22 May 2009
By Paul Dicken in Cardiff
The spending watchdog for Wales has published a three-year strategy for improving public services during the recession.
Sustained impact in a time of change was published at the Wales Audit Office annual conference in Cardiff on May 20.
The Welsh Assembly Government and auditor general Jeremy Colman also discussed the new performance framework for Welsh local authorities that is expected to be introduced next year.
The WAO said it was operating in a ‘climate of significant change which will have far-reaching effects on the public sector’. One of its main aims will be to promote better comparisons, clearer performance data and more accessible reporting to decision-makers and citizens.
The strategy includes a local government measure designed to improve services and relationships with citizens. It seeks to link wellbeing and community planning with service improvement, and redefines basic duties for councils, as well as reforming the inspection regime.
Colman told Public Finance that the measure was an ‘opportunity for really big change in the way improvement is supported and scrutinised’.
He added: ‘We will be fundamentally changing our own approach to local government improvement. Instead of producing a very large number of small projects, we will be doing two projects in each local authority in each year.’
Colman said one assessment would be forward-looking, assessing the ability for an authority to improve in future years, and the second would be a retrospective look at how well a council had performed.
‘This may seem elementary, but the current system in Wales doesn’t provide for that kind of assessment,’ he said.
Colman said he had been critical of the assessment regime in the past but the proposals, passed in the National Assembly last month, had met those criticisms.
Wales’ 22 unitary authorities spend around £4bn a year on services.
