Rationalising Regulation and Inspection
Professor Lorne Crerar, Chairman, Harper McLeod
Karen Watt, Director of Regulation and Inspection, Communities Scotland
Douglas Paterson, Chief Executive, Aberdeen City Council
Housing organisations can face inspections from up to 14 external scrutiny organisations. Against this background, the audience were asked if there is a place for external scrutiny and does it improve services.
Professor Crerar damned the current system of regulation inspections as burdensome, containing unnecessary duplication and containing serious omissions. He will publish a discussion document later this month. This will be followed by consultation with stakeholders before a final report on his recommendations for regulation in Scotland in published in July or August this year.
Karen Watt from Communities Scotland defended the need for inspections as a vehicle to prove service providers are providing good value for public money and providing services that are needed and improving. She also contended that inspections allow service providers to share good practice that benefits the housing sector as a whole. She also said that the majority (88%) of local authorities and housing associations welcome the inspection process and that every single organisation had been able to identify areas where they could improve their service as a direct result of the inspection process.
She then explained the steps that Communities Scotland is taking to improve and rationalise the inspection process. They have adopted a flexible and selective approach to inspection that will move away from the 5 year review cycle. Instead a regulatory plan should be drawn up for each organization assessing risk and performance. In this scenario, organizations performing well could be left alone to deliver, allowing efforts and resources to be concentrated where most needed.
Douglas Paterson gave a personal perspective from a local authority standpoint. He said that as long as local authorities and housing associations were spending public money they would have to prove that they were providing clear value for money and service improvements. While this is the case there was a need for inspections.
When faced with several simultaneous inspections, he was surprised to find that the inspectors were more than willing to work in partnership to reduce the need for duplication and the impact of the inspections.
He concluded that his experience and the review of inspection by Professor Crerar would result in more and more cooperation between inspectors and may even result in a reduced number of inspections for local authorities.