Accounts Commission Public Session - May 2025
May 15, 2025

Jo Armstrong  0:00
Good morning.
Welcome, welcome colleagues from Renfrewshire Council here today. This is the Accounts Commission meeting being held in Glasgow for the first time. Change from our usual Edinburgh venue.
The public session of today's meeting is being recording, recorded, and the recording of this meeting will be made available via the Accounts Commission website as soon as possible and also available on request. Members of the public are also welcome to observe the public session of the Commission's meeting.
Those who are watching this morning, thank you for finding the time to join us. But you are observing and not participating, you, therefore, can you have your camera and microphone off? But it’s, I think it’s already off? Yes. But if by any chance you might be, can you please keep your camera, camera and microphone off.
For anybody participating in the meeting who’s joining us online, please keep your camera off and microphone on mute, except when it's your turn, your item to be discussed.
May I also ask all who are speaking during meeting, whether here in person or online, to speak clearly and loudly because of the benefit of the recording and for colleagues or observers who have reduced hearing. And I’m conscious the microphone is in the middle of the table, so those at the end, please make sure you enunciate and, maybe not shout, but certainly, make it clear.
OK, that takes us to item 1. Apologies for absence, Sarah?

Sarah Watters
Yeah. We have apologies from Andy Cowie, Christine Lester and Ruth MacLeod. All other members are in the room today.

Jo Armstrong 
Item 2's declarations of connections.
As members are aware, I have a connection with the Renfrewshire report in items 5 and 10 on the agenda as former chair of the Board of Hub West Scotland, which is a partner with Renfrewshire Council delivering capital projects. Because of that, and after consulting with our deputy ethics partner, I will recuse myself and take no part in those two items on today's agenda. Andrew Burns, as our deputy chair, will chair those discussions in my place. However, given that I am no longer on that board, I will remain in the room.
Can I ask any other members of any connection of interest regarding any items on today's agenda to please state the connection or interest and whether they consider it material enough to need to recuse themselves.
Carol.

Carol Evans 
I have … flooding report because I'm a board member of SEPA and one of their board champions for flooding, so I'll excuse myself from the room for that item. 

Jo Armstrong
Thank you. Jennifer.

Jennifer Henderson
I've got a connection in relation to item 15, quality of public audit in Scotland, I'm the chief exec of a public body that is audited within that, but I don't consider in relation to discussing the report that I need to recuse myself.

Jo Armstrong
That takes us to item 3 order of business. As normal, I will seek the Commission's approval for the order of business today. I propose that we consider items 9 to 17 in private for the reasons set out in our agenda. Are members agreed?
Item 4, minutes of the last meeting and… Sarah.

Sarah Watters 
Thanks, chair. So first of all, happy to take any issues of accuracy that members might have… No?
So I'm obviously assuming that you've read the minute in conjunction with the action tracker, but there's a further three items that I'd just like to highlight. 
Item 4, the Argyll and Bute visit has been arranged now for 28th of May. The chair will cover more on that in her update. 
Item 7, which is Jo's insight event, that had to be rescheduled and it's now scheduled for the 22nd of May, so it'll be great if members could join Jo either in person or online.
And item 14, I think after checking with members, we're going to take the Audit Scotland quarterly reports by correspondence, which means that they can be distributed to Members closer to the time that they're considered by the board.
Happy to take any questions or comments on the minutes.

Jo Armstrong
No more questions or comments, so agreed to approve? OK.
… First substantive item for today's session, which is the best value in Renfrewshire Council, and as a consequence of me, of not… having the connection, I’ll hand over to Andrew to lead the rest of the meet… rest of this section. 

