By Tash Shifrin
The Local Government Association is still lobbying for changes to the new inspection regime for councils just weeks before it comes into force, the association’s leader has revealed.
The Local Government Association is still lobbying for changes to the new inspection regime for councils just weeks before it comes into force, the association’s leader has revealed.The Comprehensive Area Assessment is due to go live in April. But, in an interview with Public Finance, LGA chair Margaret Eaton said: ‘The framework has been published but I think there’s still concern about whether it actually delivers the things that have been promised…
I don’t think there is complete confidence that it will.’
Eaton said local authorities were concerned that the CAA was heavily based on data, which did not necessarily show ‘what the service for people is like’.
The LGA had raised issues ‘about the process and needing more involvement of peers, people who can go into an authority and have a nose for what’s happening as well as the data’, she said.
Experienced peers from elsewhere in local government would know whether services helped their recipients. ‘The worry is that a lot of data won’t actually tell you what the outcome is,’ she said.
Eaton also pointed to councils’ worries about the system of green and red flags, which will replace the star rating system.
Eaton said that the Audit Commission did not recognise that ‘flagging is going to give an impression that’s not necessarily a true one’. Red flags in particular could be ‘lifted out of context’, she argued. ‘People feel it could have been done differently.’
The LGA has also raised concerns that the regime could put a greater burden on councils.
An Audit Commission spokesman said the framework had been consulted on and tested in trial areas, but ‘it would be surprising if councils and inspectorates entered this brave new world without a few reservations’.
