Community planning Turning ambition into action
Prepared by Audit Scotland
November 2014

The Accounts Commission
The Accounts Commission is the public spending watchdog for local government. We hold councils in Scotland to account and help them improve. We operate impartially and independently of councils and of the Scottish Government, and we meet and report in public.
We expect councils to achieve the highest standards of governance and financial stewardship, and value for money in how they use their resources and provide their services.
Our work includes:
•	securing and acting upon the external audit of Scotland’s councils and various joint boards and committees
•	assessing the performance of councils in relation to Best Value and community planning
•	carrying out national performance audits to help councils improve their services
•	requiring councils to publish information to help the public assess their performance.
You can find out more about the work of the Accounts Commission on our website: www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/about/ac 

Auditor General for Scotland
The Auditor General’s role is to:
•	appoint auditors to Scotland’s central government and NHS bodies
•	examine how public bodies spend public money
•	help them to manage their finances to the highest standards 
•	check whether they achieve value for money. 
The Auditor General is independent and reports to the Scottish Parliament on the performance of:
•	directorates of the Scottish Government  
•	government agencies, eg the Scottish Prison Service, Historic Scotland 
•	NHS bodies
•	further education colleges 
•	Scottish Water 
•	NDPBs and others, eg Scottish Police Authority, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service.
You can find out more about the work of the Auditor General on our website: www.audit-scotland.gov.uk/about/ags 

Audit Scotland is a statutory body set up in April 2000 under the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000. We help the Auditor General for Scotland and the Accounts Commission check that organisations spending public money use it properly, efficiently and effectively.

Summary
there have been significant national developments in community planning

Key messages 
1.	Since the publication of the Statement of Ambition, there is a strong sense of renewed energy nationally and locally to improving community planning. Community planning continues to become more of a shared enterprise, with more active participation by partners and evidence of more shared ownership of the priorities in Single Outcome Agreements (SOAs). Although aspects of community planning are improving, leadership, scrutiny and challenge are still inconsistent. There is little evidence that CPP boards are yet demonstrating the levels of leadership and challenge set out in the Statement of Ambition. 
2.	The Scottish Government and the National Community Planning Group (NCPG) have taken steps to promote the importance of community planning across government and in partner organisations. The National Community Planning Group is now starting to focus its activity on the areas where national leadership is most needed. It recently issued a set of key principles that are intended to set out an ambitious but realistic improvement agenda for community planning that draws on the practical experience of implementing the Statement of Ambition by CPPs. It now needs to set out what this refocused approach to community planning means for the Statement of Ambition, its expectation of CPPs and how success in implementing these principles will be assessed. Alongside that, the Scottish Government needs to demonstrate a more systematic approach to implementing its outcomes approach by clarifying the links between longer-term outcomes, its priorities and performance measures across all policy areas. 
3.	Many CPPs are still not clear about what they are expected to achieve and the added value that can be brought through working in partnership. Although SOAs have improved, many still do not set out the specific improvements CPPs are aiming to achieve. They also lack a focus on how community planning will improve outcomes for specific communities and reduce the gap in outcomes between the most and least deprived groups in Scotland. This reflects a wider ambiguity both nationally and locally about the extent to which the focus of community planning should be on local needs or about delivering national priorities. CPPs need to use local data to help set relevant, targeted priorities for improvement that will address inequalities within specific communities. 
4.	CPPs are starting to better understand what resources they have available to deliver their SOA. They have begun to identify how partners use their resources, such as money and staff, in particular priority areas or specific communities. But discussions about targeting these resources at their priorities and shifting them towards preventative activity are still in the early stages. CPPs do not yet know what a strategic approach to prevention will look like, and in many areas the evidence base for this is underdeveloped. The current pace and scale of activity is contributing to an improved focus on prevention but is unlikely to deliver the radical change in the design and delivery of public services called for by the Christie Commission. 
5.	At present, there is no coherent national framework for assessing the performance and pace of improvement of CPPs. This means that there is no overall picture of how individual CPPs are performing and what progress is being made towards the effective implementation of the Statement of Ambition. The Scottish Government is now starting to use existing performance management and accountability arrangements to monitor the contribution of public bodies to community planning. But it is not yet consistently holding central government bodies or the NHS to account for their performance within CPPs. 
6.	The Statement of Ambition places community planning at the core of public service reform, but many CPPs are not clear about what their specific role in these programmes should be. While some CPPs have a good overview of public service reform in their area, CPP oversight of and engagement with some important aspects of reform, such as the integration of health and social care services and national reform programmes such as the Early Years Collaborative, remains underdeveloped. Scottish Government guidance is not clear enough about the specific role that CPPs should play in the implementation of public service reforms.

Recommendations
The National Community Planning Group should:
•	set out what its refocused approach to community planning means for the Statement of Ambition and its performance expectations of CPPs. 
The Scottish Government and COSLA should: 
•	clarify their performance expectations for CPPs in the context of the National Community Planning Group’s refocused approach to community planning
•	develop a national framework for assessing and reporting progress in improving community planning and implementing the Statement of Ambition
•	work with the Improvement Service and other national improvement agencies to establish and coordinate a programme of well-targeted, practical support that will help CPPs to implement the Statement of Ambition effectively. 
The Scottish Government should: 
•	ensure that future guidance on the implementation of public service reform programmes is clear about the specific role that CPPs should play and the contribution they are expected to make in supporting improved outcomes 
•	implement its outcomes approach more systematically across all policy areas 
•	ensure that its review of national performance measurement arrangements streamlines approaches and creates a stronger prevention and outcome focus
•	hold central government bodies and the NHS to account more consistently for their performance within CPPs
•	review the role of location directors. 
CPPs should: 
•	strengthen the effectiveness of the leadership, challenge and scrutiny role at CPP board level 
•	streamline local partnership working arrangements and ensure they are aligned with local improvement priorities 
•	ensure that local community planning arrangements are clear about who is responsible for: 
≠	agreeing the priorities of the CPP and SOA
≠	allocating resources and coordinating activity
≠	implementing activity
≠	scrutinising performance and holding partners and others to account for their performance

•	work with the new health and social care integration joint boards to develop services that meet the needs of local people and support SOA priorities 
•	set clearer improvement priorities focused on how they will add most value as a partnership, when updating their SOA
•	use local data on the differing needs of their communities to set relevant, targeted priorities for improvement
•	start to align and shift partners' resources toward agreed prevention and improvement priorities.