Andrew Burns 
OK, thanks very much, Jo. Morning, colleagues. So as Jo said, I'm going to chair this, item 5 and also, in public, and item 10 when we come back to discuss Renfrewshire in private after, I think it's the lunch break and so on.
I think we've got about an hour, hour and 5/10 minutes at the most to cover all of this, so if colleagues could help me out in that regard, that would be great! If we can try and finish by about 11:15, that would be fantastic. 
So we're obviously joined by Helena as Controller of Audit and Gary and Adrian from Azets so will come to you in due course. 
So as you'll know, this is the statutory report by the Controller of Audit on best value in Renfrewshire. The report draws attention to the findings from the Council's 23/24 annual audit report on how effectively the council demonstrates best value. The Commission's being invited to consider and endorse the Controller’s report in this next session and will then, in private after the break, consider how we wish to proceed.
And the Controller and the audit team, Gary and Adrian, are here to provide any clarifications or answers to questions that members may have on both the Controller’s report and the annual audit report as it relates to best value. 
We have got a break after this session, so I’m conscious we’ve got a couple of colleagues from Renfrewshire, which is great to see, here in the room, so there will be a 15-minute break after this session, about 11:15, so if you want to hang around for informal discussion, I stress informal discussion, then you're very welcome to do so. And then we'll convene after the break. 
But I think unless there's any queries on the broad format, then without further ado, I’ll hand over to Helena and colleagues to introduce the report.

Helena Gray 06:11
Good morning, everybody. I welcome the opportunity to discuss my best value report on Renfrewshire Council with the Commission this morning and I'm delighted to be joined by Gary and Adrian from Azets who led the audit work, and … for their work on the audit.
Auditors have concluded that Renfrewshire Council remains committed to the principles of best value and has made good progress in implementing previous auditor recommendations arising from both best value reports and statutory reports.
Auditors have specifically noted improvements in levels of scrutiny by the audit, risk and scrutiny board, and the steps the council has taken to self-assess its organisational culture using an innovative new approach called the culture assessment model, developed with the Improvement Service.
As well as the actions it is taking to further strengthen transparency and openness in its decision making, the order… auditor also reports good progress in the development of consultation and community engagement, including a refresh of the council's overall approach, with appropriate steps being taken to support better governance and scrutiny of these arrangements. And the auditor will continue to monitor progress in these areas as part of their 24/25 audit.
The auditor has found that performance management arrangements at the council are robust, with performance monitored through quarterly performance reporting for corporate management team and scrutiny twice a year between the Chief Executive and each directorate, with plans for a new performance report this year, to drive further improvement in service level performance. 
Overall the Council has 57% of its local government benchmarking framework indicators in the top two quartiles of council performance, having fallen slightly from 63% in the base year. 
The council has appropriate workforce planning strategies and other policies in place, and has implemented a number of automatic processes to drive efficiency and innovation, although there is scope for improving how progress against its workforce …
I note that the council is looking at how it can incorporate business case and options appraisal assessments more transparently in its decision making processes, and has plans in place to link its corporate strategy more clearly to operational plans.
Finally, the council has… the auditor has concluded that the council has appropriate financial monitoring arrangements in place. While the council reports it has delivered significant savings, it still had to use reserves to close the budget gap in previous years, and it's forecasting a cumulative budget gap of 33 million by 27/28.
It plans to update its medium term financial strategy in September of this year, and as part of this it will set out the level of savings it expects to achieve through its transformation programme, Reshaping Renfrewshire. 
Like many councils, it’s likely they'll need to take some difficult decisions.
I’ll pause there, thank you…

Andrew Burns 
Thanks very much, Helena. I'm sure there will be questions. And as, colleagues will usually try and organise this section of the agenda into themes, and we've got six themes that I'll read out in a second, and I’m going to ask each of our respective colleagues to lead on each of the themes in a second. And we've got actually two colleagues that want to ask about one of the themes. And as it happens, by chance not design, if you discount myself and Jo, and the three colleagues who have got apologies in, there are seven Commission members here, so it should give us a reasonable structure. That's, that's not all to say that, you know, when Carol leads off on a section, if somebody else wants to come in, please, please do so.
So the themes are finances – I’ll do them in this order – finances, transformation, workforce, community engagement, performance and leadership. And there's two questions in finance. So I'll move to finance first, if that's OK, I'm going to go to Derek and then Carol after that. Derek.

