Triangular approach to assessment is working

As we begin the countdown towards this year's general election, a growing number of battle lines are being drawn on the supposedly neutral territory of public services. Last week, Jonathan Baume, secretary of the FDA union for senior civil servants, warned the government about using civil servants to cost opposition politics, and the scrutiny of local government performance is becoming increasingly politicised. Next week, the chairman of the Audit Commission , Michael O'Higgins, will praise the impact of a "triangle" of local oversight at a conference on the first round of the watchdog's new comprehensive area assessment of councils, which the Conservative party has said it will abolish. O'Higgins is set to tell delegates that the combination of area scrutiny, with the emphasis on outcomes, rather than the inner workings of councils, together with theOneplace website and the government's Total Place project to tot up spending across specific regions, has formed a triangle of initiatives that is boosting local accountability. The speech is a strong defence of the CAA approach in the run-up to a general election. The commission's new website, Oneplace, which gives the results of the organisation's new scrutiny regime for local government, has notched up more than 1m hits since it was launched last month, but publication of the results led two Conservative-led councils, Wandsworth and Hammersmith and Fulham, criticising CAA for requiring excessive demands in terms of the councils' time and finances. Fighting for Hertfordshire This month, another attack on the new regime came from Robert Gordon, the leader of Conservative-led Hertfordshire county council, in a message to the county's residents. Overall, says Gordon, the commission's report on the county is "very positive", but it concludes that Hertfordshire is not doing enough to plan for additional housing in the county. Gordon's response? "If fighting for Hertfordshire's character and the well-being of residents results in a ticking-off from the Audit Commission, then so be it," he writes. "We're here to stand up for the people and communities of Hertfordshire." Gareth Davies, the Audit Commission's managing director for local government, says some form of political attack over CAA is "inevitable, particularly given where we are in the cycle", but says that overall there has been a varied set of reactions to the new regime and support from a wide range of local authorities, including Conservative-led Westminster. "The question is whether this [CAA] is in the public interest, what it costs and how it can be developed so that we can get more and more out of it," comments Davies. "Anything that poses a challenge to the existing way of delivering services is potentially a challenge to those leading such services, but we think the big breakthrough here is the public accessibility to information. "We have had a lot of interest that suggests there is a public appetite for this. I'm not claiming we have got everything right in all aspects this first time, but we are adjusting the system all the time and we are listening to what people are saying, so we are not in defensive mode. We think this is a big step forward."