What to expect from an inspector

It's May 2000. You survived the millennium bug with records intact, your millennium hangover has cured, the auditor has given you a clean bill of health for your Best Value Performance Plan - and then the Housing Inspectorate announces it will be calling round to see you!

Those seeking sympathy will find little support from colleagues. Inspection has been a part of life for those working in education and social services - and they still have time to provide services and look for improvement. And tenants can+t wait for the Inspector to call.

So how will it be for you? We have been working on two main areas to help us inspect local authority services. What will an inspection consist of? And what resources and organisation do we need in order to deliver it? On the first question we have published this week, From Principles to Practice, a consultation document that outlines our proposals for carrying out inspections. This describes a core methodology that we are likely to use for all inspections, but one which will be adapted for each service or combination of services.

As with most things in life the devil is in the detail. So what will each of these stages mean in reality?

Context: The purpose of this stage is to gain an appreciation of the local setting, and the authority's approach to the Best Value review. For housing this will involve consideration of the housing strategy, looking particularly for evidence of a comprehensive housing needs assessment, and statement of how the authority will meet these needs. It will also involve an assessment of the authority+s overall approach to Best Value, looking at how and why services have been examined in the way they have, as well as checking the scope of the Best Value itself.

Performance Review: This stage in inspection will be examining how the authority is currently doing in housing and how challenging the targets are for the future. Inspectors will be looking at how the authority is doing against national Best Value Indicators and whether areas of weakness have been fairly identified. Evidence will also be sought of compliance with the four Cs (challenge, compare, consult, compete).

Reality Check: Now we get to the heart of the inspection. How well is the service delivered to the tenant and other users? What evidence of improvement is there on the ground? We cannot emphasise enough that this is what inspection is all about.

The most intellectually rigorous Best Value reviews will count for nought if they are not lived out in day-to-day dealings with the public - so this is where inspectors will be looking. They will directly observe how tenants, homeless families and others are dealt with. They will carry out physical inspections of estates, mystery shopping, shadowing front-line staff and will follow through a sample of repairs - to name but a few of the reality checks.

They will examine in detail how the money is spent and how performance compares. And they will want evidence of improvement on the ground and evidence that management+s strategies are meaningful to front-line staff. They will want to hear from those staff whether they are supported and challenged to improve. And it is axiomatic that extensive feedback will be sought from tenants and other users.

Inspectors will not be confined to the work of the housing department. They will comment on a wide range of other services. Some will be obvious - cleaning and grounds maintenance. Others less so - social services, for example, where inspectors will want to see how well vulnerable tenants are supported by the whole authority and by good links with the NHS.

Interim Challenge: The inspection team will then present an interim challenge to the authority based on their findings so far. This will be a private mid-inspection challenge and its purpose will be to stimulate a response from the local authority. The authority may provide evidence from resident consultation for a particular approach to a housing service or may suggest that local geography explains certain targets. Generally this is likely to lead to the establishment of key hypotheses which may require further attention.

A good example would be around the cost of the repairs service, and just how much a higher level of service is justified by the additional cost.

Trade-off Evaluation: This is the stage where key judgements will be made based on the evidence gathered in the previous stages and the Inspector's accumulated experience. This judgement will need to be balanced taking account of the areas that have been found to be performing well and those that need improvement. For example, it is possible that an authority will have an excellent service for people who are homeless but has considerable difficulty dealing with reactive repairs. This will need to be reflected in the overall judgement whether that is by a scoring system or by a form of words.

Report and Synthesis: The Inspector's final report will be a public document and will have to address a number of audiences and there may therefore be in different formats - a full report and a summary leaflet for tenants, for example.

We owe it to tenants, other users and the public to give a simple overall assessment of the service. One way of doing this would be to give a star rating. We are consulting on a development of the assessment given by the Audit Commission/Social Services Inspectorate joint reviews of social services. A two-dimensional assessment is made of current performance and of whether there is evidence of improvement. From this, an overall star rating can be generated. We would welcome views on this.

Apart from the issue of how we will inspect, the commission has also been working on organisational and resource issues that need to be resolved before April 2000. A new Chief Housing Inspector post will be advertised soon, and he or she will be responsible for running the inspectorate.

There will not be a huge staff at commission HQ. A competitive regime will be established for the whole Best Value Inspectorate to keep costs low and quality high. All potential inspectors will have to be trained and accredited by the commission and inspection will be undertaken partly by external suppliers and partly by in-house teams.

The composition of these teams will be firmed up after we have tested the housing inspection methodology and learnt from the experience, but will include expert inspectors with recent experience in housing - probably on secondment - and inspectors with general management experience outside housing.

The commission is very sympathetic to the idea of having tenants on inspection teams, as well as seeking feedback from tenants during inspections. We are currently working through the issues and will take account of the response to the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions' consultation on housing inspections. And we look forward very much to hearing from you.