Background
1.	Community planning is the process by which councils and other public bodies work together, with local communities, businesses and voluntary groups, to plan and deliver better services and improve the lives of people who live in Scotland. The Local Government in Scotland Act 2003 provides the statutory basis for community planning. Community planning is led by Community Planning Partnerships (CPPs). There are 32 CPPs, covering each council area, which include representatives from the following: 
•	The council: It has a statutory duty to 'initiate, facilitate and maintain' community planning. It is therefore responsible for taking the steps necessary to ensure community planning takes place. 
•	Statutory partners: NHS boards, Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and Regional Transport Partnerships.
•	Other partners: These include other public bodies, further and higher education institutions, voluntary groups, community groups and business organisations.
2.	Scotland’s public sector, like those across the UK and beyond, is facing pressure on budgets because of a combination of increased demand for services and reduced funding.1 At the same time, there continues to be a wide gap in outcomes between and within communities. For example, healthy life expectancy, crime levels, and the chance of being in work are better in wealthier communities than the more deprived ones. Significant changes are needed in how public services are provided to meet these challenges. 
3.	In March 2012, the Scottish Government and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) published a shared statement on their expectations for community planning (the Statement of Ambition).2 It drew on the findings of the Christie Commission and highlighted that significant improvements to community planning were needed to respond to the challenges of reducing public finances while demand for services increased, and to address the widespread inequalities of outcomes seen across communities in Scotland.3 The Statement of Ambition places CPPs at the centre of public service reform and emphasises the important role they have to play in delivering better outcomes for communities by: 
•	planning and providing services better to meet the differing needs of local people and to reduce inequalities within populations and between areas
•	changing the way services are provided so that they are more focused on preventing problems rather than dealing with them when they happen
(eg, reducing reoffending)  
•	getting local communities more involved in planning and providing local services 
•	providing the foundation for local oversight of implementation of the Scottish Government’s wider public service reform initiatives, such as health and social care integration.
Recent developments in community planning 
4.	Since our report Improving community planning in Scotland in March 2013, there have been significant national developments in community planning, all of which we explore further in this report:4 
•	In summer 2013, all 32 CPPs developed new Single Outcome Agreements (SOAs) based on guidance reflecting the Statement of Ambition.5 SOAs are agreements between the Scottish Government and CPPs that set out how CPPs will work towards improving outcomes for local people. Each draft SOA went through a quality assurance process by senior leaders
from various organisations. They agreed strengths and areas for development with CPPs, before the SOAs were agreed with ministers
and council leaders. 
•	In September 2013, the Scottish Government and COSLA issued an agreement setting out their expectation that partner organisations would work together through CPPs to target resources towards the priorities in their SOA.6 
•	In December 2013, the Scottish Government announced changes to community justice services. This included transferring responsibility from eight Community Justice Authorities to the 32 CPPs for planning and overseeing these services. 
•	In June 2014, the Scottish Government introduced the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill to the Scottish Parliament, which includes proposals for:
≠	establishing in legislation a set of national outcomes for Scotland
≠	providing greater rights for communities to participate in planning and managing public services
≠	placing CPPs on a statutory basis, by putting a legal duty on a range of public sector bodies to work together in partnership to plan to improve outcomes for their areas. 
•	In July 2014, the chair of the National Community Planning Group wrote to the chairs of all CPPs, emphasising that CPPs should focus their collective activity on where they can make the most difference for their communities, with particular attention on reducing inequalities. 
5.	The Statement of Ambition expects community planning to be at the core of wide-ranging public service reform. On 1 April 2013, a new national police service and a single fire and rescue service for Scotland began operating. A programme of reform of colleges that includes mergers and the restructuring of the sector into 13 regions is ongoing. The Scottish Parliament passed the Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act in February 2014, requiring all councils and NHS boards to integrate health and social care services. 
About this report
6.	This report provides a national update on community planning in Scotland since March 2013. It assesses progress locally and nationally and identifies opportunities for further improvement. We have sought to capture the direction of travel for community planning in the context of the ambitious long-term agenda for improvement set out in the Statement of Ambition. Although there are common themes emerging from our work, we recognise that each CPP has its particular history and faces its own specific local challenges. CPPs need to address these local challenges alongside the significant shared strategic challenges, such as reducing resources and dealing with increasing demand for public services, that face the whole of the public sector. A Summary is provided on progress against the recommendations in Improving community planning in Scotland.
7.	We have based our assessment of local progress on our audits of five CPPs in 2014 (Glasgow, Falkirk, Moray, West Lothian and the Orkney Islands), and follow-up work in three CPPs we audited in 2012/13 (Aberdeen City, North Ayrshire and Scottish Borders). We have used examples from these audits to highlight local progress and areas for improvement. Our audit methodology is in the Appendix. 
8.	The report is structured around four key themes:
•	Part 1: How CPPs are led and run 
•	Part 2: How CPPs are planning for communities
•	Part 3: How CPPs are using resources 
•	Part 4: Monitoring performance and helping CPPs improve.

Part 1
How CPPs are led and run
there are a range of views, both nationally and locally, about the role and purpose of community planning

Key messages
1.	Since the publication of the Statement of Ambition, there is a strong sense of renewed energy nationally and locally to improving community planning. Community planning continues to become more of a shared enterprise, with more active participation by partners and evidence of more shared ownership of the priorities in SOAs. Although aspects of community planning are improving, leadership, scrutiny and challenge are still inconsistent. There is little evidence that CPP boards are yet demonstrating the levels of leadership and challenge set out in the Statement of Ambition. 
2.	The Scottish Government and the National Community Planning Group have taken steps to promote the importance of community planning across government and in partner organisations. The National Community Planning Group is now starting to focus its activity on the areas where national leadership is most needed. It recently issued a set of key principles that are intended to set out an ambitious but realistic improvement agenda for community planning that draws on the practical experience of implementing the Statement of Ambition by CPPs. It now needs to set out what this refocused approach to community planning means for the Statement of Ambition, its expectation of CPPs and how success in implementing these principles will be assessed.
3.	The practical links between the Scottish Government’s public service reform programmes and community planning are not clear. Many CPPs are unsure about what their specific role in these programmes should be and what this means in practice, in particular in the integration of health and social care services. 

