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‘Prevention is better than cure' is an adage so well used that it is in danger of being taken for granted, rather than being acted on. When I was local government minister, I frequently discussed with officials and local government representatives how we could better anticipate potentially-serious problems affecting individual local authorities, so remedial action could be taken before the authority got into serious difficulties. No-one disagreed that this was a sensible approach, yet no satisfactory response was forthcoming. On one hand, this reflected the difficulty in drawing firm conclusions from masses of often-incomplete, unsatisfactory or questionable data. On the other, it reflected a natural reluctance to admit that all was not well. No local authority wants to acknowledge it is potentially a problem, any more than any other organisation would want its dirty washing to be exposed to public scrutiny. Indeed, we know from recent events in the banking world, just how dangerous rumours about weaknesses can be in an environment when everyone is nervous and only too ready to draw extreme conclusions from, frankly, insubstantial evidence. Add to this, in the case of local government, the political dimension, and it is only too clear that owning up to potential weaknesses is risky, particularly if an election is pending, and the governing party is reluctant to give ammunition to its political opponents. But, having said that, we really are not as good as we should be at trouble-shooting – that is, spotting advance signs of potential problems and acting quickly to prevent them getting worse. This applies not just to local authorities as a whole, but also to the individual departments which make up a particular authority. Ironically, we all know any organisation, however well run, is always going to have parts that are less brilliant than others, and this is not a static pattern. We also know that key individuals can make a real difference in motivating, inspiring and galvanising their team to higher levels of performance. This is, after all, the magic ingredient of good leadership that has been advocated for many years. Indeed, the plethora of awards ceremonies that increasingly fill our diaries are all about recognising and applauding such leadership. But, if some are on the up, others are either ‘coasting' or in decline. So, if we are serious about promoting continuous improvement, we really must be better at identifying those parts of the organisation which are not performing as well as the others – and, in the wider local government family, those authorities whose performance is below par. This is not to indulge in a crude ‘naming and shaming' exercise. In my view, this is not the right way to promote improvements in performance. When I introduced the CPA, I made it clear to local authority leaders and chief executives, many of whom feared this was what was in store, that the objective was to help local government raise its game, and I am delighted almost everyone recognises that this has happened. But, we also have to acknowledge that, if the harsh spotlight of expectation and performance management is not directed into some of the darker and more obscure backwaters of local government, then unacceptable patterns of behaviour can all too easily persist. This not only undermines the efforts of those seeking to raise their standards, but also gives ammunition to critics who are still reluctant to acknowledge that local government performance is rising, and that authorities are responding positively to the public's expectation of continuous improvement. So, rather than drawing a discreet veil over the performance of particular departments or individual authorities which are not doing as well as their neighbours, we really ought to be encouraging a climate of zero-tolerance for under-achievement. It is easy to pass over this challenge, assuming it is someone else's responsibility. But that is exactly how local government got into the position, a decade or more ago, where a small number of ‘basket cases' were seriously damaging the overall reputation of local government. We have moved on from that era, I am pleased to say, but the moral remains as strong. We all risk being tarred by the poor reputation of a minority – and it is, therefore, in all our interests, to be ruthless in spotting and remedying underperformance. Nick Raynsford is former local government minister and chairman of the Centre for Public Scrutiny

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WHITEHALL

Don't wait for the chickens to come home to roost

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