Andrew Coulson

The decision to create a new public body to inspect and regulate local authorities is a recognition that it was a major mistake, made by David Cameron soon after he became Prime Minister in 2010, to abolish the Audit Commission. At the time, many of us thought that the government would come to regret it. It is much easier to reform an existing body that to create a new one.

The Office of Local Government will be a Departmental body within Michael Gove’s Department of Levelling Up, Housing and Local Government’.[1]  It will not, as was Audit Commission, be an independent public body. That leaves it wide open to the criticism that it is an extension of the process of central government bossing local government. The point has already been made in an influential report from the Institute of Government.[2]

OFLOG  has already published what it calls draft “metrics” (or performance indicators) for some of the main services.[3] The Audit Commission began identifying performance indicators soon after it was created in 1983. It published its first comprehensive set of indicators for local government in 1992. In 2001 it instituted a process of Comprehensive Performance Assessments for every council, eventually based on more than 1,000 indicators. It used these, along with some qualitative assessments which attempted to assess a council’s ability to plan in advance and respond to crises, to give each council a rating on a scale of 1-5. In 2007 this was simplified, with just 214 indicators and a streamlined assessment where seven separate inspectorates worked together.[4]

This experience showed that there were fundamental problems. Performance indicators give providers very powerful incentives to change their behaviour. But they also give them powerful incentives to game the services, often by increasing spending on aspects that are measured and lowering it for those that are not.

Here are some high-profile examples:

The Police. Former senior police officer Rodger Patrick, in a pathbreaking PhD thesis at the University of Birmingham[5], showed how the West Midlands and other Police Forces gamed the statistics used to assess them: not recording many crimes, increasing clear-up rates by giving favours to criminals who confess (who might or might not have committed the crimes), moving police to parts of the city where the crimes committed can be dealt with relatively easily, and even creating what they claimed was evidence. Crimes were reclassified to reduce the apparent number of crimes in targeted areas.

Hospitals.  Bevan and Hood used data from the National Audit Office to show that an unexpectedly large number of patients arriving in in accident and emergency departments were assessed just before they had waited four hours – thereby not contributing adversely to the per cent who waited longer. One way of doing this was not to record those waiting outside in ambulances or inside on trolleys. Another was to create Informal registers of people on long-term waiting lists, not putting many of them onto the official lists.[6]

Schools.  OFSTED ranks schools as Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, and Inadequate. A poor score on any part of the assessment will prevent a school from being recorded as Outstanding. This became very public after a primary school headteacher took her own life when her school was downgraded for failing in its child protection arrangements while scoring highly in nearly all the other parts of its assessment. This case has led to increased awareness that a single judgement on a complex organisation such as a school can often be unfair or misleading when a school is strong in some aspects but less so in others.

These are not the only kind of problem. Another issue is that what is achievable will often depend on the history and geography of a place. Thus an area with many rail stations, or with very wide roads where bus lanes can be created, will find it easier to achieve targets for public transport. Or a city which is a regional centre will have a history of supporting local arts organisations, more so than a district which is not.

The third problem is that there is often duplication with other inspectorates: the Care Quality Commission, Ofsted, the Planning Inspectorate, Police and Crime Commissioners, and many others. Should OFLOT trust these, and not duplicate their work? Or should it follow the practice of the Audit Commission in its later years and work jointly with them, with associated extra costs and hassle?

We illustrate the issues with longer comments on one service, planning, where OFLOG has already produced detailed proposals.[7] I wrote about this in 2007, and the proposals I discussed then are almost identical to those proposed now.[8]  These will judge the effectiveness of planning in an area by the number of planning applications dealt within a target number of days, and the percent of applications overturned after appeals. This does not recognise that the most important work is done well before an application is formally submitted, when an applicant or agent starts talking to officials in the planning department. This may well throw up problems with transport or access; lack of proposals for green space, community facilities or shops; environmental issues about trees or wildlife; and disagreements about densities. The Council will want as many units as possible on a site, and for an application to meet its requirements for social and affordable housing. Moreover, drawings are often inaccurate, computerised images misleading, surveys loaded to favour an application, and designs poor. Good quality advice can make a big difference. But if an application is submitted before these matters have been properly researched, or do not meet the council’s prescriptions (especially for affordable housing), it has to decide whether or not to take it to its committee recommending rejection, or to wait for a more comprehensive submission to arrive. The easiest way to meet these targets is for councillors to approve every planning application uncritically.[9] Developers frequently try to renegotiate targets for social and affordable housing units, on the basis that they cannot afford them. But with only very limited other funding for this type of housing, they are essential almost everywhere. This kind of stand-off will no doubt continue unless and until land values decline to the point where developers can both meet the targets and make money.

In short, the OFLOG draft targets for the planning function are a missed opportunity. What is needed is powers to refuse planning applications that do not include relevant evidence or meet the prescriptions set out in a council’s local plan without wasting the time of the Planning Committee. And targets which explicitly recognise the value of design and quality, and the need for social facilities and open space.

These issues are not confined to planning. At a time of austerity which especially affects the funding of local government, there will inevitably be many situations where councils are struggling to deliver services of the quality that they would like. In such situations, inspectors do not contribute much by pointing this out. Rather they need to act as advisors, or expert external friends, who assist councils making the most of what they have.

Andrew Coulson was an INLOGOV staff member for 25 years. For 14 of those years he was also a Birmingham City Councillor where for a time he was a member of the Development Control Committee as well as the Cabinet Member for Regeneration.

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[1] Department for Levelling Up, Housing, and Communities and Office for Local Government Understanding and supporting local government performance. Policy Paper, July 2023

[2] Rhys Clyne and Stuart Hoddinott   What does the Office for Local Government need to succeed? Institute for Government, July 3023  https://www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk/sites/default/files/2023-07/What-does-Oflog-need-to-succeed.pdf

[3] Office for Local Government Next steps for OFLOG and draft metrics, October 2023 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/653a74cf80884d0013f71be1/Office_for_Local_Government_-_next_steps_and_new_draft_metrics.pdf

[4] Andrew Coulson “Targets and Terror: Government by Performance Indicators. Local Government Studies Vol.35, No.2 pp.271-81, 2009

[5] For a summary, see Rodger Patrick,“A web of deceit: Police Crime Statistics for England and Wales”, in  John Eterno, Arvind Verma and Eli Silverman (eds) How Countries Count Crime: An Exercise in Police Discretion Taylor and Francis, 2022, pp.170-219

[6] Bevan, G and Hood, C “What’s Measured in What Matters: Targets and Gaming in the English Public Health Care System”. Public Administration Vol.84, No.3, pp.517-38

[7] Office for Local Government Next steps for OFLOG and draft metrics, October 2023, pp.5-7

[8] “Don’t Forget the Politics in Planning”. Local Economy Vol.22 No.3, pp.223-6

[9] “Targets and Terror: Government by Performance Indicators.” Local Government Studies Vol.35 No.2, 2009, p.279