[Ed Hammond]

This is an issue that I've gone into in some depth in our forthcoming publication on the recession.

Closer ties with regulators / inspectors / assessors are, I think, important. Too few authorities use inspection reports and other external material produced by inspectors to act as a springboard for their own research. Often I think that's due to a fear of duplication, but there are obviously ways around this problem - by monitoring the council's own response to poor results, for example.

There is the danger that scrutiny can end up promoting process-driven target chasing - but in fact, scrutiny could play a role in helping departments to translate inspection recommendations into more nuanced and meaningful high-level action plans for areas that need them.

One obvious example in practice is CAA in England. The Audit Commission want the relationship between scrutiny and CAA to be two-way, with scrutiny reports and evidence feeding into CAA itself, and CAA results (in particular, red/green flags) being used to inform future scrutiny work. Relevant info can be found at p36, para 108 of the CAA framework document.

[Keith Gordon]

I have recently adopted the habit of checking with internal Audit if they have done any work on any subject that scruitny is about to examine and we will follow up their findings in our work.

I confess that I haven't gone further; to other inspections; perhaps this will be the spur.

[tim gilling]

The former Healthcare Commission in England gave OSCs the opportunity to provide commentaries on NHS performance against standards as part of the Annual Healthcheck. Although lots of OSCs provided commentaries in order to inform the assessment of NHS bodies, not many OSCs used the assessment results to inform their work.

CfPS is currently in discussions with the new health and social care regulator in England (the Care Quality Commission) to strengthen the relationship between OSCs and the CQC so that OSCs can provide advice to the CQC thorughout the year and can influence the CQCs programme of national reviews.

The CQC will be attending the CfPS health scrutiny networking days (http://www.cfps.org.uk/what-we-do/events...ts/?id=33) and our healthy accountability forum to take these discussions forward.