Abolition of community health councils has raised widespread concern amongst those who believe the NHS needs greater scrutiny. The King’s Fund has set out an agenda to secure public trust and ensure that the health service is responsive to needs. A top priority is for the voice of patients to be heard at every level of planning. This includes being heard in GP
surgeries to the corridors of Whitehall. Citizens also need to know what to expect from the NHS, how well it is working, and what to do if things go wrong. They should be able to see that the NHS is being properly scrutinised, locally and nationally.

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Measures taken by local councils to reduce the risk of fraud are starting to pay off. A survey by the Audit Commission found that the level of fraud detected in the year ending April 2000 went down by 30% compared to the previous year. This is the first time for 10 years that fraud detection has declined. Although the fraud detection rate is not necessarily a reliable indicator of the total level of fraud, the Commission believes that the decline is the result of better fraud prevention measures. Councils in London are singled out for making the greatest improvement in fraud prevention.Housing Benefit accounts for 92% of all fraud and it is here that fraud prevention measures are starting to bite. A major weakness in verifying claims for Housing Benefit is that all benefit and pensions systems function independently. The National Fraud Initiative was launched to plug this loophole and now data from other systems is matched to Housing Benefit data to identify where any other payments are already being made. This data matching process for example identified a claimant who was receiving an occupational pension and overclaimed 19,000 pounds Housing Benefit. It is believed that publicity about the effectiveness of data matching will be an increasing deterrent to fraud.

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Hondeghem A, Vandermeulen FThe International Journal of Public Sector Management, (UK), 2000 Vol 13 No 4

Start page: 342. No of pages: 12

Reviews the literature on competency management which suggests that there is a paradigm shift from a functional approach to human resource management to a competency-based approach, explaining that this results in a broader definition of what is expected of people and a focus on the type of staff needed for the future of organizations. Outlines the trends in human resource management (HRM) in the public sector and the implications for HRM of competency management, going on to describe competency management in the Flemish and Dutch civil service. Concludes that there are two approaches to competencies in the literature, an individual and an organizational approach, the individual approach being the predominant one as is illustrated in the case studies. Establishes, moreover, that competency management is introduced with a view to improving performance and developing a new culture.

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