Tim Lund wrote:There was a presentation about this at the Perry Vale Assembly last night.
...
So, my follow up question for Robyn Fairman is whether she can share the CIPFA Value for Money information which she will be using in formulating proposals for Lewisham's Budget Challenge with us as members of the public.
I had the chance to raise this again with one of my local councillors earlier this week, and was told there was all the information I could possibly want available on Lewisham's own web site, and later relied to my follow up email about it with this link
http://www.lewisham.gov.uk/mayorandcoun ... mance.aspx
and concluded as follows:
Rather than just 'knowing' of these, through years of experience, I find it's much easier to make use of this Google-thingy. For example,
https://www.google.co.uk/webhp?sourceid ... 20councils
...found me the sort of thing you seem to be looking for. You should try it yourself sometime. I'm sure it will catch on.
It's possibly I am being a bit dim here, but it still hasn't led me to numbers to show how, all due factors taken into consideration, public spending on service X in LB Lewisham compares with spending on X in other local authorities - which is what I think we need.
What that Google search brings back is interesting nonetheless
for the prevalence of links to NHS and Scottish data (my paste here doesn't show it, but just below there's a link to the 'Scottish Local Government Benchmarking project'. I'm reminded of the reference in
Vernon Bogdanor's recent piece in the Standard, where he wrote
In Scotland, First Minister Alex Salmond ended local responsibility for the police, and established a single national police force. Devolution has meant centralisation and a weakening of local government.
The NHS is also a highly centralised organisation, with an identifiable Chief Executive, for England at least.
But following those links which do relate to English local government, the one from Leicestershire takes us back to the LGA link and Cipfa
Benchmarking is an important part of the way that Leicestershire County Council ensures it is providing good value services for the people of Leicestershire. It is used by most of the services the Council provides.
Leicestershire County Council has used a number of benchmarking arrangements in the past, including informal information sharing arrangements with other councils and specific tools provided by organisations such as the Chartered Institute of Public Financial Accountants (CIPFA).
LG Inform will be an important source of benchmarking information for the council in future. This is a web-based tool that brings together data on Local Government performance to support improvement across local authorities. When LG Inform is fully operational, benchmarking reports from the site will be published here.
but data from LG Inform, which may at some point in the future - "when fully operational" - be shared with the public, is not the whole story, since as well as LG Inform, there is LG Inform Plus
LG Inform Plus is a subscription service that allows authorities to drill down from top level strategic metrics in LG Inform to small area reporting information.
Returning to the first link sent, what's available from Lewisham on how they are meeting their targets, or not when they are not, is voluminous, and of possible interest to a highly localised policy wonk who is happy to enter the same mental world as inhabited by local councillors. But, as far as I can see, it includes nothing about why the targets are set as they are, which is where comparisons with other local authorities would be of interest.