Public Money &

Management
 Improving Local Government
Performance: One Step Forward
not Two Steps Back

Despite the clarity of purpose and

commitment to improving local government
performance that have been the hallmarks
of the Labour Governments public sector
strategy (see Local Government Act 2000;
IPPR, 1995; DTLR, 2001a), there is still a
noticeable lack of evidence and consensus
among academics and practitioners about
the effectiveness of the various approaches
deployed to date. While the research points
to the evolution of performance management
within local government undergoing a step
change in both importance and profile as a
result of the Governments modernization
agenda, there is a gap between the rhetoric
and the reality.
 CONTINUED.
Academic studies have questioned the
robustness of the theoretical underpinning
of the Governments approach, suggesting
that the emphasis on rational planning is at
odds with the empirical evidence about what
works and why (Boyne, 2001; Hyndman and
Eden, 2001). Furthermore the literature
indicates that the Governments predilection
and search for a uniform one size fits all
framework fails to recognize the inherent
difficulties of measuring performance in the
public sector (Wilson, 1995; Rouse, 1997;