a more coherent and integrated system of performance measurement in which all local councils are assigned, on the basis of Audit Commission-directed inspection and assessment, to one of five performance categories ( excellent, good fair, weak, poor-see Wilson and Game,2002:347). While the higher performers are rewarded with 'additional freedomes' and funding, the poor performers may be penalised, including transfer of functions to other providers or even placing the council into the hands of government-appointed administrators.
By and large, BV and also CPa can be seen as just another move of central government to impose on the local authorities a degree of centralist guidance and control which contiuse to ' fall out of step with the of Europe' (to apply and extend Gerry Stoker's dictum and verdict on the Thatcherite era also to the Blairite period, see stoker,1998). Yet it should be recognised that the centralist top-down rigour exercised by central government has obviously elicited some 'bottom-up' initiatives, activities and learning processes, not least through the Local Government Association (LGA) and the 'Improve-ment and Development Agency', established by LGA in 1998 (see Cochrane,2004).