The Government has made the improvement of public services one of its key objectives, and is committed to stepping in to 'intervene' in failing services at local level. This study focuses on the impact that such interventions have had, and makes recommendations to Government, national bodies, councils and to the Commission itself about how to improve the way in which interventions are carried out in future.
The study takes as its definition of intervention 'cases where Government departments and/or ministers have taken action that they would not otherwise have taken as a result of a critical inspection report or other external source of evidence of service failure'. Using this definition there were 41 interventions in social services departments or local education authorities (LEAs) in England between 1997 and 2001. In addition, there has been one example of an intervention following a referral to ministers by the Audit Commission. These 42 interventions took place in 38 councils (25 per cent of the total number of upper tier councils - those with responsibility for education and social services).
Interventions involve one tier of democratically-elected government intervening in the affairs of another tier, which raises difficult questions of democratic legitimacy and accountability. These questions arise because the electoral process has proved slow to produce change, even where councils have provided poor services for many years.