Accounts Commission: Moray Council needs to speed up change

Moray Council needs to speed up the pace of change to make savings of more than £16m by March 2018, according to a report by the Accounts Commission.

“Greater pace around service transformation and more effective leadership will be required if this financial challenge is to be met,” said the report.

The Accounts Commission said that the council had made progress on its improvement action plans, including a ten-year community plan, a more robust corporate plan and service planning.

However, it noted that there is still a lot to be done and progress should be seen in the context of “a relatively low starting point”.

“Basic building blocks for Best Value that are now well developed in many councils, such as an overall customer focus strategy, strategic planning and […] continuous improvement are still in their infancy or are only now being effectively applied in Moray,” the report said.

It concluded that Moray “must increase the pace of change and improvement, to ensure it fully complies with its statutory duties, and gains the benefits that Best Value can bring.”

The report notes that “the delicate political balance” in the council makes this more challenging.

Despite the calls for improvement, the commission said the council performed well compared to other local authorities and put Moray among the top half of councils in Scotland.

All Scottish local authorities have a statutory duty of Best Value under the 2003 Local Government in Scotland Act.

Best Value is audited by the Accounts Commission, the public spending watchdog for local government.

Today’s report is one of a series of progress reports since the Accounts Commission’s first Best Value report in 2006 found that Moray Council lacked some fundamental elements of Best Value.