Kerry Lorimer examines the impact a year on from the publications of the Crerar Review
The Crerar Review heralded nothing less than a revolution for Scotland’s public sector. No more death by red tape. Public bodies freed to get on with the job without infestations of bureaucratic meddlers. No more exotically named quangos toiling away in brass-plaque offices in Edinburgh, churning out reports that no one reads.
In their place would be a sleek, streamlined system of external
scrutiny in which maximum assurance is provided to the public for
minimum hassle, generating huge savings to boot.
t was a daunting task. So, one year on, what impact has the review had on Scotland’s public sector and the bodies that scrutinise it?
Professor Lorne Crerar was the man commissioned just over two years ago to look at the way Scotland’s public bodies are inspected, audited and regulated. He had a particular remit to examine the labyrinthine complaints-handling system. Crerar was then expected to make recommendations for an improved system of external scrutiny.
In his final report, published last September, Crerar admits the whole exercise was more complex than it looked. To the casual observer, the solution is obvious – do away with superfluous scrutiny bodies and pocket the savings. But in the most ominous line in his 117-page report, he says: “I’ve reached the conclusion that the answer is not that simple
I’ve reached the conclusion that the answer is not that simple 
.”
Instead, the focus of his recommendations was on making external scrutiny more independent, proportionate, transparent, accountable and meaningful to the public.
For local government, Crerar said, there should be less reliance on external scrutiny, with self-assessment becoming the core tool of accountability. All cyclical inspection should be reviewed. Corporate assessment should be merged into the Best Value audit and a single body, probably the Accounts Commission, should oversee scrutiny in order to reduce the burden on councils.
For health, his recommendation was that an external scrutiny body should be handed some of the functions and resources of Quality Improvement Scotland (QIS), the Scottish Government’s health directorates and the Care Commission.
The most eye-catching recommendation, and the one latched onto by politicians and the media when the report was published, was Crerar’s assertion that his recommendations should allow “in the longer term” the establishment of a single national scrutiny body. He accepted that that level of change would require “significant commitment and direction” by ministers, Parliament and other key stakeholders – in particular, presumably, the bodies who would be voting for their own extinction.
The extent of the Government’s ambition will shortly become clear: an announcement is expected imminently from the Scottish Government about a structural reform that will reduce the number of scrutiny bodies and simplify the current landscape.
The indications are, though, that the pace of reform will be less big bang than continental drift. The notion of a single scrutiny body, for example, was binned almost immediately on the basis that such a body would be monolithic, unwieldy and lacking in specialist expertise.
The only public pronouncement has been a statement to Parliament in June by John Swinney, Cabinet Secretary for Finance and Sustainable Growth, saying the number of scrutiny bodies – 29 were identified – will be reduced “over time” by a quarter.
As soon as ongoing rounds of inspection are completed, Swinney said, all cyclical inspection of local government and health will be ceased or scaled back, and the timing and intensity of any future inspections will be based on an explicit assessment of risk.
In the meantime, the Accounts Commission has been gearing up for a more macho role in keeping with Crerar’s recommendation that the body should supervise local government scrutiny in order to reduce the burden on individual councils. As yet, no decision has been made on how this ‘gatekeeper’ function will operate. One possibility is that Audit Scotland, in conjunction with other inspection bodies, will carry out annual risk assessments to determine the level of scrutiny required by each local authority.
Other notable developments: HM Inspectorate of Education has reduced inspection times and pre-inspection work for councils and schools, while the Scottish Housing Regulator has stopped cyclical inspections for housing associations and will do the same for councils after the initial round has been completed.
Swinney described progress to date as “promising” but said the pace of progress must increase. “We are determined to embed a culture of continuous improvement in public services and move to a risk-based, proportionate level of scrutiny,” he told MSPs.
Behind the scenes, five action groups have been working on specific elements of Crerar’s recommendations.
Composed of leading figures from central and local government, these groups have been examining accountability and governance; user focus; the reduction of burdens; policy and approach and the complaints-handling system. The groups are overseen by a programme board, made up of senior representatives of the Scottish Government, Audit Scotland and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities.
