Different Regulatory Regimes in Different Parts of the UK? A Comparison of Narrative and Practice in Relation to Poor Performance in Local Government

Abstract

This article addresses whether there are differences in regulatory regimes in the devolved nations of the UK. It focuses on the divergence between rhetoric and practice around improving performance of local authorities. By discussing general understanding of public sector quality and the possible role for regulators in ensuring quality it shows that Scotland and Wales have developed different approaches since devolution of power in 1999. By comparing case studies from each of the nations it shows that practices vary much less than could be expected based on the previous research. This is likely to be due to shared underlying assumptions about performance and how to improve it, rather than the regulatory regimes themselves. It is argued that external pressure and support are vital, and that these functions can be damaged by reducing involvement of the state in safeguarding quality of public service delivery.

Key Words:

• Regulatory regimes
• performance improvement

Acknowledgements

Production of this article was supported by the ESRC Public Service Programme under research award RES-166-25-0020: ‘Responding to evidence of poor performance: explaining public organisations’ capacity to deal with failure’.

Notes

1. For ease of use the regulating organisation will from now on be referred to as the regulator, and the regulated organisation as the regulatee. This not only reduces the need to keep repeating the word organisation but the term regulator can be interpreted flexibly to refer to the collective of regulating organisations as well as to a single organisation.