Best Value a corporate view

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Best Value - a corporate view

• Brian Roberts
• Deputy County Treasurer
• Staffordshire County Council

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Staffordshire Treasurers
Our Team

• Finance Team of the Year - highly commended
• CIPFA prize winner
• IIP accreditation
• Reduce senior management
• Quality
• Highly devolved

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What is Best Value?

• Quality, value for money services
• Meets peoples needs
• Community leadership

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Context
How do we achieve B.V. against

• Tight government controls
• Under funding (general)
• Inequality in resource allocation
• Uncertainty
• Negativity (government)

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Why Bother?

• Statutory requirement
• Poor service provision (not all)
• Intervention

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Statutory Requirements - The Enforcers

• Scrutiny members
• Internal audit
• Best value officers
• External audit
• B.V. inspectors
• OFSTED etc.

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Why Poor Services?

• Quality of managers
• Poor infrastructure (underfunding)
• De-motivated staff
• Ticking over strifing

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Look at Two Aspects of B.V.

• Continuous improvement
• Fundamental reviews

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Continuous Improvement

• Performance indicators
• Performance targets (top quartile)
• Efficiency gains (2 p.a.)

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Achieving Continuous Improvement

• Translate targets to actions
• Have a process
• Staff buy-in
• Partnerships (get out of the box)

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Fundamental Reviews

• Selection (large is best)
• Process (D.A.) vs outcomes (inspectors)
• Challenge
• Resource rich / light touch
• Improvement plans

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Barriers to Achieving B.V.

• Lack of strategic thinking
• Unco-ordinated approach
• Too many reviews
• Lack of skills (members/officers)
• Vested interests (independent members)
• Departmental boundaries

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Other Factors

• PSAs
• The new constitution
• E-government
• Partnership working

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Role of the Accountant

• Finance expert needed on most reviews
• quality financial information (and other)
• Advising and supporting

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Summary

• Early days (survive in this form?)
• PSAs
• Greater emphasis on outcomes rather than process
• Real challenge