scrutiny and accountability to local citizens are in place.

Entitlements offering public service users a number of guaranteed commitments from public services were a prominent feature of policy under the previous government. They included:

• Maximum waiting times in the NHS
  
• Free care at home for older people and the disabled
  
• ‘September Guarantee’ offering all 16 and 17 year old school leavers a guaranteed place in education or training
  
• One-to-one tuition for all school children falling behind in English and Maths

NLGN’s report highlights the considerable evidence that uniform entitlements distort the priorities of frontline staff away from providing the best possible service, towards fulfilling specific entitlements at the behest of civil servants in Whitehall. Entitlements such as the NHS waiting times are also vulnerable to manipulation, for example holding A&E patients in ambulances so as to process them within the four hour maximum wait.

As such NLGN recommends that:

1. 1) Priorities and policy aims should be formulated on the basis of a negotiated agreement between central government and the local authority based on policy objectives and the needs of the local community. Drawing on the findings from the Total Place pilots, NLGN proposes that such a ‘Place Agreement’ should define clear service outcomes to be achieved locally and include additional devolution of funding and powers to meet these objectives.

2. 2) To provide the necessary safeguards, both central and local government should ensure that public service outcomes are clearly transparent and accountable to citizens. This should be done through a series of measures including e-transparency, an assessment system focused fundamentally on the citizen, and greater scrutiny from the local government family. Such a system will be the focus of NLGN’s forthcoming report in July 2010 on the ‘Future of Assessment’.

3. 3) Where the Coalition Government chooses to maintain or introduce future entitlements, that these should be broad and outcome-focused, rather than narrow and procedural, to allow local bodies flexibility to meet the needs of their community. The Policing pledge commitment to spending time on the beat working to agreed neighbourhood priorities is a positive example.

4. 4) Local authorities should be given greater responsibility for services such as healthcare and policing – strengthening joined up working and giving a cohesive democratic mandate to locally-responsive priorities.

Luke Hildyard, the report author said:

‘Fears of public services suffering as a result of the abandonment of entitlements are unfounded. Equivalently resourced services ought to be capable of producing better outcomes if they are subject to less central instruction, not worse. Provided the necessary safeguards of transparency, scrutiny and accountability to citizens are in place, public service users will benefit if the coalition’s move towards a more devolved, locally-focused system of public service management leads to the scaling down of uniform national guarantees’

In one of the most detailed studies so far on Total Place, the research finds that whilst billions of savings could be achieved at the local level by better joined-up services, a lack of coherence between Government departments and a historic reluctance to devolve threatens to derail the project. The report is timed to inform the debate around the future of Total Place before further announcements are made in the Budget.

NLGN’s report argues that major change is needed at the centre to break existing top-down models and cultures of accountability and service delivery, which lead to significant inefficiency and wastage in public services. For instance, one local pilot uncovered as many as 50 different benefits each with their own form, rules and administrative machinery; another has calculated that it costs as much as £135m to spend £176m on economic development projects. NLGN’s analysis shows that major benefits can be unlocked by a more collaborative approach to public sector assets and building services around the citizen at a local level.

The report advocates the setting up of a new Department for Devolved Government to subsume CLG and the Cabinet Office and the Scottish and Welsh offices to drive devolution across Whitehall and release greater freedoms and powers for locally elected politicians to coordinate activity and decide how and where services are delivered. As part of this, accountability for public health budgets and local policing should be devolved immediately to all local authorities.

It also argues that localities and national government should come to a new series of deals on devolving public money and delivery responsibilities across a wider range of services such as employment and skills. These Place Proposition Agreements would allow local areas to set out how they could provide improved services for less money as a response to the expected cuts in public sector budgets.

Further recommendations in the NLGN report include:

• Allowing councils full discretion over spend across regeneration, transport and housing in a single capital pot;
  
• Establishing a new Joint Parliamentary and Local Government ‘Total Place Progress Committee’ comprised of MPs and local council leaders to scrutinise cross-government activity;
  
• Strengthening existing Local Strategic Partnership arrangements and moving towards more statutory, incorporated and focused Public Service Boards;
  
• Undertaking total counts of public resources and asset mapping across all local areas as a catalyst for collaborative approaches;
  
• Setting up a Collaborative Leadership Academy to develop leadership across the public sector.

‘The concept of aligning all public resources in an area around the needs of its community is simple and commonsense. Putting it into practice, however, remains a major challenge not just for local areas but also for Whitehall. The changes needed go way beyond merely removing a few ring-fenced budgets or performance targets. Our cultures of governing and our current systems of funding and accountability cut through and undermine our focus on what the citizen needs.

‘With public sector budgets under pressure, it is more important now than ever that we seek to institute reforms that can ensure the most targeted and efficient responses to our local communities. This must include greater freedoms, responsibilities and resources at the local level.’

