LEARNING FROM THE EXPERIENCE OF RECOVERY FOUNDATIONS FOR RECOVERY: First Annual Report

Improving the performance of local authorities is high on the political agenda. Central government has implemented a range of policies to stimulate and focus improvement, there are extensive systems of support through national agencies of local government, and councils themselves are demonstrating ways of strengthening service and corporate performance. The desire by central government level to improve the performance of local authority services has increased in significance during the two decades since the early 1980s. Policy initiatives have developed in sophistication, moving from the relatively simplistic assumptions about the power of market forces that were inherent in Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT) through more comprehensive service review and procurement approaches in Best Value and then into a range of demonstration and incentive initiatives including Beacon Councils, Local Public Service Agreements and Shared Priorities. Frequently, these policies have emerged as a result of innovation within local government. Their development and implementation has been supported by the active involvement of individual local authorities and the Local Government Association (LGA). The implementation of performance improvement policies has been assisted by a substantial infrastructure of consultancy, organisational and management development providers, including those programmes within the Improvement and Development Agency's (IDeA) portfolio. The drive of these programmes is towards performance improvement, but the introduction of a nationwide performance assessment process-the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) – has revealed that some councils are unable to respond effectively to the improvement agenda. Within this group, a number are poor performers whose services and corporate arrangements do not meet the standards expected of modern local government. The CPA is being undertaken in a series of phases for all local authorities in England. It started with the major spending councils – county councils, London boroughs, metropolitan and unitary councils-who had their performance reported in December 2002. District councils in two-tier areas are currently being assessed. Councils are classified into one of five performance bands (excellent, good, fair, weak and poor), and there is a strong expectation that those in the lower bands will improve significantly. Councils classified as poor are subject to special monitoring by central government and the Audit Commission, and may be the focus of legal intervention to direct them to undertake certain tasks or transfer responsibility for a function to a nominee of the Secretary of State. The evidence that a group of councils that is under-performing relative to national expectations raises two important questions: 1. Why …