Renfrewshire Council: the Audit of Best Value and ... - Audit Scotland

continuing to develop its approach to performance management and a set of key corporate indicators
has been expanded and improved to give a better focus on the main issues for services. The
indicators have been selected on the basis of their specific relevance to the council, either because
they are strategically important or have been identified as an area for service improvement.
32. To date, the main challenge to directors on service performance issues has come from the chief
executive on a one-to-one basis. This is done through six monthly meetings on service plans and
performance indicators. There is scope for the corporate management team to provide more collective
challenge on service performance and the new corporate performance reports should facilitate this.
Setting a clear direction
The council has a clear strategic framework based on community planning objectives and service
planning is improving. Further refinement to these arrangements continues and the council should
consider how it can report more explicitly on its corporate contribution to community planning
objectives, establish more specific targets for its four additional corporate objectives and improve
the resource information included in its service plans.
Community planning
33. Councils are responsible for ensuring that key organisations which influence public service delivery
work together in their area to focus resources on the achievement of common long-term strategic
objectives. The council has taken a significant role in developing community planning and keeping
structures and objectives under review to ensure they continue to be relevant and effective. The
council worked closely with its partners to draw up its community plan. In agreeing its community plan,
the council and partnership consulted widely, for instance with its Citizen’s Panel, made up of 1,500
local residents and with individuals and community groups, to inform the final plan published in 2000.
In the council’s survey of citizen panel members almost two-thirds responded that the plan reflects
their views on the most important issues facing the area.
34. The community plan represents a coherent statement of the partners’ strategic objectives. The
partnership’s overall vision is for a ‘Thriving, safe, and forward looking community which provides
opportunities for all and which cares for its people and its environment.’ The plan is well structured
and has a good level of detail, enabling the partnership to be held to account for delivering its planned
improvements. Targets are expressed in terms of better outcomes, or establishing the building blocks
that will lead to better outcomes, such as reducing the percentage of working age adults with no
qualifications to the Scottish average. (In 1998 around 20 per cent of working age adults in
Renfrewshire had no qualifications compared to the Scottish average of 17 per cent).
35. The community plan also establishes a clear planning framework, based on three guiding principles
(social inclusion, modernising government and sustainable development) and three key themes
(learning and work, health and social care, and housing neighbourhoods and community safety). The
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