Derek Yule
Thanks very much and thanks for the report. I thought on the whole it was a very good report. I think it's always when we look at these from the outside, it's just trying to make sure that we understand where the, where the council is so, I guess my starting off point is, I felt from the report, that the council does have, you know, very strong financial management. It's got a good track record of achievement and, and delivery. 
There's a couple of things in the report I just wanted to tease out to make sure I understand the position properly. The first one would be round about savings.
Your report suggests that the council, I assume when it, it builds that into the budget and in reporting on service performance against budget. You said there wasn't, you know, clear evidence to know whether the savings had been achieved or not, and yet, paragraph 57 of the report makes reference to 190 million of savings since 2011. So I suppose my first question around about that. If non-delivery of service isn’t, of savings isn't routinely reported, what assurances can the Commission take that the council has a track record of delivering savings? 
So that, and I suppose in a sense it’s then, you know, what confidence can we take that that will continue in the future? So that, that would be the first, first question. Second one would be about reserves because I just again trying to understand the information that’s in, in the report. The, it probably is unfortunate timing of the, I think you said the council’s planning to update its medium term financial strategy, but there did seem to be a gap going forward and in your report, met from reserves and I think you, you reference that they’ve used reserves to bridge the budget gap in previous years. So I guess my question arising from that is how sustainable is that going forward? 
The council does seem to have quite a substantial balance in earmarked reserves, which seem to have come from the service concessions and other sort of one-offs. So I suppose just trying to tease out, how challenging the position is for the council going forward. 
How they’ve balanced their budget in the past seems to be using reserves, is that sustainable position, how’s, what’s the council’s strategy in terms of reserves going, going forward?
My third question, which again, it’s looking at financial risk around the IJB which is mentioned quite extensively in the report, as being an ongoing financial challenge, I guess like every council’s facing that just, it’d be interesting to hear how the relationship with the IJB works and what risks are built into the council's medium term financial strategy on the back of that.

Andrew Burns
Thanks very much, Derek. 

Helena Gray 
As always, a lot within that. I'll go through each of those and, and I'll bring in Gary and Adrian as well to offer some more, more detail. 
But firstly on savings. So the 190 million of savings since 2011 is reported by the council in their council financial outlook and their medium term financial plan. I think in terms of, and I'll bring in Gary to talk a bit more about the transparency around this, but the way in which the council reports on, on the savings is that where a saving is agreed it is then baselined within their opening departmental budget. So non-delivery of the saving is where it's then reported, so it will be reported as an overspend to the relevant departmental board. So I think that's just that slight difference in the way that the council are reporting savings than we've seen before. But perhaps if I pause at that and bring in Gary and Adrian and then we'll come to reserves and the IJB in a minute.

Gary Devlin 
Yeah. So Helena has captured the position in relation to how savings are managed and monitored. Eventually savings have to crystallise in the budget. So at some point the budget speaks for itself. The, the number you spend is the number that you spend.
And savings are not audited and they’re not audited for a really good reason because some of them are real in terms of, they could be cuts, for example, and it depends on what you mean by the term saving, is it an efficiency saving where you are transforming the service to deliver the same quality but with less inputs, or is it an actual cut in service, whether or not that's a saving? 
We don't audit savings. What we order are the numbers within the accounts, and Helena has just outlined that the council does report savings to, to full council and to its committees, to its various boards, but we don't audit that and I think quite rightly because it's such a moving feast and it's subject to such challenging terminology.
The real meat of this, though, is in the financial sustainability of the council against its budgeted plan, and when you're dealing with savings they’re either going to crystallise and find a way into general reserves or, or they are not as they become overspends and they become a lower general reserve because you’re not achieving the saving.

