The current system of assessing the performance of local authorities may be flawed, but performance monitoring is here to stay, the Audit Commission's associate director said last week.

David Browning told delegates at a performance management conference organised by Community Care and Starfish Consulting that there were a number of "difficulties" with the current system, but that performance management was not going to disappear so it was important those at the front line were not made to feel it was just an attempt to catch them out.

"Information is power. At the moment power lies with the regulators and central government. If you can get information out to front-line staff, that empowers them," he said.

Acknowledging the pressure faced by local authorities from an excessive number of targets and indicators, he said: "There's just too many of them. People talk about killer indicators - half a dozen or so that you have to hit or you'll get sacked."

Browning added that focusing on performance indicators on their own was unwise. "Use the indicators to check your position but use qualitative information to build up that picture," he advised.

Earlier Tony Hunter, junior vice president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, said that performance monitoring was now a way of life. "It's not an agenda we can ignore and if we do then it's at our peril. We can whinge about indicators but, overall, the concept of performance is critical to our futures. The truth is, performance matters to everybody," he said.