For Sport, managing our performance as a means of improving the way we do things has been part of the agenda for a long time.
Until the mid-1980s council sports and recreation facilities were almost wholly managed in-house. Since then, there has been a shift towards management by private sector contractors, and more recently to management by trusts. Although in-house management still predominates, the proportion of trust-managed facilities has nearly doubled over the last four years to 21 per cent, with private contractors maintaining a constant 17 per cent share of provision.
Under this mix of market provision local authorities are still expected to be able to demonstrate good performance and value for money. Initially this was all about cost, and local authorities were required to go through Compulsory Competitive Tendering (CCT). Amongst other things this had the effect of separating “Client” and “Contractor” functions and gave rise to services being specified in a “contract”. Although this has not been a requirement for several years, the hangover from these arrangements can still be seen in councils today, with separation of financial, and sometimes operational, accountability.
After CCT came Best Value. Which was a wider but still prescriptive set of performance management requirements. Based on service reviews and external inspection, Best Value saw the rise of the Audit Commission’s role in interventionist activity in local government, and the development of a new government inspectorate within the Commission. Some Best Value initiatives are still with us, particularly the Best Value Performance Indicators (BVPIs).
The Government’s Comprehensive Performance Assessment process (CPA) followed Best Value and the emphasis on self assessment and continuous improvement came in. Alongside some very specific savings requirements – see Gershon - CPA still relies on inspection and scoring, both for organisations as a whole, and for specific services. CPA is now changing and possibly quite radically. In the short term the new CPA arrangements for District Councils are available. Those for single tier authorities are already out, but the agenda is set to change more radically after 2008.
It is likely that at all levels in delivering sport, setting standards, monitoring delivery and scrutiny, meeting local and stakeholder interests are taking over from national targets. Central Government controls will still be in place, but these will be focussed more towards monitoring how well Councils are responding to community needs and working with community partners, than on meeting national PIs.
This move away from essentially service based performance measures to locally based reporting of our performance is a real challenge. The HM Treasury / ODPM document “Securing better outcomes; developing a new performance framework” draws on the experience of Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs) to inform a new approach to delivering performance reporting at a local level. (New Localism – Citizen Engagement, Neighbourhood and Public Services: Evidence from Local Government ODPM 2005). IT systems are now being developed that can be operated, accessed and managed by a range of partners and stakeholders. This means that you may soon be reporting, not to your local council on your performance, but direct to the local community itself.
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