Best Value Duty

The statutory guidance further defines the Best Value themes by providing a detailed description of the theme, along with various positive features as ‘characteristics of a well-functioning authority’, contrasted with a list of example negative indicators of potential failures. There are 73 separate characteristics across the 7 themes described in the statutory guidance. The Council must respond to the NS-BVN in a pragmatic way to assure Central Government that RBC is a ‘well-functioning authority’. Therefore, one of the first workstreams in RBC’s NS-BVN response programme was identified as a self-assessment against the seven Best Value themes and each ‘characteristic of a well-functioning authority’. A robust systematic process was developed to assess and reflect on our current position against the Best Value Duty guidance.

Methodology

For each theme and characteristic, an initial narrative along with evidence to support the narrative was prepared by the workstream team based on general knowledge of the Council and services provided. This was then used in a series of workshops with relevant Corporate Heads of Service and subject matter experts from across the organisation depending on the requirement of the characteristic. In this way, the narrative was further developed and expanded, and the evidence library further populated. Once narratives were in final drafts, seven independent reviewers were identified, one for each theme, and were asked to review the narrative, sample the evidence and score the characteristic. A second level of assurance on the scoring was subsequently applied, with another officer reviewing all scoring across all characteristics to provide a consistency check of all the scores initial reviewers had given. The Corporate Leadership Team (CLT) then reviewed the scoring given and subsequently a ‘heat map’ was produced:was produced:

Self-Assessment Heatmaps keys