Best Value Duty

Theme 2: Leadership

Self-Assessment Heatmap
L001 L002 L003 L004 L005 L006
L007 L008 L009 L0010 L0011 L0012

Best Value Duty - Description of a Local Authority Whose Service Delivery Delivers Best Value:

  • Effective political and administrative leaders who have a clear vision and set of priorities for their area, are key to building local economic growth, social cohesion and a healthy local democracy. 
  • When they model positive and effective leadership behaviours at all levels, this can be beneficial to a local authority’s overall culture and governance. 
  • It is essential that all officers with statutory responsibility, including the Chief Finance Officer (Section 151 Officer or Section 73 Officer in the case of combined authorities and combined county authorities) and Monitoring Officer uphold their duties, both individually and collectively and provide reports to the Chief Executive/Head of Paid Service and, as necessary, to full Council. Statutory officers must work effectively together, have access to the highest levels of Council decisions and have a voice in important decisions. 
  • An authority that either fails to recruit to its statutory officer posts on a permanent basis over an extended period of time or has a high turnover in these roles indicates instability and potential wider cultural concerns. 
  • When this is compounded by many senior positions being appointed to on an interim basis over an extended period, this can signal a problem. 
  • All-out as opposed to multiple elections within the four-year cycle can enhance political stability and reduce ongoing campaigning that can hinder improvement.  
  • The Council’s Corporate Business Plan is our top tier strategic document describing the overarching aims of the Council, underpinned by five corporate strategies. The Plan was developed in conjunction with Members, it ties all the work of Council staff together and generates a clear vision of how the Borough will be improved over the next 5 years – enabling place-shaping, local growth and improving the quality of life of residents. 
  • Service Area Plans are developed to deliver the objectives and outcomes described in the Corporate Business Plan ensuring that all services contribute to the overarching aims of the Council.
  • The Council has robust systems owned by Members for identifying, reporting and mitigating risk in place. It was previously identified as an area for improvement in the Annual Governance Statement, but it was thoroughly reviewed and improved through the Standards and Audit work programme for 2023/24 and assured by an internal audit in 2024.
  • The Council’s previous CEX held this post for 14 years and following his retirement, a new CEX joined in August 2023. The Assistant CEX (Place) is a new senior role to provide additional senior leadership capacity, which was filled in July 2023. Both this postholder and the Assistant CEX/S.151 Officer are postholders of 3 years or less. The Council’s Monitoring Officer has held this position for over 13 years. This demonstrates that the Council has successfully recruited to its statutory officer posts on a permanent basis and there is not a high turnover rate in these roles.
  • The Council was able to show in the self-assessment that all statutory officers uphold their duties and always consult the appropriate officers and Members on their reports. The Monitoring Officer and S.151 Officer are both part of the Corporate Leadership Team (CLT), which is the most senior level of staff at the Council, meaning they have access to and have a voice in all important council decisions. 
  • Refresher training for staff on Financial Regulations and Budget Management (with a more local context) is overdue. A series of refresher courses need to be developed and delivered once the Accountancy team is fully staffed and the audit backlog is resolved. However, this is not likely to be before January 2025.
  • The Council has the ability to measure certain aspects of the health of its workforce data and performance, but the accuracy and the breadth of this data must be improved to help the Council to make more evidence-led workforce decisions to achieve better outcomes. 
  • The Council must improve establishment controls to synchronise HR and payroll information to maintain an up-to-date establishment and improve monitoring of staffing costs. This will reinforce strong financial management and reporting throughout the organisation and support more effective workforce planning.
  • The Council must find ways to improve workforce planning by planning for future workforce needs. Currently, HR Business Partners support the CHoS in identifying the skills and expertise required for a role, benchmarking salaries, grades of posts, and providing guidance. Departmental workforce plans provide a more collaborative and strategic approach that is needed to maintain effective succession planning, but they are not in place for all service areas in the Council.
  • CLT to consider implementing service area reports on KPI performance and progress against service area plans to the relevant service committee on a quarterly basis to improve consistency.
  • Continue to refine and develop the risk management system through feedback from risk owners and reporting to Standards and Audit Committee. 
  • Monitoring progress of delivery and measuring benefits realised of capacity and capability review, and the organisational culture assessment will provide assurance of continuous improvement in strategic leadership capacity and capability. Delivery and progress are monitored as part of the established NS-BVN response programme.
  • Review and refine the ‘rules of engagement’ with the Runnymede Council Alliance to ensure this delivers Member leadership and direction in a timely manner to support efficient decision making.
  • An effective professional development and appraisal process system will be put in place during Phase 2 of the My View system implementation. The new system will capture data from the Performance and Appraisals system, and once this is obtained analysis of the data will be carried out so that the quality of appraisals can be examined. 
  • The development of departmental workforce plans across the Council will provide a more strategic approach to develop optimal team and service structures that can be resourced to ensure teams are resilient and achieve the outcomes required. Development of workforce planning is in the HR & OD Service area plan for delivery in 24/25.
  • Phase 2 of the My View system implementation will also set up a new integrated HR/Payroll system, as well as the establishment reconciliation workstream in the Savings and Efficiency Programme. The Finance Management System will be reprocured in 2024/25 and the system specification will need to incorporate management controls and checks and balances to improve self-service budget management reporting capability.
  • management controls and checks and balances to improve self-service budget management reporting capability.

Next Steps Identified in Action Plan:

Through self-assessment, we identified seven key actions to implement to improve service delivery, laid out in page 6-9 of the action plan.