The Highland Council has strong leadership and knows where it needs to improve, according to the Accounts Commission. It is also focused on issues that matter to local people and works well with partners. However, it needs to make sure it can better demonstrate value for money.

The Highland Council is generally delivering good quality services resulting in high and improving levels of customer and citizen satisfaction. Some improvement is required in areas such as adult social work and the management of housing rent arrears.

The Accounts Commission says Scottish Borders Council works well with other organisations, is improving well already and knows what more it needs to do to improve. It now needs to develop its systems for managing its performance.

Scottish Borders delivers good quality services which have improved in recent years and are well-regarded by the local community. The council works well with its partners and together they are achieving good outcomes for the community in areas such as health improvement, jointly-provided social care, community safety and child protection.

A national detection exercise by Audit Scotland and other public bodies has identified fraud and error overpayments, savings and other outcomes worth more than £20 million.

An Audit Scotland report, The National Fraud Initiative in Scotland: making an impact, sets out the results of the 2008/09 exercise, which involved 74 bodies, including councils, police forces, fire and rescue services, health boards, the Scottish Public Pension Agency and the Student Award Agency for Scotland.

The NHS in Scotland could save almost 15 per cent of the money it spends on locum doctors in hospitals – or about £6 million a year – through better planning and procurement.

The bulletin primarily aims to share information with non-executive health board members and elected members of councils, but it also provides a summary of our work that we hope will be of interest to staff working in health and community care services.

The Audit Scotland annual report sets out our progress under each of our five corporate priorities:

There are important lessons to be learned by all public bodies about using the private sector to help deliver their objectives following the losses incurred through the 2009 event The Gathering.

Audit Scotland has reviewed the public funding of The Gathering, an event held in Edinburgh in July 2009 as part of the Homecoming Scotland programme, and has published a report today, The Gathering 2009.

The Accounts Commission has requested more information on The Highland Council’s Caithness Heat and Power (CHaP) project.

The Commission took the decision at its meeting on Thursday 17 June, when it considered a statutory report from the Controller of Audit that highlighted concerns with the project.

Chair of the Accounts Commission, John Baillie, said:

The Accounts Commission has published its findings on South Ayrshire Council today, following its consideration of the latest update report from Audit Scotland on the council’s progress in meeting its Best Value duties to local people.

The Commission welcomes the good progress made by the council since the last Best Value audit in April 2009, and urges it to continue with this as there is still much to be done.

Chair of the Accounts Commission John Baillie said:

The work-plan for a new streamlined scrutiny system for Scotland’s councils is published today, with a 36 per cent reduction in the time scrutiny bodies spend in councils undertaking strategic scrutiny work.

In the National Scrutiny Plan for Local Government 2010/11, Scotland’s scrutiny agencies jointly set out the strategic scrutiny work they will do in councils during the year. The agencies are coordinating their work and focusing on the key issues at each council, in order to make scrutiny more efficient and effective.