Public must act as watchdog over local services

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Citizens should take a greater role in monitoring public services to avoid ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ when comprehensive area assessments are abolished, according to a think tank.

In a new report on the future of public service inspection, New Local Government Network (NLGN) calls for local citizens to play a greater role in driving up standards, remaining inspection regimes to be slimmed down and greater responsibility for local government in improving its own performance.

It also warns that ‘wholesale abolition’ of assessment regimes could risk ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ and may lead to local authorities only being held to account either through elections or more transparent listing of their spending and decision making.

The coalition government plans to scrap the CAA, introduced in 2009 but which has been criticised for being too expensive and overly burdensome. A number of local authorities have publicly announced they will limit the amount of time afforded to collating data for the inspectorate.

Under NLGN’s model, citizens would be invited to act as ‘bare-foot’ assessors of local services by taking a greater role in service provision, holding their public services to account and petitioning the Local Government Association (LGA) if they felt the quality of a specific local service was declining.

Other measures outlined in Through the looking glass: putting citizens at the heart of the assessment process include switching key service inspections to a ‘risk-based’ weighted approach, a redefined role for the Audit Commission and a greater one for the local government family, led by the LGA, to support underperforming councils and provide peer-led reviews.

Report author and NLGN researcher Olivier Roth said: ‘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.’

He added: ‘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.’