Helena Gray 
I think just the final thing on that and we'll probably come on that. The other part of your question around savings, I think was around that track record. I think when we come on to discuss transformation, we can talk about some of the work that the council has already delivered in terms of that transformation as well.
I suppose, to come on to reserves then. And so again, as I set out in my opening remarks, the council has used reserves to help manage budget gaps in previous years, as well as helping to afford investment. But the council's medium term financial plan does recognise that this isn't sustainable and that their aspiration is to use reserves to support a smooth delivery of savings and, and manage, I suppose the pace of recurring savings and that investment.
The 25/26 budget agreed the use of reserves of 0.4 million, but if you look at the table, you can see that, I think, that that is largely to support savings and investment… sorry, investment, as you'll see from the budget gap that they've got, money from savings and Council tax will be enough for that, that gap. And as you've already mentioned on reserves, the Council has a significant level of usable reserves, as a proportion of the annual budget.
Shall I move on to IJBs, and then I can bring in the team as well? 
So just again on, on the IJB. So the 23/24 annual audit report of the IJB and I should say that, that Gary is not the auditor for the IJB, I know often we have it where we have the auditor for the IJB are the same, so, but the 23/24 annual audit report for the Renfrewshire IJ, IJB does highlight a significant risk around the ability to bridge future budget gaps, particularly in 25/26. Now we know that that's a position that is shared by many IJBs across Scotland.
And, I believe that their CFO has presented a balanced budget, recommended a balanced budget for 25/26, which does include the drawdown of IJB reserves, and the advice to the IJB suggests that reserves will be fully drawn by the end of 25/26, so I think in terms of that question around risk, like many Councils and IJBs, I think it's absolutely an area that the council and the IJB will need to, need manage and they're, they’re obviously not alone in that. 
But I'll bring in Gary and Adrian if there's anything they want to add.

Gary Devlin
The commentary I would make on reserves is, when I look at Renfrewshire Council, this is a council that has built up strong levels of reserves in the good times and they're applying those reserves when times are becoming tougher and I think that's, that's a sign of good financial management over the long term, you're not getting a zigzag and cuts in services, you're getting a much smoother line in relation to the quality of service, the council is able to … the more challenging circumstance.
And the council also has, you see this in the report, but it has really quite ambitious capital investment plans to use those reserves, particularly around the education estate, which has been a feature of this Commission meeting in previous… 
And I would just argue that's the sign of a well, a financially well-managed council.

Andrew Burns
Thanks, Gary. Derek, anything?

Derek Yule 
No, I think that that's, that's helpful. I think Gary’s comments at the end about, that kind of supports the view that I’d kind of formed from, from reading the documents, so that's quite helpful. Thank you. 

Andrew Burns
Thanks, Derek. I think I mentioned at the start there's a couple of questions on finance, and Carol, you had one slightly separate around capital, I think?

Carol Evans
Yeah, so, mine is on Dargavel and I'd like to start by saying I congratulate the way you've handled the, the summary of that and the progress that's been made to date. It's really good to see the community engagement. Taking that aside, I think the council appears to be performing well and I welcome the, the work on the innovation and the workforce development, the digital and the partner working, education and so on.
But I have a slight concern, taking it back to Dargavel, and I just want to clarify if my understanding of the report is correct, that there's the 45 million now and then it seems to be suggesting there's 1.2 million from the interest and the ongoing costs of 2.8 million over 40 years, which is about 157 million in total. So it's really, is that correct and what's the sort of sacrifice that will be made for that or is it going to be met by council tax? That's my first question. And the other one is how much of the 13 million external borrowing for this year and the 33 million required in the medium term financial plan is directly attributed to the Dargavel.

Gary Devlin
So the additional burden on the loans fund from, from the Dargavel issue was around the 75 million mark. That may well move as plans for Park Mains High School and Dargavel may change. We know that construction costs go up, but start off with the 75 million mark. And that will add a loan, a loans fund servicing debt burden onto the revenue cost of the council for the length of those loans, say, as old as the school is, so say 40 years. And that will directly affect the education budget and the council will have to meet those additional costs from within the revenue budget. So that's factual, that will happen. 
Within that, though, this is a council where if you build a village, you also attract people into that village. With that comes additional council tax and additional school grant. It's not a, it's not a one-way value sum, it's quite a complex calculation between the income side of it, and the revenue costs which would definitely would be, which would have been avoidable revenue cost if the developer had met them. 
But the council has factored all of that into the budget planning. It will revise that again in September and we'll get a clearer view what the impact on the education budget will look like. 
I would also say just in context that, look at the, the SPIs for the education cost side, it's one of the lowest-cost education providers of any council in Scotland. So there's room in the budget there, to meet those costs. 
I don’t know if that helps.