NLGN’s report was undertaken with support from Cap Gemini, Grant Thornton, Leadership Centre for Local Government and London Councils.

In this report NLGN argues that the traditional centralised provision of services often disregards the specific needs of individuals, leads to massive wastage and fails to meet the rising expectations of citizens. Instead, the next stage of public service reform should see citizens making their own choices – with greater individual control of resources – and communities empowered to generate their own revenue and invest in services that meet the needs of their local neighbourhoods.

But, it concludes, current efforts to drive this agenda from the centre looks set to fail. Centralised investment, decision-making and performance management has made few inroads. ‘Personalising’ a service requires in-depth knowledge of consumer demand, of how markets can best provide for this demand, and how to involve citizens in designing and even running these services. It is only elected local government that is best placed to intervene and tailor responses to individuals who are out of work, homeless or in receipt of care.

The research identifies 26 practical ways in which individuals and communities can be given greater control and influence over the services they receive. It calls for new freedoms to allow funding to follow individuals and wrap around their needs and for Whitehall to step back and let citizens evaluate how services should be improved.

The report concludes by setting out new reforms to bring personalisation about:

• councils should provide leisure and recreation vouchers and allow young people to choose how to spend these on sports services (such as leisure centres or renting football pitches) or recreation (such as hiring a recording studio);

• there are increasing moves to provide convenient access to information and ticket sales across the national rail network, but this concept should be developed to bring about a National Oyster Card that would allow easy access for commuters and travellers across localities, regions and the country;

• current contractual arrangements in dental health mean that millions are going without treatment with the most significant reason remains lack of NHS dentist capacity. As a driver for wider choice, access must be opened up and the Government should, as part of its ongoing review, consider obliging those dentists who receive NHS training to conduct a minimum proportion of their work under NHS terms;

• lessons should be learned from market leaders such as the Tesco Clubcard and Amazon, with councils providing residents with local swipe cards to access services that can be credited with rewards and topped-up, and in turn provide evidence for shaping services based on customer usage and preferences;

• under a system of electronic patient records, the days should be over when commuters are forced to take a day off work to visit their GP

• individuals should be allowed access any GP, whether near their workplace, friends or family – to provide convenience and prevent wasted time;

• revenue from parking charges, environmental fines and infrastructure charges from utility companies should be devolved to the street level, where this money could be invested to make roads safer, hire a community hall or enhance the local environment.

The report assesses the ‘spatial awareness’ of Whitehall departments and proposes sweeping reforms to the way it operates sub-nationally. Its recommendations include introducing a new “duty to devolve” on central government, reform of Public Service Agreements and departmental Capability Reviews, merging the Audit Commission and National Audit Office into a new single auditor and converting regional Government Offices explicitly into ‘Offices of the Regional Ministers’.

Authored by NLGN Director Chris Leslie and Nick Hope, the report argues that Whitehall departments need to adapt to the challenges of delivering modern public services and should develop a more strategic, less interventionist role. The report also encourages reform of the civil service recruitment process including the establishment of a new National Public Service Fast Stream scheme for graduates and insisting that senior civil servants have some experience of working within local government.

The report maintains that while local authorities are expected to comply with a number of formal duties, central Government should mirror this process by introducing a new “duty to devolve” on Whitehall departments. This duty could become a ‘devolutionary test’ in the parliamentary and legislative process.

It also suggests enhancing the role of Regional Ministers by appointing full time Ministers of State for each region, supported by the adaptation of Government Offices into explicitly ‘Offices of the Regional Ministers’.

In the report, Chris Leslie says:

“We believe that these reforms would build on progress already made and deliver a step-change in the quality of local service delivery. They would strengthen Whitehall’s “spatial awareness”, raise the consciousness of its own limitations, encourage a more cross-cutting approach to policy and increase its understanding of variation between and within regions and localities. Such reforms would better ensure that decision-making is

properly integrated throughout sub-national structures and take place at the most appropriate spatial level. Crucially, they would help transform the way communities and citizens are served.”

Leslie argues there are four core pillars of modern public service management that are not yet fully appreciated across the public sector:

“First, the factors that drive improvement differ from service to service, and new methods must now go beyond the ‘choice’ and ‘contestability’ models. Other factors can be equally important, such as citizen and political power, professional influence and the public service ethos, and the power of new substitute technologies and products replacing existing activities. Government must analyse each line of public service activity and recognise that sometimes greater consumer choice will be needed, but in other cases tapping into professional goodwill might be a better means of achieving improvement.

“Second, we are entering a new era of networked governance and decision-making by partnerships, yet the skills to build productive alliances are not recognised or rewarded adequately.

“Third, a fresh approach to risk management is needed to encourage creativity – and stronger messages about understanding risk and boldness need to be sent from the top.

“Fourth, greater advantage needs to be taken from new commissioning approaches, whether analysing public need more acutely, prioritising resources more effectively or contracting more cleverly on behalf of the taxpayer.

