Podcast transcript

This is Anne McCubbin talking with John Baillie, Chair of the Accounts Commission, about the Accounts Commission’s findings and the Audit Scotland audit report on Best Value & Community Planning at Dumfries & Galloway Council.

John, first of all could you just summarise the Commission’s findings?

Yes indeed. There is positive performance at Dumfries & Galloway, but also serious weaknesses such as in political and managerial leadership and in managing performance. 

It is essential that the council takes action now to focus on addressing the weaknesses, and in improving leadership and direction. 

Ok, overall it’s fair to say that the findings are hard-hitting and they do raise serious concerns about the council. What are the main weaknesses you’ve identified here?

The Commission is especially concerned about weaknesses in political and managerial leadership, about service performance that is mixed and the council doesn’t have an effective performance management system. The councillors’ responsibilities for scrutinising performance are quite unclear. And finally the effective management of council staff is not properly developed.

There’s a line in the findings that says ‘there are serious weaknesses at Dumfries & Galloway Council which would be of concern in any circumstances but are even more concerning given the serious challenges facing the council.’ What is meant by that line?

What we mean by ‘significant challenges’ is that first of all it needs to increase the pace of improvement in its services at the same time as making sizeable budget savings.

It also needs to improve leadership and direction in order to achieve these aims. 

And in particular there’s an urgent need to make performance management effective so as to provide councillors and services with the information that’s needed to drive improvement. 

Now, like all other councils, all this has to be achieved at a time of recession when there is likely to be extra demand on both services and budgets. 

So are the financial pressures just caused by the recession or are there other factors here too?

No indeed, it’s not just the recession, there are other financial pressures. 

The council is facing significant financial challenges, with insufficient links between service and financial planning to help it deal with them. 

Vital processes including risk management, asset management and people management are poor or are undeveloped.

How can the council improve? What should it be doing?

Well it needs to do several things. It needs to improve the training of councillors to help them carry out their responsibilities. It needs to make performance management effective and to make sure everyone in the council is focused on continuous improvement. It also needs to improve councillors’ scrutiny of performance. And finally it needs to increase the pace of change in service performance and make these services more efficient.

So, thinking about what the council has available to build on, are there any particularly positive findings, areas where the council does perform well?

Well there were indeed positive findings. 

There is a good lead provided by the council in community planning. It has a clear vision for the area and there’s a new focus being provided by the area’s Single Outcome Agreement.

The local area committees work well. A number of major projects have been delivered. And finally, the council has sound financial controls.

So what happens next in the audit process?

Well the council needs to carefully consider and reflect on our findings. It now has a very good opportunity with the changes in senior management that were announced a few months ago, and with our clear recommendations, to focus on improvement and take action to ensure improvement happens. 

The really very important point is that it does this as quickly as possible. 

John, thanks very much.