Partners are demonstrating more collective ownership of community planning and participation has improved 
9.	Community planning was introduced as a statutory duty on some public bodies in Scotland in 2003 (paragraph 1).7 In the decade since its introduction, community planning has helped to develop a better understanding between partners of each other’s business, created a greater climate of trust and strengthened the networks required for effective joint working. 
10.	Before the introduction of the Statement of Ambition in 2012, community planning had tended to be seen as a council-led exercise in which partners participated but did not lead.8 In 2013, we reported that partners were starting to see community planning as a shared enterprise rather than something that councils led. We are now seeing partners increasingly demonstrating collective ownership of the priorities in the SOA (Exhibit 1). Partners are starting to make the CPP’s priorities part of their own organisation’s work. For example:
•	the corporate plan for Borders College for 2013–16 highlights how the college is contributing to specific outcomes in the SOA 
•	in North Ayrshire, the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has set up its local management structures to mirror the six neighbourhoods that the CPP is focusing its activity on (Case study 3) 
•	Scottish Enterprise has allocated a location director role to 19 of its most senior staff, who lead on Scottish Enterprise’s contribution to the 27 CPPs it is represented on. 
11.	Non-council partners are demonstrating a greater leadership role in CPPs. For example, in Scottish Borders CPP the Chief Executive of Eildon Housing Association chairs the Future Services Reform thematic group, and chief officers from various partner organisations are leading on different aspects of the CPP’s improvement programme. Increased participation and leadership by partners provides a good foundation for the proposals in the Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill to:9 
•	remove the existing statutory duty on councils to 'initiate, facilitate and maintain' community planning
•	place new statutory duties on more partners to help the CPP fulfil its functions and improve outcomes for communities. 
12.	In most areas, councils have a unique role as the only organisation whose services cover the council area (in six areas, the council and NHS board have the same boundaries – Dumfries and Galloway, Fife, Orkney, Scottish Borders, Shetland and Western Isles). Councils also have a distinctive role in community planning, given the democratic nature of local authorities. This means that councils have a particular role in understanding the interests and needs of their local community. It is important that, under the proposed new arrangements, an appropriate balance is struck by councils between demonstrating a community leadership role and allowing other partners to contribute equally to the community planning process. 
13.	The number of dedicated staff available to manage and support the operation of CPPs varies. There are some examples of jointly funded posts, for example between the council and NHS board, but overall council staff do most of the day-to-day management of CPPs. For most CPPs the level of support they receive reflects an historic approach to supporting community planning. If the statutory duty on councils to facilitate community planning is removed, partners will need to ensure that they consider collectively how the process will be resourced and supported in future to deliver the expectations set out in the Statement
of Ambition. 
14.	All partners have an important contribution to make towards improving outcomes for local people. The specific contribution of national and regional bodies at a local level will depend on the extent to which local CPP priorities reflect the individual body’s role and responsibilities. CPPs now need to gain a better understanding of the specific contributions that individual partners can make to improving agreed outcomes. This will include partners using their resources, including money, skills and equipment, to meet shared and agreed community planning priorities (Part 3). 
Leadership at a national level is improving but many CPPs are not clear about what they are expected to achieve
15.	The Statement of Ambition sets ambitious and challenging improvements for community planning to make (paragraph 3). This has contributed to a sense of renewed energy in CPPs and more active participation by partners in the community planning process. The Scottish Government, COSLA and the National Community Planning Group (NCPG) have an important role in providing leadership around the expectations of the Statement of Ambition. 
16.	The Scottish Government has taken steps to highlight the importance of community planning in some areas of government and in some partner organisations. For example, it emphasised the role of community planning in the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill and in guidance to NHS boards to include specific reference to community planning in their Local Delivery Plans.10
It is also working to better embed community planning in the work of national and regional bodies, such as the police service, fire and rescue service, colleges and non-departmental public bodies (eg, Scottish Enterprise). 
17.	The NCPG was established in 2012 to provide the strategic leadership needed to push the community planning process forward, in line with the Statement of Ambition. Members are senior leaders from across the public sector, ministers, elected members and the third sector. Since its first meeting in August 2012, the group has met eight times. The group has helped to raise awareness of community planning, and highlight the importance the Scottish Government places on it, at a senior level across the public sector. But it has not met the expectations of CPPs and individual partner organisations, who want clear and consistent messages about what successful community planning looks like in practice. 
18.	In October 2013, the NCPG agreed four priority areas for its programme of work, where it feels it can most usefully provide leadership. These are:
•	joint resourcing
•	governance and accountability
•	community engagement
•	prevention. 
19.	The NCPG also re-established a Senior Officer Group to provide it with advice and support. In doing this, the NCPG recognised that it needed to do more to use members’ practical experience of delivering community planning on the ground to inform CPP policy-making and guidance, and to ensure more effective sharing of emerging good practice with CPPs. Membership of the Senior Officer Group includes representatives from COSLA, Improvement Service, NHS boards, Scottish Government, Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE) and Voluntary Action Scotland. The group aims to provide more focus and momentum to the NCPG. 
20.	Although the Statement of Ambition provided a renewed focus on community planning, it is being interpreted in different ways. There are a range of views, both nationally and locally, about the role and purpose of community planning and what it can be expected to achieve. A significant area of ambiguity is the extent to which community planning should meet specific local concerns and the weight that CPPs should give to national priorities. There are also differences of opinion about the extent to which community planning should focus on prevention and inequalities or whether it should have a broader role in improving and reforming mainstream public services. This has important implications for the level and range of resources that CPPs see as falling under their influence. This in turn influences the likely scope and potential impact of community planning in the local area. 
21.	In June 2014, the NCPG considered a paper by the Senior Officer Group on the important role of CPPs in improving prevention, joint resourcing, community engagement and reducing inequalities. Following that meeting, the chair of the NCPG wrote to the chairs of all CPPs highlighting how CPPs can maximise their impact by focusing on these four areas. The letter emphasised that CPPs should focus their collective activity on where they make the biggest difference to local people. This was intended to set out an ambitious but realistic improvement agenda for community planning that draws on the experience within CPPs in implementing the Statement of Ambition. The NCPG now needs to set out what it expects CPPs to do to deliver this refocused approach to community planning. This refocused approach also needs to be supported and endorsed by the Scottish Government and COSLA as the joint signatories of the Statement of Ambition with key leadership roles in community planning.
22.	Effectively implementing the proposed refocused approach to community planning will require a significant programme of change and improvement at both national (NCPG, Scottish Government and COSLA) and local level (individual CPPs). The nature and scale of the change required is such that it will only be delivered by strong and sustained leadership over time. 
Governance and accountability in CPPs remains weak and there is limited evidence of challenge at a board level
23.	Although aspects of community planning are improving, leadership, scrutiny and challenge remain inconsistent. The Statement of Ambition is clear that 'CPPs must be genuine boards with all the authority, behaviours and roles that implies for them and constituent partners'. Although this language was intended to improve the level of challenge within CPPs, it has created confusion among partners. It implies that partners should be formally accountable to the CPP board, but there is no statutory basis for this. Partners’ formal lines of accountability are not to the CPP board, but to their own organisation’s board, Scottish ministers, the Scottish Police Authority (in the case of Police Scotland), the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service Board, or to the communities that elected them (in the case of local authorities).
24.	CPP boards are not yet fulfilling their role effectively. Strategic leadership, oversight and challenge still tend to be happening at a level, or at levels, below the CPP board. Many boards are overseeing the community planning process but are not showing leadership by setting ambitious improvement targets and holding partners to account for their contribution to delivery of the local SOA. In many CPPs, further work is needed at board level to clarify where added value can be achieved through working in partnership and what that means for partner organisations. Those CPPs that have been able to agree clear and jointly agreed priorities for improvement are now able to focus on the necessary next steps of aligning resources to those priorities and establishing effective performance management arrangements.  
25.	Partners need to create a more effective leadership, challenge and scrutiny role in CPP boards. But this depends less on formal accountability arrangements and more on trust between partners, a shared commitment to change, and a culture that promotes and accepts challenge among partners. Support is required for CPPs to develop the skills and culture that are needed to create effective challenge within CPP boards given the difficult balance this requires between building and maintaining good ongoing relations and the ability to hold colleagues, and in some cases peers, to account.
26.	Coordinating and managing partnership working is complex for CPPs, given the range of leadership boards, local thematic groups, national reform activity and other forums that are in place in most areas. This can mean that the leadership and oversight of partnership working will often be complicated leading to a lack of clarity about who is holding who to account for what in the local partnership structures. CPPs need to streamline their local partnership working arrangements and ensure they are aligned with their local improvement priorities.
27.	An important element of implementing effective governance and accountability arrangements for community planning is ensuring that there is sufficient clarity and distinction between roles and responsibilities. It should be clear who is setting the direction and agreeing the priorities for the CPP, how and when resources are allocated, who is implementing the changes set out in the SOA and where holding to account takes place.
28.	Many CPPs are still in the process of agreeing or refining what performance measures will underpin their SOA and clarifying what specific contributions partners will make to implementing the SOA. These are some of the fundamental buildings blocks of effective governance and are necessary prerequisites for effective scrutiny and challenge. 
Councillors and non-executive members are becoming more involved in community planning 
29.	In 2013, we found that councillors and non-executive members did not clearly understand their role in the community planning process, and this was a barrier to providing effective leadership and challenge.11 Since then, some CPPs have taken action to help clarify this role and get them more involved. For example:
•	Falkirk CPP is developing a partnership agreement to clarify the CPP’s purpose and the roles and responsibilities of the thematic groups, members of the board (including councillors and non-executive members) and council officers who support the CPP’s work. The agreement aims to strengthen both the CPP’s overall governance arrangements and partners’ individual and collective responsibility for achieving outcomes.12 
•	Glasgow CPP reviewed its structures and established 21 area partnerships that match the council’s multi-member wards. This restructuring should allow councillors to become more involved with community planning and play an important local leadership role.13
30.	Councillors and non-executive members are becoming more aware of, and involved in, community planning both at a CPP board level and at a neighbourhood level. But some, who are used to working in a single organisation, are still finding it hard to adapt to working in a partnership setting, as opposed to chairing or serving on a council committee or a board. 
The links between community planning and national public service reform programmes are not clear 
31.	The Statement of Ambition makes it clear that community planning and SOAs should provide the foundation for effective partnership working within which wider public service reforms will happen. These reforms represent major changes to the way public services are arranged and provided. They include establishing single police and fire services, integrating adult health and social care services, restructuring the college sector, and welfare reform. Some CPPs have reflected these reforms in changes to their structures. For example, Scottish Borders CPP has established a Public Services Reform thematic group. But the extent to which CPPs recognise their role in public service reform and seek to integrate it into their work varies. 
32.	The Scottish Government’s public service reforms include large national programmes, such as the Change Fund and the Early Years Collaborative. While some CPPs have a good overview of public service reform in their area overall, CPP oversight of and engagement with some of these important aspects of reform remains underdeveloped. Scottish Government guidance is not clear enough about the specific role that CPPs should play in the implementation of public service reforms. Going forward, as the Scottish Government refines its approach to public service reform, it should consider at the outset what role and contribution community planning should play in any new developments.
33.	The Statement of Ambition notes that community planning and SOAs 'must be core to the implementation of proposals for integration of health and adult social care services and in the operation of the proposed Health and Social Care Partnerships'. But national policies relating to this programme include little reference to the role of community planning.14 Many CPPs are unsure about their role in health and social care integration and how the practical aspects should operate. For example, the legislation on health and social care integration requires the new health and social care partnerships to identify at least two localities, or neighbourhoods, and to include representatives from them in a strategic planning group. Recent work led by the Joint Improvement Team found that partners:15 
•	are not clear about the relationship between CPPs and the locality planning aspect of health and social care integration
•	are concerned about the lack of connectedness between CPPs and proposed health and social care partnerships 
•	are not clear about the respective roles, relationships, delegated authority and reporting accountability for CPPs, health and social care partnerships and localities
•	want clarity on how guidance on SOAs, the Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill, the revised role of CPPs and NHS Local Delivery Plans all relate to each other.
34.	We found that activity to integrate health and social care services has been happening largely in parallel to community planning, with many CPP boards simply noting update papers on plans for integration. This may reflect the operational nature of some of the decisions that councils and NHS boards need to make about the model and scope of future health and social care services, not all of which will be directly relevant to all CPP partners. But, given the significant impact these decisions will have on other partners, such as the housing and voluntary sectors, it is important that CPPs give them greater consideration. CPPs need to work with the new health and social care integrated joint boards to develop services that meet the needs of local people and support their SOA priorities. In some CPP areas, such as Moray, health and social care integration planning already formally feeds into the CPP through a thematic group dedicated to this task. 
35.	The creation of single police and fire and rescue services for Scotland changed the oversight and scrutiny arrangements in ways that offered flexibility for the role of CPPs and related partnership activity such as community safety. A range of different oversight models have been adopted across Scotland. There is no evidence at this stage of these changes impacting negatively on the participation of police and fire and rescue services in local community planning activity.
 