“The civil service has rested on withered laurels for too long. Defending closed procedures for those employed in senior positions and artificially insisting on outdated lines of vertical accountability are practices that have had their day. What is required is a different model that drives performance and delivery with the same power that bureaucracy drove delivery in the industrial era.”

The pamphlet, with a foreword by the LSE’s Tony Travers and supported by Mouchel Business Services, recommends a revived role for localism and local governance, constitutional reform to support new ways of working, and a Whitehall based on project working rather than departmental silos.

The New Local Government Network has analysed the evolution of PSAs and reform of the Cabinet Committee system, concluding that the Prime Minister has developed the tools for a new approach to public service management based less on departmental silos and more on cross-Whitehall delivery for which individual Ministers and senior civil servants are now accountable.

The study also looks at which Ministers are responsible for PSA targets, which detail each Department’s aims and objectives for the forthcoming three years. These agreements describe how targets will be achieved and how performance against these targets will be measured. The study reports on dispute resolution and progress chasing powers of Cabinet Committees and Cabinet Sub-Committees and analyses the allocation of this authority to different Ministers.

Cabinet Ministers have been given personal responsibility for delivering the Prime Ministers’ 30 key goals. The bulk of responsibility lies with a small number of Ministers. Topping the list is Ed Balls, Secretary of State for Children, Schools and Families with responsibility for five PSAs, with Home Secretary Jacqui Smith next with responsibility for four agreements. This contrasts with other Cabinet colleagues such as Ruth Kelly and David Miliband having responsibility for only one.

Number of PSAs for which each Cabinet Minister is operationally responsible

The report argues that the Prime Minister’s PSA reforms have the potential to “change the DNA of Whitehall” replacing a culture based on departmental fiefdoms with an outward focus on meeting public concerns. Greater public scrutiny is needed to complete the reform.

NLGN make recommendations to give the House of Commons greater authority to call government to account including the creation of “question times” for individual PSAs and the Ministers responsible for their delivery; annual Ministerial reports on progress and Select Committee scrutiny and formal status for Whitehall’s new ‘Senior Responsible Officers’, which were created by Gordon Brown on becoming Prime Minister in July 2007.

The study also assesses the reformed Cabinet Committee and Sub-committee systems, finding that some Ministers have considerable influence over the final delivery of PSA targets:

Ranking of Cabinet Ministerial responsibility for dispute resolution at Sub-committee level

In the report, author Dick Sorabji, Deputy Director of NLGN argues:

“Traditionally Britain’s great offices of state are those of Chancellor, Home Secretary, Foreign Secretary and in recent decades the Deputy Prime Minister. The PSA regime reveals a different ranking; one that is far more closely aligned with the reported alliances within the Labour government”

“This is an approach to running Whitehall that could replace Prime Minister Blair’s use of high profile central ‘Units’ [such as the Strategy Unit and Social Exclusion Unit]. Building on his reforms to PSAs and Cabinet Committees the Prime Minister has the opportunity both to make Whitehall more effective and also to deliver the ‘joined up government’ that is central to his long term vision.”

Download White Paper

This report seeks to address Lyons’s terms of reference and offers new solutions on local-central relationships and revitalising local democracy. It addresses the future of local governance structures, how it interacts with its citizens and advocates new and innovative ways of funding local government.

The underlying argument of this report is that reform of local governance is not like repairing a machine. It cannot be done piecemeal, fixing one piece at a time. Changing to meet the demands on the local state is like repairing an eco-system. The connections between each part of the system are so dense that failure to address any one area, will undermine and ultimately cancel out progress in all other areas.

Pacing Lyons argues that the whole eco-system of governance in the English state must be reformed. It delivers a list of powerful and compelling recommendations that reform not only local government, but our entire way of functioning with our democratic structures.

Pacing Lyons – Executive Summary (PDF)

Bringing together key representatives from local government, academia and think tanks,Made to Measure offers a blueprint for reforming and enhancing the way that local government views productivity issues and offers real solutions to enhance services and become more accountable.

Made to Measure – foreword (PDF)

Services are developing in ways that reflect people’s lifestyles, liberate the workforce, and extend the council’s frontline. Cutting the Wires draws on a wide evidence-base to discuss possibilities and challenges for local government.

As lifestyles change, nearly all of us are carrying mobile devices, and these allow us to interact in different ways. Why shouldn’t this apply to local public services as much as it does to commercial ones? Following the lead taken by early public adopters, we are seeing the mobilisation of the workforce. This opens the door to new ways of working, where staff are freed to be judged on outcomes, not input.

After a decade of being told that “it’s not about the technology,” Cutting the Wires suggests that, now, it just might be. Mobile IT is changing how we live and local government can either embrace and lead this change, or stick its head in the sand and accept the consequences. By then, it might be too late.

Cutting the Wires – foreword, intro and Ch1 (PDF)