Further detail

To demonstrate how Best Value is being achieved in SPA Corporate we undertake an annual self-assessment against the seven Best Value themes as described in the Scottish Government’s guidance for Accountable Officers (AO).

Areas where the SPA believes further improvements toward best practice can been made are singled out for further deep dive work to be completed. This may involve using best practice guidance for that area which could involve Audit Scotland guidance and toolkits.

This is the second full iteration of utilising the AO guidance with assessment by holding seven workshops involving a range of stakeholders from across SPA Corporate. Since the previous assessment the SPA team has been taken a far more robust and challenging self-assessment approach. The team is firmly focused on continuous improvement, with a far higher level of expectation compared with the previous year.

Approach and Findings (2023/24)

Seven facilitated Best Value workshops have been completed utilising the Scottish Government’s guidance for Accountable Officers. This involved completing an assessment against a number of defined indicators. The workshops have been collaborative involving lots of different stakeholders from across SPA Corporate.

The self-assessment focused on ensuring that we have robust evidence to support our evaluation. We have identified that there has been a maturing of our approach. Highlights included:

Demonstrating improvement in compliance for actions delivered that were previously non-compliant or partially compliant.
Recognising that whilst we may be compliant with indicators, we have identified actions that could strengthen our position moving us from a baseline compliance to focus on best practice.
Revising some areas, acknowledging that there is further work to be done to demonstrate full compliance with best practice.

Our overall results from the self-assessment completed this year highlight that we are achieving:
57% fully compliant
42% partially compliant
0% non-compliance
1% not applicable.

These overall results are positive and the underlying analysis shows that for a large number of areas of partial compliance have predominantly been achieved with minimal extra steps to achieve full compliance.

Previous Self-Assessment 2022/23

In comparison to the previous year’s assessment, the level of full compliance remains consistent, however, the main change has seen the level of non-compliance reduce from 32% to 0%, whilst seeing full compliance continue to increase from 52% to 57%.

Assessment last year revealed that Sustainability was an area of weakness where significant improvements could be made. A number of initiatives have been launched to improve this area which are reflected in the assessment this year.

As a result of the improvements implemented and the creation of the Sustainability Plan for 2023-24, scoring against this indicator has improved and is expected to continue to improve.

Next Steps

Improvement actions identified from the self-assessment will be progressed through the current service plan, where they align. For any actions not incorporated into this year’s plan these will be built into the service plan for 2024/25, including areas for improvement (AFI’s) where it is appropriate to do so.

Deep-dive areas have been agreed with the SPA Corporate Extended Leadership, Equality and Performance Management. There are already established working groups within SPA Corporate focussing on these areas so deep dive activity and improvement actions will be driven through these groups.

The Best Value self-assessment will inform part of the HMICS validated self-evaluation so our findings and supporting evidence will be shared with them.