The complaints-handling group, the first to conclude its work, has produced clear recommendations for reform. Chaired by Douglas Sinclair of the Scottish Consumer Council, the group wants to see a standardised complaints-handling process for each sector. Priority would be given to the areas that attract most complaints and in which service failure poses the highest risk, namely, social care and local government. The group envisages a beefed up role for the Scottish Public Services Ombudsman, whose remit could expand to cover complaints about prisons, police, buses and water, as well as the work currently done by local authority complaint review committees. No new complaints-handling bodies should be set up without considering whether the SPSO could take on that function, the group concluded.
 Given the preponderance of complaints-handling bodies among the 29 under review, reform along those lines would put the Government well on its way to its target, as well as scoring valuable points with the consumer lobby.
The work of the reducing burdens group, yet to be published, will also be highly influential. The main thread will be the shift away from external scrutiny in favour of self-assessment, initially within local government. That is a move already incorporated in the reformed Best Value system (BV2) which will be introduced for local government next year with a view to eventually rolling it out across the public sector.
Also on the cards is a new website, possibly built on the One Scotland portal, which will function as a single source of information for scrutiny across the whole public sector. The site would aim to address the gripe that the same information has to be presented again and again for different scrutiny bodies. It would also make it easier to plan and coordinate scrutiny activity.
The third group, user focus, will develop ways of involving service users more directly at every stage of the scrutiny process, in particular, those from groups with which public bodies traditionally find difficult to engage. That could include easier to read reports and greater use of grading systems to make the findings more accessible to the public.
The fourth, accountability and governance, will look at the case for replacing the current plethora of governance arrangements – executive agencies, advisory bodies, tribunals and so on – with a single status. The major issue will be how independence can be safeguarded, not just from the bodies under scrutiny but undue political interference.
The final group, policy and approach, is expected to set out a framework for the organisation of scrutiny in the future, in contrast to the ad-hoc approach that has characterised the sector to date. Whether scrutiny is required and if so, what form it should take – for example, registration, regulation or periodic inspections – will be the key issues, together with an attempt to analyse the costs and benefits of scrutiny.
Among those who will be most affected by the outcomes of the review, expectations are high.
“In local government we’re encouraged that the Government has put a lot of energy and resources into following up the recommendations of Crerar,” says Sue Bruce, chief executive of East Dunbartonshire Council, who sits on the policy and approach group. “We’re looking forward to seeing what the overall outcomes are in terms of a more proportionate approach to the scrutiny of local government.”
Jon Harris, strategic director at COSLA, who sits on the reducing burdens group and the programme board, says anyone hoping to see all scrutiny disappear at a stroke, will be disappointed. But the work done to date is a “significant step forward”, he says.
“It has been quite a lot of work, and bringing it together has been quite a challenge, but it has been a positive experience,” says Harris. Scrutiny bodies, government and the bodies being scrutinised have all had to rethink the way they work. “It hasn’t been an easy process but we have ended up with something everyone is willing to sign up to. Everyone has had to move - that was made clear up front.”
Others within local government have noted the irony of a process designed to bust bureaucracy, itself being so cumbersome.
Progress to date has struck some as modest given the ambitions of the original review. There was, apparently, “a sharp intake of breath” among chief executives when the highlights of the work done to date were revealed at a meeting of the Society of Local Authority Chief Executives and Senior Managers.
Dave Jones, chief executive of Clackmannanshire Council and member of the reducing burdens group, says the group’s good work has been undermined by the reluctance of inspectorates to step back until the next round of inspections is complete, as far off as 2011.
“It’s very clear that while the senior people in the inspection agencies can see they have to reduce the weight of inspection, they won’t let go easily,” he says. “They will cling on and cling on.”
What is certain is that the breadth of the Crerar Review, and the energy expended in following it up, have raised expectations across the public sector against which government will be judged. Until ministers deliver on those aspirations, the bonfire of the quangos risks being seen as a damp squib.
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