Perth and Kinross Council: the audit of Best Value and Community Planning – podcast transcript

This is Anne McCubbin talking with Anne MacDonald about our Best Value audit report on Perth and Kinross Council.

Anne: how is the council doing?

Overall Perth and Kinross is a well managed authority which seeks to continually make improvements. We found that it works well with partners and it also involves employees in making improvements. 

That said it’s not perfect, which it recognises. It needs to improve some aspects of services, particularly in dealing with planning applications and education attainment. Again, it is aware of this and well placed to tackle these issues.

So what’s the council doing well?

We found a lot of good practices in the council and there is a real appetite to improve services for the people of Perth and Kinross. In particular we found that members and senior officers work well together, staff are involved in reviewing practices and implementing change.

We also found that strategic partners such as Tayside Police and the NHS are involved in planning for the area. We were particularly impressed by the parliamentary forum, which we believe is unique to Perth and Kinross. MPs, MSPs and MEPs meet regularly with political group leaders and senior officers to discuss and scrutinise important issues.

Good financial management in the council has enabled the smooth introduction of single status and the start of the school replacement programme.

We also found that the performance of services is monitored across the council and members know how they are doing. The community is involved and progress is reported back to them in an open, clear and balanced way.

So it’s doing well on those things, but what does it need to improve on?

Overall the council is doing a lot of good work. The council’s rate of service improvement is good but further improvement is required.

Performance in dealing with planning applications has been poor in recent years and a number of factors have contributed to this. For example, a growth in the number and complexity of applications the council has received, a high number of public inquiries which have taken up a lot of planning officer time and there have also been problems with recruitment. All of this combined has resulted in a growing backlog.

The council has however reviewed the service, introducing some restructuring and streamlining of responsibilities. They have also introduced an initiative to ‘grow your own staff’. We found these changes were making a difference but they need to be sustained over time.

Education attainment has been an improving story. Pupils are currently achieving appropriate national levels of attainment but the council could still make improvements. This is recognised by the council within its priorities.

A particular challenge for the council is the need to provide affordable housing. It has the highest population growth projections, including a number of migrant workers. A working group has been established but difficult decisions lie ahead for the council.

Other areas of improvement that we noted include the need to use feedback from communities to shape services in the future. We’d also like to see the introduction of workforce planning and for employee reviews to be completed.

Finally we would like to see the council undertake broader reviews and benchmarking to ensure its services are delivering best value.

So what happens next with this council?

The council knows what it needs to do to improve and agrees with the improvement agenda included in the report. It will now be working on a detailed improvement plan for agreement with the Commission.

 Progress against this plan in terms of implementation of actions and impact of the action on service performance will be monitored by the local auditor as part of the council’s annual external audit, as is the case with all councils.

Anne, thanks very much.