ABSTRACT
All organisations are the product of their history and the advisory service is no exception. It has grown slowly since it was established in a few authorities towards the end of the last century but the pace of change has accelerated and the service has been particularly affected by recent changes. In 1974 the reorganisation of local government gave many LEAs the chance to rethink the role and structure of their advisory services and there was considerable development at that time. Unfortunately the reorganisation was followed fairly quickly by the oil crisis and recession and by falling rolls so that many of the planned posts fail to materialise but other posts were lost to the service, sometimes through redeployment, sometimes through redundancy and sometimes by not filling the posts of people who had left. This left many teams with an unsatisfactory structure. It also led to the allocation of responsibilities to inspectors/advisers addition to their normal work and for which they were, in some cases, not qualified. For example, a study of the responsibilities held by inspectors/advisers in 1979 found some people with responsibility for half a dozen subjects but expert in only one.
