Podcast transcript - Interview with John Baillie, Chair of the Accounts Commission

Scottish Borders Council: Best Value 2 pathfinder report

1. What are your overall messages for this council?

Scottish Borders Council provides good services and is well placed for future improvement. It works well with other organisations, it is improving well already and knows what more it needs to do to continue to improve. It now needs to develop its systems for managing its performance. 

2. Could you expand a bit on this?

Yes. Services are of good quality. They have improved in recent years and are well regarded by the local community. We particularly welcome the good and improving service delivery within social work and education services.

The council works well with its partners and, together they are achieving good outcomes for the community.

There is strong leadership and effective governance as well as clear strategic direction and the council also has a good awareness of its own capacity and need for improvement. 

The council has set a very challenging efficiency savings target. To help meet this it should develop fully its mechanisms for testing and scrutinising value for money across its services and firmly establish its processes for managing performance. 

3. So, summing up, what’s the council doing well?

Overall, there is strong leadership and effective governance, as well as clear strategic direction. The council also has good awareness of its own capacity and need for improvement. 

It also has good quality services and the council works well with its partners and together they are achieving good outcomes for the community in areas such as health improvement, jointly providing social care, community safety and child protection.

4. What needs to improve?

Well the council has a clear programme for improving how it conducts its business. Although progress against this has been slower than anticipated. So the council should make further progress with this programme and also develop its corporate processes to help it maintain standards and drive improvement. 

The council has set a very challenging efficiency savings target and so to help meet this it should fully develop its mechanisms for testing and for scrutinising value for money across its services, and firmly establish its processes for managing performance. There are some important areas highlighted in the 2007 Best Value report such as regulatory and technical services, roads and asset management that also still need attention.

5. Looking ahead, what happens next with the audit of this council?

The issues identified in this report will inform what is known as the Assurance and Improvement Plan for the scrutiny of Scottish Borders over the next three years. A plan is put together for each council after a shared risk assessment is carried out by all the audit and inspection agencies working jointly. The plan shows the scrutiny activity for Scottish Borders, for each agency.

John, thanks very much.