Recommendations
The National Community Planning Group should:
•	set out what its refocused approach to community planning means for the Statement of Ambition and its performance expectations of CPPs. 
The Scottish Government and COSLA should:
•	clarify their performance expectations for CPPs in the context of the National Community Planning Group’s refocused approach to community planning. 
The Scottish Government should: 
•	ensure that future guidance on the implementation of public service reform programmes is clear about the specific role that CPPs should play and the contribution they are expected to make in supporting improved outcomes.
CPPs should: 
•	strengthen the effectiveness of the leadership, challenge and scrutiny role at CPP board level 
•	streamline local partnership working arrangements and ensure they are aligned with local improvement priorities
•	ensure that local community planning arrangements are clear about who is responsible for:
≠	agreeing the priorities of the CPP and SOA
≠	allocating resources and coordinating activity
≠	implementing activity
≠	scrutinising performance and holding partners and others to account for their performance 
•	work with the new health and social care integration joint boards to develop services that meet the needs of local people and support  SOA priorities. 

Part 2
How CPPs are planning for communities
building blocks to support improvement in community planning are in place, but there is still more to do
Key messages
1.	Many CPPs are still not clear about what they are expected to achieve and the added value that can be brought through working in partnership. CPPs need to use local data to help set relevant, targeted priorities for improvement that will address inequalities within specific communities.
2.	Although SOAs have improved, many are still not clear about the specific improvements CPPs are aiming to achieve. They lack a focus on how community planning will improve outcomes for specific communities and reduce the gap in outcomes between the most and least deprived groups in Scotland. This reflects a wider ambiguity both nationally and locally about the extent to which the focus of community planning should be on local needs or about delivering national priorities. The Scottish Government needs to demonstrate a more systematic approach to implementing its outcomes approach, by clarifying the links between its national priorities and performance measures and the achievement of longer-term local outcomes. 
3.	CPPs continue to improve the way they consult with local people. But they are not yet routinely working with communities to make sure local people can influence or change the way partners deliver services. The third sector has an important role in working with communities and delivering services. The Improvement Service, Voluntary Action Scotland and the Scottish Government are working with partners to help them better understand the contribution the third sector can make to community planning. 
New SOAs place more emphasis on local priorities, but many lack a clear focus on what improvements CPPs aim to achieve
36.	Community planning has an important role in the Scottish Government’s outcomes-based approach to delivering its objectives. The Scottish Government’s National Performance Framework underpins this approach. The framework sets out the Scottish Government’s purpose, its strategic objectives, the national outcomes it wants to achieve, and national indicators that track progress towards the achievement of the national outcomes. The SOA guidance states that the direction provided by the National Performance Framework is central to community planning and that SOAs should demonstrate how local outcomes relate to one or more of the national outcomes.16 The Statement of Ambition also notes that local circumstances and priorities must be considered within the context of the National Performance Framework. 
37.	We previously reported that CPPs were not clear enough about the priorities for improvement in their area.17 We found that SOAs tended to be summaries of existing planned actions, covering all national outcomes, without clearly focusing on things that matter most for the local area. 
38.	COSLA and the Scottish Government jointly issued revised guidance on SOAs at the end of 2012.18 This was based on the expectations of community planning in the Statement of Ambition. It highlighted the need for SOAs to:  
•	demonstrate a clear and evidence-based understanding of local needs and opportunities, including the inequalities facing different areas and population groups 
•	set out clear and agreed priorities for improving local outcomes
•	demonstrate a commitment to working with local communities to help achieve outcomes 
•	promote early intervention and preventative approaches in reducing inequalities, including a specific plan for how to prevent them.
39.	The guidance also stated that SOAs should focus on the following six national priorities:
•	economic recovery and growth
•	employment
•	early years
•	safe and stronger communities and reducing offending
•	health inequalities and physical activity
•	outcomes for older people.
40.	All CPPs drafted a new SOA based on the guidance from COSLA and the Scottish Government in early 2013. These SOAs went through a quality assurance process by senior leaders from various public bodies and other organisations such as the Improvement Service. The quality assurance teams agreed strengths and areas for development with CPPs, before the SOAs were agreed with ministers and council leaders in September 2013. The quality assurance process found that:
•	all 32 SOAs were better developed than previous versions
•	many CPPs had a strong, evidence-based understanding of place and communities
•	in most cases, partners had collaborated effectively to set priorities
•	all SOAs demonstrated a strategic commitment to the preventative agenda and many had identified existing preventative action
•	nearly all CPPs were taking action on the six national priorities in a way that reflected local needs. 
41.	Although the SOAs published in 2013 place more emphasis on local priorities, tackling inequalities and prevention, many do not provide a true plan for the areas and communities that they serve. Many SOAs do not clearly focus on the specific improvements that community planning is trying to achieve. Few are clear about how community planning will improve outcomes for specific communities and reduce the gap in outcomes between the most and least deprived groups. But some SOAs, such as Glasgow CPP’s, have identified a small number of specific priorities for their area with associated outcomes (Case study 1).

Case study 1
Identifying priorities in Glasgow CPP

The SOA for Glasgow CPP for 2008–11 had over 20 priorities. The new SOA, agreed in August 2013, identifies three thematic priorities over the next ten years: alcohol, youth employment and vulnerable people. 
The CPP used available data in selecting these three priorities and has identified outcomes for each of them. It selected these priorities as they affect the work of all partners to varying extents and are interlinked. For example, misuse of alcohol could affect an individual’s ability to maintain employment and good health. 
In agreeing these three priorities, the CPP has made an important shift towards a more long-term, preventative approach to public services; one that aims to break the cycle of poverty and poor health. The partners in the CPP, in agreeing this focus, have demonstrated strong collective leadership and determination to tackle important social and cultural issues that affect a wide cross-section of people in Glasgow.
Source: Glasgow Community Planning Partnership, Audit Scotland, April 2014

The Scottish Government needs to be more systematic in implementing its outcomes approach
42.	There is ambiguity both nationally and locally about the extent to which the focus of community planning should be about local needs and ‘place’ or about delivering national priorities. This is reflected in the ongoing focus on national input/output measures in many current Scottish Government performance measurement arrangements, rather than a focus on places and outcomes. The Scottish Government has clearly set out what it wants to achieve in the National Performance Framework, but it needs to demonstrate a more systematic approach to implementing its outcomes approach. At present, many performance management frameworks are still heavily focused on inputs and processes and lack a clear prevention focus. The Scottish Government has recognised this and is working with SOLACE and the Improvement Service to identify opportunities for streamlining its performance framework and creating a stronger prevention and outcome focus. As part of this process, the Scottish Government needs to clarify the role that it expects community planning to play in supporting the delivery of national outcomes. In addition, it also needs to more securely embed its approach to planning for outcomes across the whole of the government so that the contribution of all parts of government to supporting delivery of national priority outcomes is identified and understood.
CPPs need to get better at using data to understand local areas and target their improvement activity
43.	Overall, CPPs need to make better use of data to improve their understanding of the differing needs of their communities, and to set relevant priorities and identify actions for improvement. Most CPPs are using data at a CPP level, but the more well-developed SOAs use data at a neighbourhood level. For example, North Ayrshire CPP has produced reports on the six neighbourhoods where it
is focusing its activity. These present a comprehensive profile of each area. They draw on data from sources including the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD), the 2011 UK census and partner organisations. The CPP is focusing on analysing data at a very localised level, in some cases using data-sets as small as 20 households, to help it target its activity more effectively towards areas of need. 
44.	CPPs can do more to use data to monitor outcomes at a neighbourhood level, and some CPPs are taking action to do this. For example, West Lothian CPP has employed a data analyst to measure outcomes at local level (Case study 2). 

