PERFORMANCE REVIEW IN LOCAL GOVERNMENT
First published 1998 by Ashgate Publishing
Reissued 2018 by Routledge
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Copyright Rob Ball 1998
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A Library of Congress record exists under LC control number: 98071408
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-33278-2 (hbk)
ISBN 13: 978-1-138-33279-9 (pbk)
ISBN 13: 978-0-429-44636-8 (ebk)
Dedicated to the memory of my mother,
Beatrice Ball
I am particularly grateful to Dr Claire Monaghan for making a major contribution to the research described in this volume. Without Claires contribution, this book could never have been written. Thanks go to all my colleagues at the Department of Management and Organization at Stirling University for their support whilst working on this book. Also my thanks to the members and officers at Central Regional Council and Stirling Council whose discussions on policy matters greatly contributed to the background to this book. In particular, I should particularly like to acknowledge the support of Anne Wallace of Central Regional Council and Ann Strang of Stirling Council.
I would also like to thank those officers and members throughout the UK who generously contributed their time to the research work. The financial support of the Economic and Social Research Council is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks are also due to Elizabeth Fraser and Sharon Martin for typing the manuscript and converting it to camera ready form.
Finally I would like to thank my wife Moira and son Chris for putting up with my frequent unavailability whilst working on this manuscript.
As local government has become more policy driven and financially constrained, interest in performance review has increased. Such interest has recently been increased by the introduction of Best Value by the Government, since performance review is an integral part of this process.
This book attempts to place performance review in its appropriate political and managerial context. It also endeavours to establish its close relationship to the policy and service planning process. Existing work on performance indicators and the development of standard performance review systems are considered before discussing the authors empirical work in the performance review area. This work fields a range of insights into the successful development and operation of performance review systems gathered from Authorities who are working in this area. Major problems and difficulties and potential further developments was also identified.
The impact of the Citizens Charter on performance review in Local Government is also explored. The views of the author, that the way that the Charter has been applied to the local government area may prove damaging, are outlined.
In the final chapter likely future developments in the performance review field are examined. The principles of Best Value and the essential part played by performance review are highlighted. Owing to the introduction of Best Value, it appears that performance review work is likely to be an integral part of the work of all middle and senior managers in local government. It is hoped that this book will be of assistance in helping them tackle this task.
It is also hoped that undergraduate and postgraduate students studying public administration or public management will also find this book invaluable.
Introduction: the need for performance review
Organisations that operate in the traded sector of the economy have a range of measures available to evaluate their performance. Such measures include profit, market share and a range of financial ratios such as solvency and productivity ratios. Most of these performance measures are reasonably well established although their appropriate use still involves problems in interpretation and choice of a suitable timescale.
There are no such well established measures of performance in the non traded and public sector into which local authorities fall. Nevertheless, such approaches are necessary. If performance is not monitored then it is impossible to tell if reasonable progress is being achieved in delivering organisational objectives. Neither can the authority respond effectively to attacks from central government and elsewhere.
The need for performance review has long been recognised in local government. As far back as 1972 the Bains committee (which was advising on management structures following the 1974 local government reorganisation) advised setting up a specialist performance review sub-committee to complement the work of the policy and resources committee in achieving corporate objectives. In Scotland the Paterson committee (1973) suggested that performance review questions should be handled at the full policy and resources committee. Following local government reorganisation in the 1970s many authorities took the recommendation of the Bains and Paterson reports on board. Indeed, some commentators feel that in some cases authorities adopted some elements of these committee recommendations rather uncritically. In our studies we found a few systems that were introduced in the 1970s that were still in existence and that some current systems are modifications of earlier systems dating from this time.
Performance review was also considered in the Layfield report on local government finance published in 1976. This report was focused mainly on issues relating to local government finance, but also touched on efficiency and value for money questions. Performance review was considered by this committee to be a useful service to management, encouraging elected members to participate more effectively in the accountability process.
This book is concerned with the current state of the art with respect to performance review in British local authorities. It is based on a three year Economic and Social Research Council study, and focuses on experience of British local authorities in the performance review field, views of officers and members together with ideas for good practice.
It would clearly be rather myopic to focus on performance review in isolation. A number of issues are so closely associated with the performance review process that they have to be included in any comprehensive survey of this topic. Amongst these is the question of local authorities becoming a policy driven organisation. Without such an orientation the power of performance review becomes questionable. After all, if organisations have no idea what they are trying to achieve, why go to the effort of trying to monitor it? Planning issues relating to the development and implementation of policy objectives over a period of time are also closely related to performance review questions. Indeed, our studies indicate that the majority of local authorities had managed, to some extent, to integrate the operation of their performance review system with their planning system. Thus, we shall be exploring in depth the work of local authorities with both strategic planning and service planning systems.
