The national indicator set should be drastically scaled back in favour of targets tailored to councils and agreed by local people, not central government, a new blueprint for inspections will propose.
The Local Government Association's (LGA) vision for the future of local accountability, due to be published for consultation at the end of this month, is set to advocate a radical reduction in the number of local government inspections.
It will also propose an expansion in the use of peer-based challenge and support, to replace the work of field forces.
Nick Easton, senior policy consultant at the LGA, said the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) has failed to reduce the inspections burden on councils.
"The focus of our proposals will be about moving towards evaluating the whole place," he explained. "CAA is a step in the right direction but we've still got all the separate inspections frameworks. We want to focus on the area assessment and explore whether we can eradicate some of the additional framework."
Easton said the plan would include suggestions on how to reduce the current 198 national indicators.
"A lot of the national indicators are based on processes, not outcomes, and a lot of them are deficient. It would be easy to reduce the indicators on that basis," he said.
John Chowcat, general secretary of the children's services union Aspect, admitted a reduction in inspections would give directors of children's services more time to focus on frontline service delivery.
He added that the LGA's proposals would also save cash, but warned that the rigour of inspections must not be compromised.
"Outcome-focused targets would be good but the credibility of inspections must be maintained," he said.
Gareth Davies, managing director of local government at the Audit Commission, urged councils to give CAA more time to bed in.
"This is only the first year of CAA. It's the first time that such an ambitious area assessment has been carried out, and we will learn from the experience to improve it," he explained.
The LGA's final proposals on a new inspections system will be published in the spring.
CAA inspections are conducted by a team of seven inspectorates, including the Audit Commission, Ofsted and the Commission for Social Care Inspection.