Case study 2
Making better use of data in West Lothian CPP

West Lothian CPP has recognised that using data effectively is important to develop a successful CPP. The council recruited a data analyst for the CPP in February 2014, tasked with developing local profiles for areas in West Lothian. The CPP aims to use the data in these local profiles to gain a better understanding of its communities, so that it can:
•	target resources, such as funding and staff, to where they are most needed, for both individuals and communities
•	try to predict, and then prevent, specific issues arising in the area
•	gather evidence to measure the impact the CPP has on the outcomes in its SOA. 
There are plans for the data analyst to use geographic information system (GIS) software to identify communities' needs at a very local level. This will help to bring together data across many indicator areas to build up a comprehensive picture of local communities in the CPP area. As part of this process, the data analyst is working closely with partners across the CPP to gauge where they could provide any additional data and where more detailed data would be helpful in their work. 
The CPP hopes to see benefits by using a wealth of information that has never been used to full effect and to share relevant data across the partnership. Increasing the CPP’s ability to analyse data should help it to develop a better understanding of West Lothian and its residents.
Source: West Lothian Community Planning Partnership, Audit Scotland, October 2014 

45.	Some CPPs reported difficulties in making full use of local data because some information was not available at neighbourhood level. Examples included data on road safety, crime and fire incidents. Others reported problems in sharing data with partners for technical and cultural reasons, for example because of data protection problems or partners using different information systems and procedures. There are particular challenges for CPPs that operate in rural areas making use of SIMD data. This is because deprivation is often dispersed across isolated pockets in rural areas making numbers small and difficult to work with. Work is happening at a national level to help CPPs use data more effectively. For example:
•	the Improving Evidence and Data Group was established in March 2013, and includes representatives from SOLACE, COSLA, the Scottish Government and the Improvement Service. It is exploring ways to help CPPs use and analyse local data and evidence to improve outcomes for local communities, including engaging with the Scottish Government about where there is a need for more data at a local level
•	the Improvement Service is redeveloping and expanding the Viewstat mapping tool, which allows users of the system, which is available to CPPs, to visualise neighbourhood information in map form 
•	three analysts from National Services Scotland Public Health Intelligence (NSS PHI) have been located in North Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire Councils. This initiative has been mutually beneficial. The analysts have supported CPP initiatives by analysing local data, and NSS PHI has gained a better understanding of CPPs’ needs and the value of local information and insight. CPPs have reported that local initiatives have made progress as a direct result of the analysts’ involvement.  
CPPs are improving how they consult with local people, but work with communities to improve local services tends to be small scale
46.	The Statement of Ambition expects CPPs to get local people more involved in improving outcomes within their communities. The Scottish Government’s Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill is intended to strengthen the legal basis for doing this. It is important that local communities are involved in changing and improving the way services are provided, to ensure that they meet their needs. CPPs continue to improve how they consult with local people. But, they are not yet routinely working with communities to ensure they influence the CPP’s priorities or help to change the way services are provided. 
47.	Individual partners are working closely with communities, but they tend to do this as an individual organisation rather than at a partnership level. Some CPPs are developing a shared approach to community consultation to help coordinate this activity. For example, Scottish Borders CPP has agreed a shared set of principles for engaging with local communities and has developed a community engagement framework. Individual partners and the partnership use this framework to ensure that they all consider the priorities and outcomes in the SOA consistently when they are involving, or consulting with, local communities. Partners in North Ayrshire CPP are focusing their community engagement activity in targeted neighbourhoods (Case study 3).

Case study 3
North Ayrshire neighbourhood planning approach

North Ayrshire CPP has taken a localised approach to involving communities to help achieve the outcomes in its SOA. It has divided the council area into six neighbourhoods – Arran; Irvine; Kilwinning; Three Towns; Garnock Valley; and North Coast, West Kilbride and Cumbrae –  reflecting the different demographics and needs of these areas. 
CPP partners have analysed these six areas in detail. They have produced in-depth neighbourhood profiles covering local demography, incomes, employment, education, health and crime. By understanding the unique characteristics of each area, the CPP hopes that it can better meet the needs of individuals and reduce inequalities.
A series of community-based planning workshops were held between the end of 2013 and beginning of 2014 in the six neighbourhoods. Over 200 delegates attended these workshops, where community planning partners shared the information in the area profiles, including the challenges facing the local community. Delegates were asked whether this information reflected their experiences of living in the area and were asked to vote on what they thought were the priorities for the neighbourhood.    
Many community planning partners are reflecting the neighbourhood planning approach in their work. For example, Police Scotland used the data in the area profiles to develop the priorities in the local policing plan. The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service has aligned its local resilience managers within North Ayrshire to the six neighbourhood planning areas to support service delivery and partnership working at a local level. Increasingly, activity to consult with the local community, for example on health and social care integration, reflects the neighbourhood planning boundaries. 
The CPP plans to develop six neighbourhood plans linked to the SOA, with six corresponding neighbourhood forums. The CPP is using the neighbourhood profiles, along with local action planning, to develop local priorities. As the neighbourhood planning approach develops, the CPP hopes that communities will increasingly be able to influence how services are delivered to meet their own needs and priorities.
Source: Audit Scotland 

48.	There are some small-scale examples of CPPs involving local people in developing local services, but these activities are at an early stage. For example, Falkirk CPP began a one-year pilot project that aims to involve older people in developing new ways of providing services to help them remain independent for as long as possible. The project is funded by the Older People’s Change Fund, and involves partners including Falkirk Community Trust, Falkirk Council, NHS Forth Valley and local voluntary organisations. The project team plans to evaluate the impact of the pilot and then extend it to other areas of Falkirk.19
49.	As CPPs start to develop their approaches to working with local communities to design and provide improved services, this will have implications for the role of elected members. Local councillors have a democratic community leadership role, in that they are elected to make decisions on behalf of the communities they represent. This has been their main role in community planning to date. In future, they may need to make decisions on local services in partnership with the local people who are involved in designing and delivering them, something which many of them are used to doing in a local authority setting. The Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy notes that increased participation by communities does not necessarily weaken the role of democratically elected representatives.20 But, elected members will need to consider how they carry out their democratic community leadership role in the context of increased community participation.
50.	In general, CPPs are not clear about what involving communities and local people in changing the way services are provided and achieving local outcomes means in practice for their role. There is also uncertainty about what role communities could, should, or want to play in providing local services. CPPs, the Scottish Government and COSLA need to create a culture that promotes effective engagement with communities, and provides them with the support needed to participate effectively in contributing to improved public services (eg, guidance, training and financial resources).  
The third sector has an important role to play in community planning 
51.	The third sector, which includes charities, voluntary groups and social enterprises, has an important role to play in working with communities and providing services. Each council area has a Third Sector Interface (TSI) to support and develop the third sector locally. Each TSI currently receives an average of around £250,000 each year from the Scottish Government. The role of TSIs include: 
•	developing volunteering
•	supporting social enterprise
•	supporting and developing voluntary and community organisations
•	building the third sector relationship with community planning. 
52.	TSIs are represented on all 32 CPPs, but there can be a lack of understanding among partners about their role. In working with CPPs, TSIs may be involved in coordinating engagement with the third sector, sharing knowledge of local resources (eg, community groups and volunteers) and reporting on their knowledge of, and views from, the third sector locally. However, they are not a substitute for consulting and working with individual voluntary bodies or engaging with local communities.
53.	The Improvement Service, Voluntary Action Scotland and the Scottish Government are working to improve the impact of TSIs in community planning in five local areas over 2014/15: Aberdeen, North Ayrshire, North Lanarkshire, Orkney and Scottish Borders. The programme aims to strengthen the links between TSIs and CPPs and help develop a shared definition of the role of TSIs and the wider third sector in community planning. Following the initial phase, the programme will be rolled out to all remaining CPPs. 
CPPs need to improve outcomes for local communities through a culture of continuous improvement
54.	Many of the building blocks to support improvement in community planning are in place, but there is still more to do. CPPs need to consolidate the progress they have made to date, and focus on where they need to continue to improve. The actions that CPPs need to take to improve outcomes for local communities in a sustainable way are set out in Exhibit 2. 
Recommendations
The Scottish Government should: 
•	implement its outcomes approach more systematically across all policy areas 
•	ensure that its review of national performance measurement arrangements streamlines approaches and creates a stronger prevention and outcome focus.
CPPs should: 
•	set clearer improvement priorities focused on how they will add most value as a partnership, when updating their SOA
•	use local data on the differing needs of their communities to set relevant, targeted priorities for improvement.

Part 3
How CPPs are using resources
partners have to make difficult choices about the allocation of increasingly scarce public resources
Key messages
1.	CPPs are starting to better understand what resources they have available to deliver their SOA. They have begun to identify how partners use their resources, such as money and staff, in particular priority areas or specific communities. But discussions about targeting these resources at their priorities and shifting them towards preventative activity are still in the early stages. Moving resources will become increasingly challenging as pressures on budgets and staff continue to tighten. 
2.	The way public services are delivered must change to help the public sector manage financial and service demand pressures, and to address the significant variations in outcomes experienced by different communities. Community planning partners increasingly recognise that they need to work together in different ways to help public bodies to deal with these complex long-term challenges. This approach is generally being taken forward through relatively small-scale projects. The current pace and scale of activity is contributing to an improved focus on prevention but is unlikely to deliver the radical change in the design and delivery of public services called for by the
Christie Commission. 