Andrew Burns
OK. Thanks, Derek and Carol. Any other queries on the broad theme of finance?
Angela.

Angela Leitch 
Just on capital. I just wondered if you could expand a wee bit on the measures the council are taking to avoid delays.
I read in the various reports about ongoing delays in the commitment that has been made in terms of capital spend, and I wondered what measures the council have put in place to avoid that happening in future.

Helena Gray 
…to talk about specific measures, but I think it is worth remembering again that these are issues that we've talked about in relation to a number of councils as well, well aware that capital programmes across the country have been affected by cost of living and supply chain challenges. But Gary do you want to talk specifically about the approach the council is taking to manage it?

Gary Devlin 
So this is a risk and I think it's a risk that auditors going into the future will have to, and councils are ultra aware of, it's not, it isn't just the audit community talking to them.
They are looking at how they budget for capital going forward, there’s a much closer dialogue between estates departments and planning departments about what the capital plan and expenditure will look like, and building in contingency schemes that they could bring forward. If some schemes are unable, for whatever reason, to go ahead. But it's one of the significant risks I think Renfrewshire faces because it's such a large capital programme, really ambitious capital planning, 700 million or so over the next 20 years, so it's I think one of the most ambitious capital plans, and there is a real risk that they won't be able to deliver that, and that will result in an opportunity cost for the people of Renfrew.
So I don't know that I know the answer to that. I know the Council are paying really close attention to it, there are plans in place to monitor more closely. Slippage is happening in the capital programme, I think it's fair to say, across Scottish local government.
Yes, so it’s on their radar. I don’t know if that’s a satisfactory answer.

Andrew Burns 25:33
OK. Thanks. 
OK, colleagues, unless there's any other queries on finance then I'm going to move on to the second theme that I mentioned, which is transformation, I’ll come to Mike and then we'll go onto workforce and Jennifer, after that. But transformation, Mike.

Mike Neilson 
Yep. Thanks very much. And I think a very helpful paper. And I think what's been said already confirms the sense you’ve got a very solidly functioning local authority, which does, does do financial planning effectively.
For me, the, however, it comes down to the risks that the transformation programme will not deliver the structural change that takes you to a sustainability. And here we've got, we've got, according to the medium term financial plan, which is basically, well, updated now, reserves play a really big role in, in closing the gap. So it all undermines… underlines the importance of the transformation plan.
You’ve, so really I think two questions for me. One is around the track record and you've already indicated you've, you've got some things to say in relation to what transformation activity has been delivered so far, and how that gives us reassurance that the, as it were, more fundamental service transformation as well as more efficiencies can happen. And the second really is around the transformation plan, acknowledging that the financial savings have not yet been worked out, it would be very helpful to get a sense of the scale and ambition of the transformation plan, the areas in which they're, they're looking to deliver, and given that they're so crucial to sustainability in two or three years’ time, how, how you'll be monitoring whether the that programme is on track to deliver.
So three questions actually.

Andrew Burns 
Thanks very much, Mike. Helena.

Helena Gray 
Thank you. I'll bring in Gary and Adrian in a moment, and obviously you'll appreciate that the thematic for the current audit year is transformation, so we'll be looking in at it in much more detail again in, in the next few weeks as well.
But like many councils transformation in the form of efficiency savings isn't, isn't new and I think for Renfrewshire they have gone through change programmes and reform and transformation programmes in a number of different guises. So the current transformation and change programme is called Right for Renfrewshire, and that was introduced in 2019. They initially envisaged it would be a three-year programme but obviously it had to be paused as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. And the council report that between 2020 to 2025 the programme delivered 26 million of savings.
Examples of the transformation activity that's been undertaken and I think there are a couple of really good examples actually in the, in the best value workforce thematic around digital. So examples including the use of digital solutions.
And again, in fact the Accounts Commission has previously highlighted, the, the work of the, Renfrewshire Council around digital exclusion actually and how it is adopted in support of digital solutions in a way that supports those as well. But the digital exclusion agenda.
I’ll bring in Gary and the team to talk a bit more about some of the other examples. In terms of that, the focus of the current phase of the transformation programme, I think that there are a number of areas, again including digital, service redesign projects, strategic procurement and commissioning, the use of place-based assets as well as income generation. I'm not sure yet though whether we have detail, but I'll bring in Gary to correct me otherwise in terms of that scale and ambition. But I think as the council updates its medium term financial strategy this September, I think how it articulates the scale of ambition of the Renfrewshire, the, the Right for Renfrewshire programme will be key, I think, in setting out how the transformation work contributes to that financial sustainability.
But Gary, Adrian, I'm bring you in to…

