Title

The CAA results are out, balance sheets have been written, and the first heads have rolled, and already the Conservatives are threatening to scrap it! Davy Jones joins the debate on the verdict so far Local public services face unprecedented challenges over the next five to 10 years. The response to the growing climate catastrophe will increasingly dominate their attention, every bit as much as the drive for greater efficiency to meet expenditure cuts. Strengths and weaknesses of CAA Most people seem to agree on its strengths: *its multi-agency remit, rightly, went beyond the solely council-based CPA *it was generally less burdensome than CPA *few people seemed to dispute their local assessment *the independence of the assessment was welcome *the One Place website is useful. But there are corresponding weaknesses: *CAA was not comprehensive with its agency-based value for money and organisational assessments *the bureaucratic burden on local partners remained unacceptably high *generally, people felt that CAA hadn't told us much we didn't know already *the judgments may have been independent, but citizens and service-users scarcely got a look-in. Demographic changes are changing the face – and faces – of many communities, posing huge organisational and social cohesion challenges. The level of trust in politicians has hit an all-time low, and citizens now expect to have much more of a say. The new CAA should be truly comprehensive. It must focus on how all partners in localities are facing up to these challenges, producing a Total Local Sustainable Place assessment. It could be exclusively area-based. The organisational assessments of the different public sector agencies must be dropped. And in the spirit of Total Place, it should assess the value for money of all public money being spent in a local area. It must be a self-assessment made by the local partners in the area. But local services alone assessing themselves will never be acceptable to local people without an independent element. But citizens and service-users should provide it rather than the inspectors. Local area agreements (LAAs) should be truly local – an agreement between the local community and local partners on how to deliver the sustainable community strategy. It must be signed off by citizens, not by the Government. There should be no compulsory targets in LAAs and an improved national set of performance indicators must be voluntary, and co-ordinated by the LGA and appropriate partners from other sectors. LAAs should be at every local authority level – not just unitaries. And parishes and other specific localities – large estates and cross-local authority areas – could also be encouraged to adopt the same approach. Every three years, local partners – in all three tiers – must undertake a thorough self-assessment of the quality of life and services in their local area, including value for money. This would include peers from other areas, staff representatives and crucially, local people and service-users. The outcome should then be communicated widely to and discussed with local people in their neighbourhood meetings, citizens panels, user forums and so on – not just by posting on the web. The One Place website, CLG's Places Database, and the proposed local spending reports should be merged into a one-stop-information shop for local places. Services could then be encouraged to submit additional local qualitative feedback about their area and its services. And each area must have Amazon-style ratings of local services by citizens and service-users. We need a single national improvement agency for local services to co-ordinate expanded programmes of peer support, benchmarking and good practice. Peer intervention would be the first response, where self or citizen assessments highlighted serious weaknesses. Otherwise, inspection ought to be a ‘weapon of last resort', co-ordinated by a single local services inspectorate. But, there remains a need for unannounced, independent inspections in services for the most vulnerable – children and the elderly – although they, too, should include service-users. Ideally, these changes would be linked to other reforms – of local service finances – eg, ending ring-fencing, and local democracy and accountability – eg, having one accountable body for all local services. But that requires another article! Davy Jones is a freelance consultant

Title

WHITEHALL

So, how are we doing so far?

SUBSCRIBE TO CONTINUE READING