CPPs are starting to discuss what resources, such as money and staff, they can contribute to improving local outcomes
55.	The Scottish Government and COSLA published their agreement on joint working on community planning and resourcing in September 2013.21 This places clear expectations on community planning partners to:
•	share resource planning information and budget assumptions with each other at an early stage
•	work together through CPPs to deploy resources to achieve the jointly agreed priorities set out in the SOA.
56.	Although the agreement encourages partners to consider their financial budgets, it notes that the greatest benefits are likely to be realised by using partners’ wider resources, such as staff, buildings and other assets. Ministers wrote to councils, NHS boards and other public bodies setting out their expectation that these bodies will implement the agreement on joint resourcing.
57.	CPPs are in the early stages of implementing this approach. Partners are starting to discuss what resources and activities they can contribute to improving local outcomes and where working together differently will improve local services. There are already some small-scale examples of partners sharing resources. For example, jointly-funded roles, such as director of health posts funded by the council and NHS board, and shared properties such as partnership centres in West Lothian. It will be challenging to scale this work up to the level needed to transform how services are provided and make the future savings required from the public sector.
58.	In the eight CPPs we looked at, partners are identifying how they currently allocate their budgets and deploy resources. They are approaching this in different ways. Some are looking at the total budget of partners, as suggested in the agreement. But most are focusing on what they are spending in a particular geographic area or on a specific priority. For example, Glasgow CPP partners are focusing on identifying the resources that they are contributing to the CPP’s three priority areas. Partners in North Ayrshire CPP have identified how much they spend in the six neighbourhoods that the CPP is focusing its activity in. When we reviewed this work, it was in its early stages and none of the eight CPPs had yet established how they could shift their resources towards their priorities.
59.	As well as thinking about pooled and shared budgets, CPPs are starting to identify what people, buildings, equipment and other assets all partners have available to direct towards specific programmes of improvement or geographic areas. For example, in April 2014 West Lothian CPP agreed to develop a CPP Asset Plan for property, information technology resources, and vehicles. This will allow it to identify the assets held by CPP partners across West Lothian and to manage them better to achieve the shared aims of the SOA. 
National and regional organisations need to do more to identify the resources available locally 
60.	Partners that share the same boundary as the CPP are more able to link their budgets and align resources to the SOA’s local priorities. It can be difficult for national and regional organisations, with associated national and regional budgets, to estimate how much of their budget they can allocate locally. This includes statutory organisations such as NHS boards, Police Scotland, Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Scottish Enterprise and Regional Transport Partnerships. 
61.	For example, Skills Development Scotland (SDS) and Scottish Enterprise are national bodies involved in local CPPs. They are working towards national objectives and targets related to employability and economic development respectively: 
•	SDS is working with CPPs to deliver many of its services at a local level, for example commissioning provision of SDS’s Employability Fund with partners at a CPP level.22 But many of the issues relating to employability span regions, rather than fall within CPP boundaries. This means that identifying expenditure at a CPP level is not straightforward. Rather than focus on funding, SDS contributes towards CPP priorities by providing resources in the form of skills, experience and specialist knowledge of the area.  
•	Scottish Enterprise allocates its budget in response to economic growth opportunities in line with the Scottish Government’s economic strategy, rather than on geographic lines. It is working with CPPs to identify areas for local collaboration based on those economic opportunities most likely to deliver the most significant economic outcomes. Through its location director approach (paragraph 10) Scottish Enterprise contributes specialist knowledge, skills and networks to individual CPPs. 
62.	Many CPPs have taken the important first step of developing a shared understanding of what is meant by resources and identifying how much flexibility there is to move them among partners. Given the continuing pressure on public sector budgets, it is important that CPPs now build on the work done to date and identify where there are opportunities for them to share resources more effectively to deliver the priorities in their SOA. For national and regional organisations, this means using local data to get a more detailed understanding of demand for, and supply of, their services and what resources are used to meet this.
Partners have to make difficult choices about allocating resources as budgets tighten
63.	CPPs are committed to identifying the resources available to deliver their priorities. But this is not straightforward as CPPs do not have any formal powers to control local budgets. Instead, they must rely on the willingness of individual organisations to support and pay for achieving the partnership’s priorities. CPPs face some practical barriers in both identifying available resources and moving them towards agreed priorities, including: 
•	difficulties in aligning partners’ budget-setting processes, for example because of different budget timetables
•	difficulties in identifying the resources available for a specific geographic area in organisations that cover different boundaries to the CPP
•	the ability and willingness of some partners, in particular national organisations, to commit resources to local priorities
•	the fixed nature of much expenditure, for example to deliver specific services in the NHS
•	difficulties in developing long-term plans because some partners are required to apply for annual funding. 
64.	As pressures on budgets and staff tighten, there is a risk that organisations will protect their own resources. While partners’ contributions to community planning are becoming a more significant aspect of their accountability arrangements, there are still long-standing forms of accountability for national performance. Many CPP partners are held to account for the performance of mainstream services and their achievement of national targets. This can create challenges when partners have to make difficult choices about the allocation of increasingly scarce public resources.
65.	For example, NHS boards are required to meet a number of performance targets that cover health improvement, efficiency, access and treatment (HEAT targets). These aim to ensure that NHS boards focus on making improvements in areas the Scottish Government has identified as priorities, to help to achieve its overall purpose and objectives. In recent years, the Scottish Government has reduced the number of HEAT targets and has committed to focusing more on outcomes. But the level of performance that boards are expected to achieve has become more challenging at the same time as budgets are tightening. The focus on meeting challenging financial and performance targets each year makes it difficult for NHS boards to focus on long-term outcomes and does not encourage longer-term financial planning.23 
66.	Reaching agreement on shifts in resources is likely to be difficult as it may involve reducing some budgets and increasing others. This will be particularly difficult where it involves moving resources away from short-term targets towards longer-term preventative work, which may not return gains directly to the organisations that have invested resources. 
67.	Strong shared leadership both nationally and locally will be needed to overcome these obstacles. Building strong relationships and trust among partners will be essential in ensuring they use and share their resources as effectively as possible to maximise the impact of the partnership. The Scottish Government also has a role to play in helping national organisations balance national and local priorities and think more flexibly about how they use resources at a local level. 
Moving resources towards preventative activity while meeting current demand will be challenging 
68.	In the context of increasing pressure on budgets and the widening gaps in outcomes for communities, CPPs are starting to focus more on preventative activity. The NCPG defines this as ‘actions which prevent problems and ease future demand on services by intervening early, thereby delivering better outcomes and value for money’. Prevention activity among community planning partners is often prompted by national funding or initiatives such as the Change Fund or the Early Years Collaborative.
69.	Partners are increasingly recognising that they need to work together in different ways to deal with complex long-term challenges. They are starting to do this through relatively small-scale projects, which often focus on specific themes or within particular targeted communities. For example: 
•	in Falkirk, local partners are working together to help improve the employment prospects of young people, by offering them vocational opportunities at Forth Valley College. The two-year Schools College Opportunities to Succeed (SCOTS) programme is targeted at secondary school pupils who would not otherwise have considered attending college after leaving school. In August 2013, 120 pupils from across Falkirk’s eight secondary schools started the programme. In January 2014, over 100 pupils remained on the programme. Over 90 per cent of these pupils have since chosen to continue with their college courses. Feedback from pupils and staff to date has been positive24 
•	Aberdeen CPP is piloting a preventative model focusing on the activity and resources in place to prevent domestic abuse in one particular area of the city. This links to the CPP’s priority of safer communities, and aims to improve outcomes and reduce long-term costs through prevention. 
70.	The Scottish Government and COSLA expect SOAs to include a specific plan that sets out what partners are collectively doing and spending on prevention.25 CPPs have started to collate existing preventative activity in plans linked to their SOA. They now need to identify how they can move funding and staff towards more preventative approaches, and start implementing this. Shifting resources in this way will become increasingly challenging as pressures on resources continue to tighten, as initially organisations will need to continue to deliver existing services while investing in prevention initiatives. For example, meeting the Scottish Government’s ambitious vision for health and social care will involve providing more care in the community to prevent people going into hospital, at the same time as meeting demanding targets for hospital care and at a time when budgets are tightening.26 The Scottish Government needs to work with partner organisations to explore the options for managing this.  
71.	If CPP partners are to play an effective part in supporting public bodies to meet the growing financial and service demand pressures facing them, then finding ways of scaling up current developments and making changes across the whole local public sector system will be needed. Making such changes is something public bodies have not yet had to do at scale. There is a risk that the current approaches being adopted, and the pace at which they are moving, will not be sufficient to significantly ease the demand pressures partners will increasingly face.
72.	CPPs need national support to help them understand what a successful shift to prevention would look like, and how all partners can contribute towards this (for example, through the What Works Scotland initiative – (paragraph 94). The evidence base on good preventative services is underdeveloped, as is the level of understanding across the public sector about how to:
•	transfer good practice from one organisation or place to another
•	convert innovation from small-scale pilots to large-scale changes in services.
73.	The move towards shared resources which are focused increasingly on prevention is not inevitable. It is complex and challenging and it would be unrealistic to expect CPPs not to encounter difficulties and setbacks as they take forward this agenda (Exhibit 3). The variable capacity to lead and deliver change in many CPPs means that there are significant risks associated with delivering the preventative agenda.

