Community Planning Partnership – national report. Podcast transcript
I’m here with John Baillie, chair of the Accounts Commission to talk about a new report, a national review of Community Planning in Scotland.
John, can you tell me what this report is all about?
Well, we’ve had Community Planning Partnerships in Scotland for ten years now. They were set up to bring together councils, health boards and other public, business and voluntary bodies to sit down together to tackle complex problems in local communities. 
And these are real, nitty gritty problems that matter to people – reducing crime, how schools are doing, providing jobs, joining up health and social care, reducing social inequalities.
The review looks back at how these partnerships were doing, and, more importantly, how they could do better in the future. 
So how have they done so far?
It’s been a bit of mixed bag. They have not met the ambitious goals set for them.  But there have been good examples of partners working together and delivering good results at local level but these have been largely based on one-off project funding, rather than from involvement of community planning partnerships.
Now community planning has also been seen as a council-driven exercise and not a core part of the day job for other partners who have little incentive to become fully involved. 
Some progress though has been made in consulting communities about their views but there is a long way to go before the potential of local people to participate, shape and improve local services is actually realised.
And what’s the outlook for the future?
Well, community planning in Scotland really stands at a crossroads. There is now a unique opportunity to seize the nettle and make it work effectively. The Scottish Government and councils are keen on this but it will need strong and sustained leadership and support from them to deliver it.
We are also, as everyone knows, living in tough times when all budgets are being squeezed so that’s another important prompt, if you like, for seeing how we can do things better by working more closely together. 
But it’s not going to be easy. The problem is there have been clear priorities or real priorities set. Their boards have no substantial authority to make decisions that commit partners to action and allocating resources from their organisations’ budgets. And if you look at it from a local perspective, the Scottish Government’s public sector reform agenda does not seem well joined up.
Now on the plus side, there is that opportunity here to establish a new system enabling partnerships to make a real difference on the ground. This requires fundamental changes in culture, shifting mainstream resources and seeing the wider benefit of necessary changes to make it work
So what do you want to see happen next?
Well, the review sets out the challenges, the many challenges, that lie ahead. It is now up to councils and all their partners and the government to make effective community planning a reality.  And it they do succeed, I think communities around Scotland will feel the benefit. 

John, thank you very much.