86% of residents think Renfrewshire is a good place to live. 
Best Value Audit
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On 6 July 2006, Audit Scotland published their Audit of Best Value and Community Planning report on Renfrewshire Council. This audit forms part of a three year rolling programme to audit all of the 32 Scottish Councils. The audit looked at how well the Council deliver services across the Renfrewshire area and in particular, it addressed the following questions:
- does the council have clear strategic direction?
- is the council organised to deliver better services?
- how are services performing?
- what needs to improve?
Council's Improvement Plan
On 7 September the Council approved an Improvement Plan to deliver the twelve improvement actions identified in the Audit report. The Council will be sending the Improvement Plan to the Accounts Commission by October 2006.
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Best Value Audit: Conclusion
The overall conclusion of the Audit is:
“Renfrewshire Council has adopted a modernising agenda to ensure it is in a good position to meet the changing demands on public services in its area. The Council understands what needs to be done to develop best value and is making good progress in developing systems and processes to support continuous improvement. Now that these underlying systems are being established, the Council needs to concentrate on improving the quality and efficiency of its services year on year to deliver measurable benefits for local residents... It has developed a positive and customer focused organisational culture which effectively supports the drive for improvement.”
- download the complete Audit Scotland report Warning! This PDF file is large (1.2Mb) and may take some time to download with dial up internet access.
- read a summary of key findings
- read a summary of the Council's customer care assessment
To view the Audit's assessment of the performance of Council service departments or to view the Council's submission to Audit Scotland, please use the related content links on the right hand side.
Summary of key findings
Here are some of the key findings of the audit:
- public performance reporting is well presented in Renfrewshire, showing a balanced approach with references to targets not met as well as those achieved.
- the Council is supporting best value by managing and developing its staff, procurement, community planning, equal opportunities, sustainable development and customer care.
- the Council makes use of thorough best value service reviews, benchmarking, consultancy reviews and external service delivery to demonstrate the competitiveness of its services.
- the Council is focused on the people it serves and has invested in improving its approach to customer care.
- Council services are well managed and are customer focused. A culture of continuous improvement exists and the Council makes good use of quality awards and other external accreditations to engage, involve and focus its resources, including staff, on achieving continuous improvement.
- despite the challenge of pockets of significant deprivation in the area, Council services generally achieve good levels of satisfaction and performance. Educational attainment is consistently good; the housing service is engaged in a progressive area renewal programme; environmental services perform well and are particularly customer focused; and planning and transport co-ordinates an integrated approach to the area’s regeneration activities which helps to promote the economy and assist people into jobs.
- overall, the Council demonstrates a strong commitment to delivering continuous improvement and this is reflected across all of the Council’s services. The Council is also developing its capacity to ensure it can deliver measurable service improvements in the future.
Customer Care
“The Council places a high priority on customer care in its plans. Its high-quality ‘Customers Matter’ toolkit has been used to train around 1,700 employees and the Council has made good progress against its customer strategy targets” As the audit points out, delivering customer care is an explicit priority of the Council as ‘treating or customers well’ is one of our corporate values.
In order to deliver good customer care, the Council focuses strongly on equipping frontline staff with the necessary skills. The ‘Customers Matter’ training toolkit sets out the standards expected of staff in dealing with customers. To date, over 100 ‘Customers Matter’ training workshops have been delivered to around 1,300 employees and a further 400 employees have passed the online training course.
The audit also praises the Council for consulting customers on their preferred means of contact and developing services according to their feedback. While developing information and technology solutions such as the new community portal, the Council also noted that many customers prefer telephone and face-to-face communication with Council staff. As a result, the customer contact centre has extended services into evening hours and a new pilot Customer Service Centre was opened in Council Headquarters to deal with customer enquiries.
Another important aspect of customer care is giving customers the opportunity to complain if they are unhappy with the service they receive. The audit reports that the Council’s complaints procedure is clearly set out in leaflets and posters, the community portal and the Renfrewshire residents’ magazine. Also, complaints are recorded, analysed and monitored and staff are given guidance on dealing with complaints as part of their ‘Customers Matters’ training.
You can view the council's submission documents and summaries of the auditors' comments on Council service departments from the related content links on the top right hand side of this page.
If you would like to find out more about this audit in Renfrewshire, please email us at chiefexec@renfrewshire.gov.uk.
