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Social care would be one of very few services to face external inspection under proposals from the Local Government Association.

Inspections should be made where public safety or harm to users is an issue such as in "services to vulnerable individuals" and "residential settings", says a document drawn up by the LGA and the Improvement and Development Agency.

Under the blueprint, the current system of annual assessments using national targets would, in the main, be replaced by annual self-assessments by councils and "peer challenge" by other local authorities using locally agreed targets.

The LGA and IDeA, rather than central government, would be responsible for tackling poor performance, while national targets would be retained for "issues of inescapable national concern", but these would largely be assessed locally.

Driving Improvement: a New Performance Framework for Localities from www.lga.gov.uk