In welcoming the NLGN study David Parsons says there are three key elements of a sector-led assessment regime.
We have always said that inspection and assessment can play a useful role in safeguarding financial probity – providing reassurance around high-risk areas, such as adult and child safeguarding, and ensuring minimum standards at institutional level, for example, in care homes, and prisons.
But, its days as a stimulus for improvement have long gone. All our experience and analysis demonstrates that self-assessment and peer challenge are the most effective ways of stimulating sustained improvement.
I was also interested to see a number of proposals around the role of the Local Government Group. I certainly think there is a necessity for national improvement bodies in a sector-owned model, and, as we develop our thinking on this, it will be very helpful to hear what others think.
As the Government unravels the restrictive and burdensome top-down performance architecture of targets, inspection and government office monitoring, the key issue for us all will be, how do we identify and manage the risk of service failure. We think this is achieved most effectively by the public sector regulating and improving itself. We fleshed-out the detail of this, with councils, through our ‘freedom to lead' work – and we have been particularly careful to avoid the temptation to replace one burdensome external system of regulation with a burdensome, sector-owned system.
Our streamlined approach involves just three key elements:
