Spoke today at a conference in Edinburgh on Best Value 2, which is Scotland's new audit process for local authorities. My role was to make a comparison with the English experience of Best Value audit, although I did feel a bit of a phoney as my Motherwell accent hasn't faded that much despite living and working in England for 11 years.

This gave me a chance to reflect on Best Value's origins and I was able to talk about the 12 principles of Best Value that Hilary Armstrong announced at APSE's forerunner ADLO's annual conference in Belfast's Waterfront Hall in June 1997, only one month after the General Election. I then whizzed through the Local Government Act of 1999 which enshrined Best Value in legislation and ultimately brought about the four 'c's for reviews and the 5 'e's. CPA, Gershon and the banker's recession quickly brought me up to date.

I revisited the early CPA arguments around inspection overload, cost, weighting bias and crude labelling - comparing this with local government’s success story in its performance under CPA. And yet there was always that nagging doubt that something wasn't quite right with the framework. This was of course the fact that the framework was set by Government and the audit commission with no regard to what the public cared about and this is what brought about the dilemma of customer satisfaction falling through the floor as local performance soared against the framework.

Some of the unintended consequences of CPA were of course careers being made or broken by the scores, people playing the CPA game with resource allocation, wage inflation and limited political impact with the public.

In terms of lessons learned more corporate assessment is useful rather than service based and this needs to be proportionate to risk. Inspectorates need to be joined up in their approach and more self evaluation is vital. One of the key ingredients is of course good local performance management frameworks.

APSE's view is that independent audit and inspection is a must for public services although any world class programme should work itself to an optimum minimum level. Best Value as a concept is still as relevant today as it’s always been. Council's have made significant progress in improving performance. Self assessment is more beneficial than inspection so long as you have good robust performance data to compare with others. This also allows for the exchange of best practice and to understand best performance.

Led a debate today at APSE's Scottish Regional Council on the next stage of Best Value in Scotland this follows on from the Best Value audit process that has recently been completed.

Having examined the recommendations made there will be a requirement for more self evaluation and improvement support will be needed. There will be a greater focus on services, outcomes and partnerships. There will be a move towards more joined up inspection with other audit bodies. The process will overview £17b of spend, 258,000 staff employed and assets of £26b.

Best Value 2 will place a greater emphasis on use of resources, its aims are to aid public accountability and scrutinise quality of service. It will assess how safe people feel, focus on the support for vulnerable elderly and homeless people and take an overall view of the quality of the local environment. Council's will need to demonstrate a clear vision and overall strategic direction. This will show clear evidence of partnership working, community leadership along with community engagement and good governance with accountability. Performance management arrangements will be a key facet of the Best Value 2 audit scrutiny. There will be an overall emphasis on the quality and efficiency of services, how quickly they are improving and there responsiveness to local need.
 
Support for improvement will involve officers and members from other councils. Authorities will have to demonstrate the range and quality of information held on how the council is improving and performing. As well as their ability to achieve change and their capacity for improvement. They should also be able to identify examples of best practice and the ability to self evaluate.

APSE as an organisation welcomes much of the new framework to audit Best Value in Scotland. The move towards self evaluation through good local performance management makes performance networks an invaluable tool for authorities in order not only to demonstrate existing performance but to track improvement and report on an on-going basis against the performance of peer authorities.

APSE also agrees that the framework around self evaluation shouldn’t be prescribed, however that a broad range of indicators on inputs, process, outputs and outcome measures should be gathered on a consistent and quality based approach. This should enable the examination of trends and comparisons with other authorities and therefore facilitate learning from others, identify best performers and the dissemination of good practice. Overall this approach is a natural progression of the ongoing development of a continuous improvement environment.