Once upon a time, Mr and Mrs Smith lived in a council house. Their children went to a council-run school. Mrs Smith's mother lived in a council home for the elderly, and the district nurse who came to see her for a while was employed by the local authority. The gasman who read their meter and the doctor who treated Mr Smith's broken arm were public servants. The bus that took him to work was a publicly owned, publicly run service.
That world has gone. Mr and Mrs Smith are now tenants of a housing association. The school has become an autonomous city technology college and the council old people's home has closed. The gasman has been transferred to the private sector. The nurse works for a unelected local quango, albeit still part of the NHS; the doctor for an independent company that runs a diagnostic and treatment centre. The buses are run by a private enterprise.

Many of us have been slow to come to terms with the complexity of the new order.

It is a world where lines of accountability are often obscure, where the idea of what constitutes the public sector has become more opaque.

This is the world into which arm's-length management organisations have been born. They are part of a new breed of organisations reshaping our understanding of the public services. Today, it is possible to be a council tenant but find that in practice your landlord is semi-autonomous, to be an NHS patient in a private hospital, to attend a publicly funded but autonomous school.

Of course, at least in part, ALMOs are a response to the resistance of some tenants to stock transfer. Critics regard them as little more than a ruse to overcome that opposition and pave the way for transfer.

But it may be more complicated than that. The Audit Commission's recent report concluded that the first wave of ALMOs have not only been businesslike but have tailored their services to the needs of the local community. Most have made real efforts to improve their stock and meet the 2010 decent homes target. The implication is that they could be a solution in themselves, not just a step towards stock transfer.

This new world of diverse providers and arm’s-length organisations can seem obscure and convoluted to people who use the services

There are two possible valid reasons for wanting to move away from old-style public services. The first is to create a more efficient and more responsive service and the Audit Commission provides some early evidence that ALMOs may on the way to be achieving that. Sometimes it is hard to compare old with new because, if central government wants to encourage a particular form of delivery, it can load the dice in its favour.

For example, if the only way you can get investment into social housing is by stock transfer, it is hardly surprising councils have gone down this route and that the benefits of extra money have followed.

Second, though, new systems should improve accountability and public involvement and the ALMO model does attempt to do that. But by definition it takes housing a step away from the one transparent democratically elected local body – it must, like so many other changes, reduce the influence and scope of the council. The ALMO board made up of councillors, tenants and community representatives may indeed be closer to local people but it does dilute local authority accountability.

In the wider sense, accountability that is not understood can be remote. This new world of diverse providers, arm's-length organisations, not-for-profit agencies and so on can appear obscure and convoluted to the patients, pupils and tenants who use the services. When things are running well and the money is flowing in, that may not seem to matter much but it won't always be like that.

Source

Housing Today

Postscript

Niall Dickson is the BBC's social affairs editor