Home » Research Projects » Comparing for Improvement: The Development and Impact of Public Services Audit and Inspection in UK Local Government
One size fits all?
What can be learned from the divergence in performance testing regimes between the different countries in Britain?
Education, health, the criminal justice system and local government in the UK have all been the focus of the quest for public service improvement over the last decade. Each has gained quantum increases in public spending, but has also been exposed to massive and unprecedented levels of scrutiny in the form of an explosion in performance testing regimes and internal and external audits.
We know less about the impact and benefits of such inspection than about its cost. The six main inspectorates in these domains cost about £600m a year to run, without taking account of compliance costs and other factors, such as distraction of frontline staff from their work, and overlap and under-lap between different inspectors. Accordingly, we need to know more about the possible effects of such inspection on public service performance.
This study will look at how the different forms of performance improvement and external audit and inspection of local government operate in England, Scotland and Wales. It will examine what improvements are achieved and sustained by inspection, what is the relation between performance and the volume of inspection, and the relative advantages of each inspection regime.
What the research means to policy-makers and the wider community
- Policy makers in local government, health and social care in all of the countries of Great Britain will be able to draw on systematic evidence about the impacts of the different external audit and inspection regimes.
- Given overseas interest in performance testing and audit, the study will be of considerable interest to scholars and practitioners overseas and the research team will exchange ideas and findings with teams in Australia, Canada, New Zealand and South Africa working on similar issues.
Research Methods
The study will:
- Use performance data in the four domains in the three countries to analyze rates of improvement in the quality and efficiency of services over a five-year period;
- Identify the different approaches taken to audit and inspection in the four domains in the three countries on the basis of published academic writing;
- Put this information together to assess the relationship between evidence of service improvement and the volume and style of inspection across the different countries and service domains.
