Like any revolution, however, there’s bound to be a certain amount of bloodletting and a few heads that roll.
Only a month or so ago, for example, Brighton & Hove council and neighbouring Lewes council withdrew from one of the flagship pilot projects. They cited "legal complexities" involving their consortium with Tandridge and Wealden councils, which had aimed to provide a centralised housing benefit service.
Hot on the heels of the Brighton and Hove debacle came a highly critical report by Geoff Filkin, a leading member of the New Local Government Network, who is widely credited with inventing the Best Value concept.
In Building Capacity for Best Value, Filkin claims many councils are experiencing considerable difficulty in both understanding and implementing Best Value. "The 41 pilot authorities have been underway for over a year and whilst some report successful results, many appear to be struggling," he says. "The picture elsewhere is similar. Many local authorities are finding the process difficult".
The difficulties include weak political understanding of the challenge of Best Value, little appreciation of the ideological shift required and weak motivation to change in some authorities. Many authorities are experiencing trouble over consulting the public, and comparing their performance with others to "identify change rather than explain away differences".
The report acknowledges that most local authorities want to succeed, but says they need strong support to do so, with "improved political leadership and managerial competence". It adds that the "institutional architecture to assess, plan and implement the change agenda is currently absent" and warns there is limited time to put in place support systems before the legislation comes into effect in April 2000.
The report also points out that no significant extra resources have been allocated by central government to support modernisation. "This contrasts markedly with the £50m per annum plus allocated for the audit and inspection of Best Value."
However, Filkin’s call to arms is not echoed by another group of Best Value experts at Warwick Business School, which has been by the DETR to evaluate the pilots and will be producing an interim report in the autumn.
Howard Davis, co-ordinator of the school’s Best Value evaluation project, says he’s not in the business of stirring up a row, nor is it his prerogative to make judgements about whether we ought to be worrying about local authorities’ progress.
"I am not going to use words like ‘struggle’ because I don’t think that is a fair way to go about this," he says. "This is a new initiative and these are authorities that volunteered to be the pilots. Local authorities obviously differ. Legislation has of course drawn on the experience of the pilots but the pilot authorities also have to have regard to the fact that there is now a Best Value framework which may in some instances be a bit different from how they originally mapped out their approach," he says.
"There are already real benefits on the ground and an awful lot of good field work has been put in place. An awful lot remains to be done and that is something the pilots themselves say. But Best Value is not something that will be finished - it is a duty of continuous improvement," he points out. "It is intended to be a challenge."
Mona Sehgal, policy officer in the LGA’s corporate policy and research division, also disputes the claim that there is cause for worry. "Our perception isn’t that there is a major crisis at all," she says. "The pilots are engaging with the issues and being honest about what some of the problem areas are."
Sehgal says 280 authorities have signed up to the LGA’s Best Value database and there have been three surveys to establish what authorities are doing. "There may be some authorities which are not doing anything yet, and there is a perceived lack of member involvement," she admits. "But we are doing something to address that with a series of regional seminars with the DETR."
She adds: "Most authorities are actively engaged and very keen to learn what’s happening from the pilots."
She expects that much will be clarified for authorities when the DETR issues guidance at the end of August.
Vivien Nind, head of forward planning and performance management at Birmingham Council, which has housing as one of four elements in its Best Value pilot, describes the current situation as "a grapple" rather than a struggle. But she agrees there are some problems.
"I think there are various difficulties, for example, how you get good quality data to make comparisons of performance. There has been a lot of criticism about the value of work there," she says. "I think authorities have grasped the concept of Best Value but it has been difficult to learn from the pilots because they are all so different."
Nind also agrees with Filkin that costs are likely to be a problem. "There is no doubt that Best Value is a very intensive process and although one can argue a lot of it is good management and we should have been doing it anyway, there is a structure there that requires local authorities to go through the process with a fine degree of regularity," she says. "We had CCT before which did involve cost and we have been able to use that, but for many authorities, particulary when they come to the five year rolling programme of Best Value, I think resources will be an issue."
Like Sehgal, however, Nind says councils won’t know how much of a problem they face as far as resources are concerned until the guidance is published. Authorities will have to pay for consultation exercises and for setting up elements of the programme such as Best Value task groups, although bigger authorities may have resources and structures already available which smaller authorities are not able to call upon.
At one of the smaller pilots, Carrick disctrict council, in Cornwall, whose scheme covers all housing services in a rural community of 37,000 households, chief health and housing officer Daphne Lockwood says the exercise has been "extremely resource intensive - it’s just considerably more work than we had envisaged," she says.
"But we are doing well actually, and I think it would be fair to say we are achieving our objectives. There needs to be flexibility within the guidance," she adds. "Anything that’s too rigid will discourage local authorities to take a wider view of their services."
The DETR claims not to have seen Filkin’s report but it acknowledges that political leadership is vital to the success of Best Value. As far as the pilot programme goes, it also recognises the importance of innovation and experimentation rather than "prescriptive guidance".
But the department still refuses to accept the arguments about money. "Best Value should more than pay for itself in terms of savings and improvements to efficiency," a spokesperson said.
At the Improvement and Development Agency for local government, which is leading on the support and information side of the programme, head of Best Value Frances Carter says Filkin’s network has an important role to challenge and ask difficult questions in order to shape the new regime. She also reports that her support team is about to multiply from one to eight people.
But she likes to take "a more optimistic and positive analysis" of the current situation. "Authorities have found it difficult and there have been some misjudgements," she admits. "We are also supposed to look at Best Value as a challenge and to fundamentally rethink what we are doing, and that is not familiar territory for local authorities.
"I don’t think we should build up a resistance industry or an avoidance industry as with CCT," she says.
"We will get there - but it will probably take longer than we may have hoped."
Source
Housing Today
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