Services for People with Disabilities

Audit Commission report on equipment provided for people with disabilities

Provision of equipment to people with disabilities is an unglamorous service that is important to millions of people. Until the Audit Commission identified the problems, of delay, out of date equipment, and poor communication, the service escaped Government attention. So no targets were set, and managers spending time on this service would be penalised for taking their attention away from Government priorities. Local democracy makes this sort of failure much less likely. Some of the millions of people receiving a poor service will talk to their elected representatives. Where a service is democratically accountable at local level, elected representatives are very effective at short-cutting management failings on individual cases. Where they find widespread cases of poor service that can be put right without huge injection of resources, they are also able to make sure that the service is improved for everybody.