Recommendations
CPPs should: 
•	start to align and shift partners' resources toward agreed prevention and improvement priorities. 

Part 4
Monitoring performance and helping CPPs improve
CPPs are improving the way they work, but some are improving more quickly than others
Key messages
1.	Performance management continues to be a weakness in CPPs. They need to strengthen their performance management arrangements by routinely gathering information that will enable them to monitor and report progress in improving outcomes for local communities. This is challenging due to difficulties in identifying appropriate indicators and available data, and the different performance management arrangements of partners. 
2.	The Scottish Government is now starting to use existing performance management and accountability arrangements to monitor the contribution of public bodies to community planning. But it is not yet consistently holding central government bodies or the NHS to account for their performance within CPPs. 
3.	There is no coherent national framework for assessing the performance and pace of improvement of CPPs. This means that there is no overall picture of how individual CPPs are performing and what progress is being made towards the effective implementation of the Statement of Ambition. 
4.	Although progress is being made in community planning across Scotland, there is significant variation in the pace of improvement. Some CPPs face having to make significant improvements and it is not clear whether they will be able to make the changes that are required. The Scottish Government has no coordinated national programme for helping CPPs to improve. It is essential that well-targeted, practical support is made available to all CPPs so that progress is consistent across the country.

Performance management continues to be a weakness in CPPs
74.	The Scottish Government and COSLA make clear in the Statement of Ambition that they expect CPP boards to hold all partners to account for contributing to and achieving local plans for improvement. An important aspect of this is establishing a performance management framework that will allow:
•	the CPP board to monitor progress in implementing the SOA over the short, medium and long term
•	partners to hold each other to account for their progress in implementing the SOA.
75.	Of the eight CPPs we looked at, most were still developing a performance management framework or revising their existing arrangements. Partners are finding it challenging to develop an effective and meaningful performance management framework that reflects the progress of the partnership and the contribution each partner is making. Few CPPs yet have a good blend of performance evidence that allows them to understand: 
•	the specific added-value of the partnership, as opposed to the work of its constituent bodies
•	how its work is contributing to improving local outcomes
•	what contribution individual partners are making to the locally agreed improvement goals. 
76.	Performance monitoring should also include a balance of data about service performance and the experiences of people who use services. CPPs should consider:
•	how well local people feel they are being involved in decision-making
•	how they will identify improvements in specific communities that might be masked in data that cover the whole CPP area. 
77.	Following the development of new SOAs in 2013, CPPs have been working to identify appropriate targets and indicators to allow them to monitor progress in implementing their plans. In doing this, CPPs need to clarify what successfully implementing their SOA would look like in terms of outcomes and what data they can use to monitor this. This work is difficult, for example because the complexity of assessing long-term outcomes can be attributed to many factors, not all of which are under the control of the CPP. Partners are drawing on lessons they have learnt about the challenges of setting meaningful long-term outcome measures, and the difficulty in balancing the need for short-term input measures with the goal of outcome-focused performance management arrangements.
78.	Partner organisations have different approaches and arrangements for monitoring performance. These are often set up to monitor how they are performing against national targets rather than local priorities. Applying this to a local partnership context can be difficult. Given the significant contribution that services in areas such as housing, healthcare, policing and education make to longer-term outcomes, it is important that CPPs establish stronger links between their own performance management arrangements and those of individual partners. 
79.	There is also a role for the Scottish Government to consider how the various national performance frameworks (eg, outcomes for older people, early years, employment and economic growth) can be streamlined and made more outcome focused. This may help to create greater alignment between national performance measurement and local community planning. 
80.	The lack of relevant, clear performance information is affecting the ability of CPP boards to scrutinise performance and hold partners to account for delivering against outcomes. CPPs are working to improve the performance information that their boards consider. It is important that the information helps them to scrutinise performance effectively, and that those responsible for holding the CPP to account understand it. One challenge facing CPPs is finding clear and straightforward ways of assessing partnership working at each level, that is, neighbourhood, theme and whole area, without creating an industry of monitoring and reporting.
National arrangements for assessing how individual CPPs perform and holding them to account need to improve
81.	The Statement of Ambition sets out the agreed accountability arrangements for community planning. Local political oversight of community planning is through elected member involvement in CPPs and, nationally, local government will exercise joint oversight and ensure accountability with the Scottish Government through the SOA.
82.	The Scottish Government will hold national bodies to account for their contribution to community planning, within the context of their national remit and responsibilities. It is starting to use existing performance management and accountability arrangements to monitor the contribution of public bodies to community planning. But the Scottish Government is not yet consistently holding partners in central government bodies or the NHS to account for their performance in a community planning context. 
83.	The Scottish Government has assigned a location director to each CPP. Their role is to provide advice, support and challenge to the CPP and individual partners on developing and delivering the SOA and community planning more broadly.27 Location directors are also expected to take messages and challenges from CPPs back to the Scottish Government, and to advise the Scottish Government and NCPG on what progress CPPs are making in delivering the Statement of Ambition. The visibility and evidence of the effectiveness of Scottish Government location directors in establishing effective working relationships and challenging partners on their delivery varies. The Scottish Government should review the role of location directors in the context of increased expectations for community planning and the need to develop a clearer accountability framework for CPPs. 
84.	Scottish Government sponsor departments are responsible for monitoring the performance of public bodies that the Scottish Government funds. This includes non-departmental public bodies and NHS boards. Each year, sponsor departments issue letters to public bodies notifying them of their budget and the priorities and targets they are expected to meet. Letters to some bodies such as Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise and SDS emphasise the Scottish Government’s expectation that they will participate in CPPs to help them achieve better outcomes for communities. Although sponsor departments monitor how public bodies perform against national targets and outcomes, it is not clear how they hold them to account for their performance at a local level or their contribution to community planning. 
85.	The Scottish Government’s guidance to NHS boards on developing their Local Delivery Plans requires them to include a section on the board’s contribution to community planning.28 Overall, this section of the plans improved between 2013/14 and 2014/15, but they still vary in quality. The Scottish Government considers progress against Local Delivery Plans at annual and mid-year reviews. Currently, these reviews do not look at NHS boards’ contribution to community planning in detail. The Scottish Government is considering how best to monitor how NHS boards take part in community planning, including how they are implementing the agreement on joint resourcing. 
86.	College outcome agreements were introduced in 2012/13, to enable the Scottish Funding Council and colleges to demonstrate the impact of the sector and its contribution to meeting Scottish Government priorities.29 Since 2014/15, colleges have been required to include a section in their outcome agreements to demonstrate that they are both informing the development of, and contributing effectively to, the delivery of the priorities and outcomes in CPPs' SOAs. In monitoring college outcome agreements, the Scottish Funding Council is looking for evidence that colleges are engaging effectively with CPPs in a way that is delivering better outcomes in the college regions. 
87.	On 1 April 2013, a new national police service and a single fire and rescue service for Scotland began operating. Both the new services have dedicated senior officers responsible for a specific local area and who are accountable for how police and fire services are provided locally. They are responsible for contributing to community planning and ensuring that local police and fire service plans refer to relevant outcomes in the SOA. 
88.	The Senior Officer Group of the NCPG wrote to CPPs in August 2014, requesting an update on progress against the development priorities agreed as part of the SOA quality assurance progress and any further development work planned (paragraph 40). As part of this update, it also asked CPPs to note the extent to which they have reflected on the letter from the NCPG in July 2014 setting out key principles for CPPs to maximise their impact (paragraph 21).  
89.	Although the quality assurance process for SOAs helped to improve oversight of CPPs at a national level, the Scottish Government and COSLA does not have a coherent national framework for assessing, supporting and challenging CPPs. The Scottish Government also needs to align its performance frameworks to understand more clearly how CPPs are performing across Scotland and what contribution individual public bodies are making to this. The lack of a national framework for assessing how individual CPPs perform and how quickly they are improving means that the Scottish Government does not have a coordinated national picture of how CPPs are performing. This creates risks of significant variations in performance that could compromise the effective and timely implementation of the Statement of Ambition. 
There is no coordinated national programme to help CPPs improve
90.	One of the priority areas of focus for the NCPG when it was established in 2013 was building and maintaining the capacity of CPPs, including knowledge sharing and best practice, and identifying performance issues that have a national dimension. While it has issued several pieces of guidance on topics such as joint resourcing and more recently principles for how CPPs might maximise their impact, it has made little progress in building and maintaining the capacity of CPPs.
91.	The lack of a clear national picture of how CPPs are performing makes it difficult to identify the areas where they need the most support, either nationally or locally. The Improvement Service and Scottish Government are providing support to individual CPPs and partners in various areas. Examples of the help being provided include the following:
•	The Improvement Service is working in partnership with the Joint Improvement Team to help individual CPPs with self-assessment and planning improvements. Education Scotland, the Care Inspectorate and NHS Education Scotland have agreed to support this work. By the end of 2014, 26 CPPs will have been through this process – 16 of whom worked with the Improvement Service in developing the approach.
•	The Improvement Service, SOLACE, the Scottish Local Authorities Economic Development Group and the Scottish Government are helping CPPs assess their economic footprint. This involves mapping the work community planning partners are doing in the areas of employability, employment and procurement activity, with a key focus on the impacts for deprived communities. 
•	The Improvement Service, the Scottish Government and statutory community planning partners are working together to support CPPs to understand and improve their approach to performance management. They aim to identify a small core set of measures that will support CPPs to benchmark outcome performance against others and to publish the first version of the framework in March 2015. This work has the potential to contribute to a more consistent evidence base of CPP performance. 
92.	This work needs to be more joined up and focused on the areas where CPPs need the most support. There is no coordinated national programme for helping CPPs to improve, which brings together all of the improvement support resources available across national and local government in a well-targeted way. The Senior Officer Group of the NCPG has asked CPPs to tell it, in its leadership and coordination capacity, about any specific support that would help them in their ongoing development work (paragraph 88). The Scottish Government and Improvement Service need to clarify exactly what help CPPs would benefit from, and coordinate how they deliver training and support and share information at a national level.
93.	There is also work going on to support health and social care partnerships through the Joint Improvement Team. This work has clear implications for community planning and is likely to cover similar areas to work by the Improvement Service, such as governance, leadership and planning. There is scope to join up support in these areas.  
94.	The What Works Scotland (WWS) centre was established in June 2014. The Scottish Government and Economic and Social Research Council provided just under £3 million to the Universities of Glasgow and Edinburgh to lead this initiative over the next three years. The WWS centre will work closely with CPPs and other stakeholders to help improve the way local areas use evidence to make decisions about developing and reforming public services. WWS is working with four CPPs as case study areas (Aberdeenshire, Fife, Glasgow and West Dunbartonshire). Through this work, WWS aims to: 
•	encourage collaborative learning with a range of partners 
•	better understand what effective policy interventions and effective services look like
•	promote the use of evidence in planning and providing services
•	help organisations get the skills and knowledge they need to use and interpret evidence.
95.	As pressures on budgets and staff tighten, it will become increasingly challenging for partners to change the way public services are provided. CPPs are improving the way they work, but some have more work to do than others and some are improving more quickly than others. In CPPs where the necessary foundations for effective partnership working are not yet in place, the Scottish Government and partners need to take urgent action to ensure that they are challenged and get the help they need to improve their performance. This will be essential to help CPPs improve their performance and work towards the expectations in the Statement of Ambition.
Recommendations
The Scottish Government and COSLA should: 
•	develop a national framework for assessing and reporting progress in improving community planning and implementing the Statement of Ambition
•	work with the Improvement Service and other national improvement agencies to establish and coordinate a programme of well-targeted practical support that will help CPPs to implement the Statement of Ambition effectively. 
The Scottish Government should:
•	hold central government bodies and the NHS to account more consistently for their performance within CPPs
•	review the role of location directors.

