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Simple Guide to Best Value

This guide has been distributed to all members of staff. It has been produced in association with the Improvement and Development agency and is intended to provide a basic introduction to Best Value. It also provides a list of colleagues who you can contact if you want to know more about Best Value.

1. Introduction

Best Value is a way of improving the lives of local people, by changing the way we provide our services in both big and small ways.
It's something councils have to do by law. But more important than that, it's a whole set of ideas about how we can all do our jobs better.
This leaflet explains all this in more detail, tells you how you will be affected and suggests how you can play your part.

2. What is Best Value?

Best Value means providing local people with what they want, when they want it, at a price they are willing and able to pay. That's what we expect when we buy things every day, and it's what the public have a right to expect of us. Other important principles are:

• Councils have to be accountable to local people. They have to listen to and consult the people they are there to serve.
• Councils must regularly publish details of what improvements they have achieved and what targets they have set.
• Councils must look for continuous improvement. Sometimes this will come through many small changes. Sometimes there will be much larger changes when the existing service is fundamentally challenged.
• Councils must be prepared to expose services to fair and open competition wherever practicable.
• Best Value shouldn't be seen as an extra job, just another new initiative adding to the workload. It is about making improvements and is part of what we should all be doing in our jobs, all the time.
• Best Value will involve change, but we can't avoid change in today's fast moving world. And isn't it better to be in there, making change happen, being proud of what you do, rather than simply being a passive victim?

3. What does Best Value require?

The law now says that every council has to review all its functions within a five-year period. These reviews should:

• Challenge why and how a service is being provided.
• Compare how we perform with other councils and service providers to see how services could be provided in better ways.
• Consult local taxpayers, service users, partners and the wider business community about what they want to get from services.
• Compete wherever practicable, fairly and openly to provide the best services.

The reviews should produce demanding improvement targets with clear action plans for how they are to be achieved.

Councils must publish a Best Value Performance Plan by 30th June each year. This sets out in great detail how well the council has done and it's plans and targets for the future.

All of this will be thoroughly audited and inspected. If the Government thinks the council hasn't done what it should in terms of Best Value it can intervene, to instruct it to do better or it can even take over the running of a service. However, it will usually let the council make improvements itself, first, before taking action.

4. Best Value in Worcestershire

You may already be aware of some of the Best Value work going on within Worcestershire.
A full five-year programme of Best Value reviews has been drawn up and some reviews are already underway. A number of opportunities for improvements have already been identified. Action plans must be developed to implement improvements identified by best value reviews. Key actions should be included in your unit's business plan, together with improvement targets that have been set. This will ensure continuous improvement.

A Best Value guidance manual has been produced setting out how to tackle Best Value. This includes details of Best Value champions within each directorate who are there to provide help and advice on undertaking Best Value reviews.

The Council published its first annual Best Value Performance Plan in March 2000.

5. What does it mean for you?

You may already be involved in some of Worcestershire's early Best Value work. If you are not involved you will be soon - Best Value involves everyone. We can all make a difference.

You should try to get involved in some of the formal parts of Best Value, for instance reviewing your own, or another area. You can also apply the principles of Best Value to your own work. For instance, ask yourself:

• Why do you do what you do? Does it have to be done that way? Could it be done better?
• Who is the `customer' of your service (it may be someone inside the Council, or people who benefit from your service but with whom you don't have contact ). Do you know what they really want? How do you keep in touch with their changing needs?
• Could you get ideas from other people or organisations as to how to do all or parts of your job better? This could be people in other sections or departments, or in other organisations.
• Can you compete with the best? This shouldn't mean just working harder or for less money. The best way to be competitive in the long run is not by working harder, but by working in better ways. That means coming up with better ways of doing things and making best use off loading edge systems, equipment, and technology.
  

6. What does Best Value look like in practice?

Best Value is not just a bureaucratic paper exercise. What really matters is making improvements for local people. Examples from other councils include:

• Setting up a direct phone line for the public to report problems across a range of services. One council did this and also called back 10% of callers, which helped them improve the service even further.
• Looking in detail at how a service is provided. Is each step in the process necessary? Could it be more streamlined? Could different services work more efficiently together? One council reviewed its housing, refuse and street based services and dramatically improved response times. It reduced housing repairs from 18 to 3 days, highways repairs from 4months to 6 weeks and produced a 40 per cent improvement in responses to street lighting faults.
• Working with other bodies, like the health service, to find more efficient and effective ways to work together. These can then be ploughed back into better services for the community.
• Asking people about their needs. In one case this produced the simple idea of bringing trolleys into libraries to help older people carry books around.
• A sports centre providing a crèche to let mums and dads get exercise. The crèche is subsidised by extra spending on aerobics, food and drink.
• Involving the whole team in reviewing a post and courier service producing £90,000 of savings and the Royal Mail's award of "Smartest Mailroom In Britain".
  

Coming up with good ideas can be challenging, but fun! Often, people doing the jobs already have lots of good ideas - the hardest part may be getting others to accept them!

7. Opportunities for change

Opportunities for change are often associated with concerns about the future. Some people may fear cuts and outsourcing, as a threat to them and their service. That is not what Best Value is about.

We all know that some councils may have to make cuts but that is not a requirement of Best Value. One of the objectives of Best Value is efficiency (as well as quality and meeting community needs better) but that needn't mean spending less. Even if you increase spending on a service, as long as you get more for your money that is more efficient. The Government has said that it is not going to take any efficiency savings away. They can be ploughed back into service delivery.

Councils will have to have an open mind as to who provides services. It will not be good enough to assume that all services should be provided in-house, or that private sector provision is always best. Each case must be looked at on its merits.

The Government is introducing safeguards so that people's livelihoods will not be put at risk and so there is some protection of terms and conditions.

8. What next?

Now it's over to you, since Best Value is for everyone. You should:

• Find out what Best Value activity is going on in your department and council.
• Ask why things are done as they are, and whether they could be done better.
• Listen to your clients and customers.
• Pick up ideas from other places.
• Don't settle for anything you feel is wrong, mediocre or not best for your clients or customers.
• Believe that all things are possible.
  

Best Value is a chance to really make a difference for the people you are there to serve and in the process make your job more fulfilling and satisfying. Together we can make things better for everyone.

9. If you want to know more

If you want to know more about Best Value in Worcestershire and how you can get involved talk to:

Wendy James (Snr Policy & Review Officer) 6680 in the Policy and Review Unit.
Annette Stock in Corporate Services 6640.
Philip Moss in Educational Services 6285.
John Evans in Environmental Services 6220.
Karen Morley in Financial Services 6522.
Terry Davies in Social Services 6912.

* I&DeA is the Improvement and Development Agency for local government. It exists to help local government meet the current agenda for change, both in response to initiatives generated by central government and those introduced by local government itself.