Researcher: Prof Chris Skelcher (c.k.skelcher@bham.ac.uk), Prof Michael Hughes, Dr Pauline Jas, Dr David Turner, Dr Philip Whiteman and colleagues

Partners: Centre for Local and Regional Government Research, Cardiff Business School; MORI

Funder: Office of the Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM), Local Government Association (LGA), Audit Commission, and Improvement and Development Agency (IDeA)

Project aims

INLOGOV was commissioned to undertake a long-term evaluation of the processes of recovery in poorly performing local authorities in England. The study tracked processes of organisational turnaround and improvement in councils rated as poorly performing by the Comprehensive Performance Assessment between 2002 and 2005. It examined and assessed the impact of the council’s own recovery and improvement strategies as well as the role of central government and other national agencies. INLOGOV is undertaking further work on these issues through the ESRC Public Service Programme study Responding to evidence of poor performance: Explaining public organisations' capacity to deal with failure.

Research design

1. Evaluation of the recovery process and its impact in five poorly performing case study councils, together with a more limited analysis in another 10 councils
2. A study of the implementation and impact of the policies of government and national agencies in relation to poorly performing councils
3. An evaluation of the ODPM's pilot approaches to voluntary engagement with other councils.
4. Action-learning sets with managers from councils on: leading recovery; and on performance management, financial management and human resource management in recovering councils
5. Policy papers on themes and issues related to recovery in poorly performing local authorities
6. Dissemination to a range of policy-maker, practitioner and academic audiences.

Findings

The study concluded:

• Local authority performance is cyclical, and inspections need to establish the overall trajectory for each local authority
• The causes of performance decline are complex, and in some cases are caused by systemic features of a local authority
• External assessment only considers some aspects of performance, and may not accord with the view of the community or elected politicians
• Some local authorities have the capacity to manage poor performance and turnaround, while others need external incentives and support
• Government’s graduated strategy of ‘involvement’ was an effective method of facilitating turnaround, and avoided the need for statutorily-based intervention
• The involvement of the wider local government community and the development of innovative turnaround strategies was essential in delivering rapid improvement.

Outputs

Click here for outputs from the Learning from the experience of recovery: Turnaround and improvement in poorly performing local authorities project.