Now a familiar sequence begins. After the "failing" headlines (don't we journalists just love them?) comes the threat of intervention, enforced contracting-out of management and further doubt about the capacity of elected local authorities to manage professional services. The nationalisation of child protection is surely just around the corner.
League tables, green lights, stars: the method is the same. It chimes with the times. Under Thatcher, competitiveness became fashionable and football's subsequent break-out into the cultural mainstream made tables familiar. The Blair government has been even more enthusiastic about grading performance. Haringey's social services are treated as if they were a failing club – Accrington Stanley, say – and taken over.
But the playing field is far from level. The referee devises the performance criteria and makes the assessment, and there is no appeal. Is inspection really so infallible – are auditors always above suspicion? After the piles of ordure heaped on Haringey during the Victoria Climbie inquiry, few are going to leap to defend the north London borough's social work record. The Social Services Inspectorate is right that something needs to be done there.
It is worth pausing to wonder whether the cult of the inspector has been overdone. Denise Platt, chief inspector of social services, is an estimable public servant and her former charge, the London borough of Hammersmith and Fulham, doubtless deserved the two stars it got. But was it entirely coincidence that among the list of no-stars councils, two Tory-controlled councils – Bromley and East Sussex – appear? It is very useful to have them there, from the point of view of the Secretary for Health, Alan Milburn. No one will be able to say only Labour councils cannot manage.
What role does politics play in determining service outcomes? Inspectors, coming from the managerial class, are squeamish about the question.
That is not the only puzzle in inspectors' work. If they and civil servants at the centre know enough to be able to opine about this area's failure and the other's success, why don't they know enough to provide the service themselves? The usual answer is that local circumstances are too powerful – central administration would not work. Local politicians offer a connection with local people, which conventional wisdom says is more democratic.
A similar argument is deployed in social housing. Why are there so many RSLs? Because in their diversity they reflect local need. They harbour detailed knowledge that no central provider could match.
But what if the coverage offered by RSLs is patchy, leaving local need unmet in some areas and access to social housing unequal? At that point the centre has to get involved. Denise Platt and her fellow inspectors are so worried about Haringey because children in that borough are badly served compared to those next door.
We hear a lot of criticism of the Blair government for control freakery. But what if another name for that desire to control local service outcomes is egalitarianism, the desire to see people enjoying roughly similar services, wherever they live?
Source
Housing Today
Postscript
David Walker writes for the Guardian and is a regular presenter of BBC Radio Four's Analysis programme. He is a director of the Places for People Group
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