Light touch performance regime for flood hit councils

Published	14 November 2007

Local Government Minister John Healey announced plans today to ensure that councils severely affected by this summer's floods will not be unfairly penalised through their performance rating system.

The performance system is important because well performing councils can enjoy financial rewards, greater freedoms on spending, and wider powers to raise funds by trading services that can be used to improve services or reduce council tax bills.

John Healey described the new approach set out in a statement of principles published today, saying that central Government and the relevant inspectorates will recognise the unusual strain placed on severely affected authorities and would be able to use common sense where the evidence clearly shows a temporary dip in performance against a previously improving trend to ensure that the authority is not unfairly penalised.

The common sense approach to assessing the performance of authorities worst hit by the floods will ensure that they able to focus on the recovery effort and are not overly burdened by performance requirements during this time. The new approach was set out in a statement of principles published today.

Local authorities were central to the response and recovery operations for the floods which caused widespread damage to homes, businesses, and key public services. With 48,000 homes affected and high levels of contaminated waste, some councils may struggle to meet key service targets such as waste collection, recycling and decent homes.

John Healey said it would be unfair to penalise authorities for temporary dips in performance caused by the floods. But equally that wholesale changes to targets would not be appropriate or what local people would expect given the Government's determination to see all councils improve and reform public services.

While on a visit to Hull to get an update on the flood recovery work taking place John Healey said:

"This summer's floods caused misery for thousands of people with widespread damage across large parts of the country. Thousands of homes and businesses were affected with further damage to schools, roads and other public buildings.

"Local authorities, working with emergency services and other agencies, responded magnificently under very difficult circumstances. Government has provided up to £57million to support the local recovery operation so far - and more financial help will follow.

"But we recognise that we can also provide support in other ways. It is important that national performance requirements on local authorities do not act as a barrier to the process of getting their systems and services back in place following the floods. Some councils have raised this concern with me so I am ensuring we take a common sense approach so we do not penalise authorities for temporary dips in performance resulting from the flooding.

"However at the same time I want councils to be absolutely clear that we continue to maintain momentum on existing service improvement, so I will not simply change the targets as some have suggested, especially given we are introducing the new performance framework and indicator set over the next year. So this is about striking the right balance between fairness and delivering better services for local communities.

"We want the process for agreeing flexibilities to be transparent and clear, as much for the benefit of those local authorities not affected by the flooding as those who have been. It also needs to be responsive and flexible, with minimum bureaucracy, while remaining consistent and fair across regions."

The Audit Commission are working with Government to use their consultation on Comprehensive Performance Assessment methodology in the New Year to outline the approach they will take for flood affected areas. They have confirmed that they will be sensitive to the affects of the floods in assessing the performance of local authorities in severely affected areas. The Audit Commission have stated that they are willing to allow some flexibility but they also need to ensure that their methodology is clear and consistent.

Background

1. Best value Performance Indicators exist because of Best value, which requires local authorities to seek to achieve continuous improvement by having regard to the efficiency, effectiveness and economy of their service delivery. It is important that these principles remain in place despite the disruption caused by the flooding, as local authorities need to have contingency plans in place to enable them to deal with events outside their control and still deliver services.

2. A Statement of Principles outlining the Government's approach to the negotiation of flexibilities for performance management by flood-affected councils was published today. The statement is as follows:

Statement of prinicples on performance management flexibilities

While performance management flexibilities will need to be agreed on a case-by-case basis with each area, the following are some broad principles to inform the engagement with authorities affected by floods:

Main principles

1. Where the impact of the floods results in an unusual strain being placed on local authorities and their partners, government departments and the relevant inspectorates will recognise this when considering performance assessment data. In particular we would expect common sense to be used when reacting to any temporary dips in performance against an improving trend or previous good performance.

2. Nonetheless, the best value duty to secure continuous improvement still applies and citizens have a right to expect that disruption to services will be minimised as far as possible. So, we would only expect flexibilities to be agreed in areas significantly affected by flooding and where clear evidence can be demonstrated as to why flexibilities are necessary.

3. Sound information remains a critical underpinning to understanding and managing performance, so authorities should continue to measure and report on their performance.

4. Negotiation of new Local Area Agreements from autumn 2007 to spring 2008 will not be delayed. Individual authorities may wish to discuss with their GO any additional support they may need to do this.

5. In line with practice in other cases where the performance of authorities and partners has been affected by events beyond their control, we cannot agree to renegotiate the targets against which reward grant is paid, either from Local Public Service Agreements or the reward element of Local Area Agreements.

6. However, we are looking at the possibility of allowing some flexibility in terms of assessment of performance attained if affected by flooding. This would be done through provision of direct evidence to independent assessors that a target would have been met in full or the threshold for reward attainment exceeded if flooding had not occurred. This would not result in adjustment of a target; rather, a change in the performance judged to have occurred.

Handling procedures

1. GO Locality Managers will be the channel for any discussions held between relevant departments, inspectorates and local authorities to achieve agreement on individual issues.

2. Inspectorates are responsible for the independent judgements they make and the methodologies on which they do so. It will therefore be for them to determine what reasonable flexibilities they can agree, within the boundaries of the principles outlined above. This might include cancelling or rescheduling an inspection, or taking account of the impacts of the flooding in reaching any judgements.

3. While we recognise the impacts of flooding can take several years to fully repair, we believe performance management flexibilities should be limited to the period that authorities are dealing with the immediate impacts and setting up their longer term arrangements. Therefore, we would expect flexibilities to be limited to within the financial year 2007/08 (recognising that this also covers inspections and assessments made in 2008/09 using 2007/08 data).