Podcast transcript

This is Anne McCubbin here to talk with Carol Brown about our Best Value report on Renfrewshire Council. Carol, first of all, what’s this report about?

The report’s looking at how well Renfrewshire Council is responding to its statutory duty of Best Value. 

Best Value is basically looking at how well services are doing over time and ensuring that there’s continuous improvement. It also looks at whether services are centred around the people that are going to be using them.

So how’s the council doing overall?

Overall Renfrewshire’s doing well in that it’s developed a positive management culture to support continuous improvement. It has strong leadership and it’s been very enthusiastic in embracing the Best Value agenda.

Its management arrangements are very sound and services are generally well managed and focused on the people who are using them.

However the council needs to now shift its focus onto improving actual service performance so that the quality of services is seen to be improving for the users. 

And how are those council services doing?

There’s a mixed picture. Some services are performing very well, such as the education service, which is doing well. Levels of educational attainment are high. Environmental services have responded well to the modernised agenda and are reshaping the services around the customer. 

On the whole, however, services perform around the average level and there is scope for the council to do much to improve the quality of its services.

The Accounts Commission highlights a couple of services which show poor performance. These are criminal justice and care services for older people. These are areas that the council needs to focus on.

So what’s the council doing well? 

Elected members and senior management provide very clear strategic direction for the council. 

The council is very good at consulting the people who use its services.

It has a strong managerial culture and good progress is being made in arrangements for managing and developing its staff and also for joining up its procurement activity. 

It is performing reasonably well in equal opportunities and making progress in sustainable development.

It is particularly strong on customer care. This is an area where the council has made a considerable investment in improving the service.

And what could the council do better?

I think scrutiny is an area where the council could improve. While there’s much good scrutiny activity that takes place at board meetings and the council has a very effective scrutiny board, there needs to be more engagement across the range of political parties with the scrutiny board. 

Also elected members need better performance management information so they can improve their scrutiny.

The council also needs to take a broader approach to examining its options for how services are delivered. 

This should look at more extensive market testing and look at whether there are other ways of offering services in partnership with other organisations.

So you’ve published the report, what happens next?

The council’s very committed to Best Value and it fully identifies the improvement areas identified in the report. We believe that they will work to address the report findings and the next steps involve them producing a more detailed improvement plan to tackle the areas that require further work. We will then monitor that to ensure that it’s implemented within the council.

Thanks very much Carol.