Scottish Executive accused of failing on Best Practice regime

17 May 07
The Scottish Executive has failed to embrace the system of Best Value for its own policies, a leading finance academic has claimed.

18 May 2007

The Scottish Executive has failed to embrace the system of Best Value for its own policies, a leading finance academic has claimed.

Arthur Midwinter, visiting professor at the institute of public sector accounting research at Edinburgh University, told a CIPFA in Scotland seminar in Edinburgh on May 11 that there was a big gap in the Best Value regime, 'in the absence of any serious plan by the Executive itself'.

He added: 'So far, it has been left to departments to do their own thing and they have concentrated on reviewing administration, rather than policy. We have had reviews of performance management and service contract systems and we have Best Value plans of individual councils, but no audit or performance reporting on annual improvements for the system as a whole.'

Audit Scotland is currently conducting Best Value audits of all of Scotland's 32 councils.

Midwinter, a former budget adviser to the Scottish Parliament finance committee, highlighted problems experienced over the Executive's attempts to develop outcome agreements, the system that seeks to link resources to results. He said that in 2002, the then finance minister, Andy Kerr, told the Parliament he was seeking to develop an agreement with the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities over six key outcome measures.

'Five years later, this issue is still ongoing, with no agreed set of outcome measures in the public domain,' Midwinter said.

He concluded: 'If the new Executive maintains the current approach it needs to reduce the spin in attempting to demonstrate fiscal competence and rationalise the system to reconcile the problems of efficiency and of linking resources to results.

'Service managers cannot be expected to deliver what they cannot control, however convenient it is for the politicians to pretend that they can.'

He also warned that, given a lack of fiscal realism in tax and spending pledges made in the recent election, the new Parliament would have its work cut out simply trying to control and monitor spending, let alone monitoring performance.

PFmay2007

Did you enjoy this article?

AddToAny

Top