Endnotes

1.	Scotland’s public finances: progress in meeting the challenges Audit Scotland, June 2014. 
2.	Review of community planning and single outcome agreements: statement of ambition, Scottish Government and COSLA, March 2012.  
3.	Commission on the future delivery of public services, June 2011. 
4.	 Improving community planning in Scotland  Audit Scotland, March 2013.
5.	Single Outcome Agreements: guidance to community planning partnerships, Scottish Government and COSLA, December 2012. 
6.	Agreement on joint working on community planning and resourcing, Scottish Government and COSLA, September 2013. 
7.	The Local Government in Scotland Act 2003.
8.	 Improving community planning in Scotland Audit Scotland, March 2013. 
9.	Community Empowerment (Scotland) Bill, as introduced in the Scottish Parliament on 11 June 2014. 
10.	NHS Scotland 2020: Local delivery plan guidance, Scottish Government, November 2013.
11.	 Improving community planning in Scotland  Audit Scotland, March 2013.
12.	 Falkirk Community Planning Partnership Audit Scotland, May 2014.
13.	 Glasgow Community Planning Partnership Audit Scotland, April 2014.
14.	Integration of adult health and social care in Scotland: consultation on proposals, Scottish Government, May 2012; Public Bodies (Joint Working) (Scotland) Act 2014; Health and social care integration narrative, Scottish Government, April 2014. 
15.	Health and social care integration: locality planning conversations, Joint Improvement Team, June 2014. The Joint Improvement Team (JIT) is an improvement partnership between the Scottish Government, NHS Scotland, Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA) and the third, independent and housing sectors.
16.	Single Outcome Agreements: guidance to community planning partnerships, Scottish Government and COSLA, December 2012.
17.	 Improving community planning in Scotland Audit Scotland, March 2013. 
18.	Single Outcome Agreements: guidance to community planning partnerships, Scottish Government and COSLA, December 2012.
19.	 Falkirk Community Planning Partnership Audit Scotland, May 2014.
20.	Effective democracy: reconnecting with communities, The Commission on Strengthening Local Democracy, August 2014. 
21.	Agreement on joint working on community planning and resourcing, Scottish Government and COSLA, September 2013.
22.	Skills Development Scotland’s Employability Fund aims to support activity to help people develop the skills needed to secure a job or to progress to more advanced forms of training. Skills Development Scotland administers the fund, but services are developed and delivered at a local level. 
23.	 NHS in Scotland 2013/14 Audit Scotland, October 2014.
24.	 Falkirk Community Planning Partnership Audit Scotland, May 2014.
25.	Single Outcome Agreements: guidance to community planning partnerships, Scottish Government and COSLA, December 2012.
26.	 NHS in Scotland 2013/14 Audit Scotland, October 2014. 
27.	Single Outcome Agreements: guidance to community planning partnerships, Scottish Government and COSLA, December 2012.
28.	NHS Scotland 2020: Local delivery plan guidance, Scottish Government, November 2013.
29.	Delivering college outcome agreements, Scottish Funding Council, August 2014. 

Appendix
Audit methodology
We reviewed a range of published information to inform our audit, including the following:
•	Policy documents and guidance on community planning from the Scottish Government and other national organisations.
•	Legislation (draft bills and acts), consultations and responses on community planning and public service reform.
•	Minutes and papers of the National Community Planning Group.
We drew on the findings and supporting evidence of our audits of five CPPs that were conducted during 2014: 
•	Glasgow (published April 2014)
•	Falkirk (published May 2014) 
•	Moray (published July 2014)
•	West Lothian (published October 2014)
•	Orkney (published November 2014).
We carried out follow-up visits in the three CPPs that were audited in 2012/13: Aberdeen, North Ayrshire and Scottish Borders. This included the following: 
•	a written update from each CPP on the progress made against their improvement agenda
•	observing a strategic group meeting in each CPP, including a group discussion on progress since their audit
•	interviews with partners from various local and national organisations.
We interviewed staff and representatives from various public bodies and national organisations including:
•	Convention of Scottish Local Authorities (COSLA)
•	Improvement Service 
•	National Community Planning Group
•	Scottish Enterprise
•	Scottish Government
•	Skills Development Scotland
•	Society of Local Authority Chief Executives (SOLACE)
•	Voluntary Action Scotland.