Bridging the accountability gap in public services

Recognising the benefits of such approaches, researchers from Cardiff Business School sought to address the lack of clear guidance on how to deliver joint scrutiny effectively.

A lack of accountability

Between 2000 and 2004, Professor Rachel Ashworth and Professor James Downe carried out an 'audit' of local government scrutiny under a new system for England and Wales.

While scrutiny was making a valuable contribution to policy review in some authorities, the audit revealed scrutiny was not holding executives to account effectively. Similarly, scrutiny of external organisations was a marginal activity for most authorities.

Further research raised concerns about the lack of accountability created by partnerships in the English regions.

It was clear to Professor Ashworth that increased funding, training and guidance was critical for politicians with responsibility for scrutinising large, financially significant organisations with wide-ranging remits.

In Wales, Professor Downe’s evaluation of scrutiny arrangements showed that effectiveness was driven by each council’s context and the extent to which council leaders valued scrutiny.

He found joint scrutiny was poorly developed and identified an acute need for councils to work together to generate added value by pooling their resources.

New ways of working

With research capacity building in this area, the Cardiff University team called on governments to provide adequate guidance to those delivering scrutiny to support and enable evidence-gathering processes.

In work commissioned by the Welsh Government, the researchers recommended providing a blueprint for collaborative scrutiny to help address practical challenges.

In 2012, they were asked to independently evaluate the effectiveness of the Welsh Government’s Scrutiny Development Fund.

While good practice across local authorities was inconsistent, the fund was providing opportunities for scrutiny teams to trial new ways of working by buddying with or shadowing colleagues from other areas and jointly commissioning better quality training to run in-house.

Their evaluation of the Scrutiny Development Fund informed Welsh Government’s decision to continue financial investment in this area and to deploy additional resource to strengthen joint scrutiny activity going forward.

A living resource

One of the projects to emerge from renewed support for the Scrutiny Development Fund was the Joint Scrutiny Handbook.

The Handbook was widely disseminated across the public sector in Wales and England in 2015 and 2016. Designed to be a living resource to keep pace with public policy developments, a second edition followed in 2017 including new case studies.

Since publication, the Handbook informed legislative proposals in the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act which established a new system of Corporate Joint Committees for Wales.

Crucially, it has also influenced practice through sector wide training and development.

In Wales, it has been used by councils in different ways: from prompting collaborations, to supporting the development of proposals and offering alternative options for joint scrutiny, to the use of checklists and case studies of good practice.

While in England, the Handbook has been used to improve accountability and scrutiny of Local Enterprise Partnerships and of health services.