Government targets for housing and other services should be scrapped, a leading management consultant has told MPs.
John Seddon, managing director of Vanguard Consulting, was speaking to the House of Commons select committee on public administration.

He said performance indicators such as those for housing benefit processing, repairs and IT were creating disorder and waste.

Seddon called for all targets to be replaced with capability measures that judged performance from the customer’s point of view.

He recommended a slimmed-down housing inspectorate that would merely have to satisfy itself that organisations adopted systems that would lead to improvement.

The resulting savings could pay for management training and support, he said.

Seddon was giving evidence to an inquiry into a housing organisation that was meeting its targets on average time taken for repairs.

Source

Housing Today