Scottish Borders Council: The audit of Best Value and community planning – transcript

Simon: Hi, we’re here today to talk to Lesley McGiffen, Portfolio Manager at Audit Scotland. She’s here to talk about Audit Scotland’s latest report the Best Value audit of Scottish Borders Council. So Lesley, what’s this report about?

Lesley:  This report is on the audit of Best Value and community planning in Scottish Borders Council.  

Simon:  So in a nutshell, how’s the council doing?

Lesley:  Scottish Borders is an ambitious council with a clear vision, sound strategic planning and strong leadership.  It has focussed on improving its processes following earlier problems but still has some work to do to improve services.

Simon:  You mentioned there some earlier problems and there were some quite high profile problems in the education department in 2000 and with the care of vulnerable adults in 2002.  What progress has the council made on those issues.  

Lesley:  The Chief Executive has focussed on building a strong corporate management team and has provided the drive and commitment to secure improvement.  The council has good self awareness and the experience it had gained over the last 6-7 years has led to the development of an ambitious programme of change for the future.  In 2000 an overspend came to light in the education service the council has invested significantly since then to prevent a recurrence of these failures and good progress has been made in responding to the findings of inspection and audit reports.  The council has now built up its senior management capacity and developed appropriate political and management monitoring systems and processes.  In 2002 a high profile case of abuse came to light which highlighted fundamental shortcomings in the councils learning disabilities services.  A joint report by the Mental Welfare Commission and social work services inspectorate was undertaken in 2004.  Inspectorate report recommendations were incorporated into existing improvement programmes and the department has undergone a major programme to review its practices, train its employees and reorganise its structures.

Simon:  You refer to there being a gap between the council’s ambitions and its current delivery of services. Are you saying that services are poor at Scottish Borders Council or are you saying something else there?

Lesley:  In all councils that we look at there are strengths and areas for improvement and Scottish Borders Council is no different in that respect.  The council is ambitious we’re not saying that anything is wrong but services are not quite at a level that match the council’s own ambition.  

Simon: So what does the council do well then?

Lesley: The council does well in providing education, refuse collection and recycling.  

Simon: And what does it need to improve?

Lesley:  The services Scottish Borders Council needs to improve on include the planning departments, maintenance of roads, some aspects of criminal justice and delivery of the planned strategic review of community care.  

Simon: So what happens now?

Lesley: The council already has good self-awareness about what needs to be done.  The next step for them is to update their improvement plan and begin delivering on it.

Simon:  Thanks for your time, Lesley.