Gary Devlin 
Don’t think I have anything to add to Helena's answer, other than partnership working will be an important part of service reform, so how you work in partnership with other organisations. Just in addition to the list that Helena provided there are a couple of hooks within the report, so one is on greater clarity around the use of business cases and options appraisal for all aspects – the council's been quite robust in telling me that they do use options appraisals, but as auditors we’d like to see that much more clearly articulated and become a part of the business as usual way. So they are clearly thinking about options, they've clearly set out the success criteria for any reform programme in advance, they can monitor and track against those success criteria and benefit realisation over time.
So, when we see this reform package in much more detail, I think we'll be able to come back to you maybe, and tell you whether or not the council has a robust framework of governance, and around then tracking of benefits to enable those things to be, those reform programmes to be effective. I think we’re too early at this stage to really provide that assurance to you. We’ve just done the thematic audit on transformation which is about to be reported to the council in the coming weeks.

Helena Gray
I think Adrian wants, wants to come in. We might want to say a little bit more about the, the governance, I suppose, of the, of the transformation work.
Adrian.

Adrian Kolodziej
Yeah, just, I would be careful about what to say because the work is ongoing, but the work on transformation that we're doing is coming to an end, we have seen evidence of digital transformation and savings.
The current savings, savings generated as a part of that, and the Council is looking forward and I think that the direction we still continue with the digital and there's, we’ve seen quite a lot of automatic processes, things like that used at the Council, so it seems that it will be the direction of things as well, but we're, we're concluding our report now, thematic report.

Andrew Burns 
Thanks, Adrian. Mike, anything? 

Mike Neilson
I think that's as full an answer as it’s feasible to have at this stage.

Andrew Burns 
Thanks again. Anything else on transformation? Derek.

Derek Yule 
Could I just come back, I suppose it links to an earlier question about the tracking of savings. In terms of governance, does the transformation programme report in separately? I’m conscious when you spoke earlier about savings being embedded within service budgets. I'm just wondering about the transparency around, around the programme.

Helena Gray 
So again, Adrian might want to say a bit more, but there is a transformation board that provides strategic oversight and there'll be regular updates.

Adrian Kolodziej
Yes, yes, we see, we see a reporting. I remember you can also see like high-level savings breakdown. So when, when, in the report it says 190 million of savings delivered through transformation, other programmes, there’s narrative that goes to the board and there is a chart which shows you how much of that is for these debts moving, treasury works, how much of that is for transformation and savings programme. So this is high level view and then there's detail reported to the board.

Angela Leitch
One other question, thank you.
I noted in the report, Helena, that you say that the council works really well with other local authorities, neighbouring local authorities in collaboration, as and where that's appropriate, I did see subsequently that the council has recently decided not to go ahead with sharing audit and counter-fraud services with some local authorities. Can you expand on that?

Helena Gray 
I’ll bring in Gary to discuss the detail, but I think my sense is that the council has given it some thorough consideration, it’s looked at the delivery model structures and the audit plans as well, internal audit, and I think concluded that little potential for efficiencies and further work around, further work will be required around the … so I think, as we all know value for money is an important consideration, and I think in this instance, that the conclusion was that this would not represent value for money, but as I said, they do have other arrangements around shared services as well. 
But Gary, I don't know if you've got any more?

Gary Devlin 
I think Helena's answered that, and, you know, individual councils will have their own value for money judgement in relation to the same issue. But I think from the evidence that we've seen Renfrewshire Council’s judgement in this case seems about right.

Angela Leitch
Thank you.

Andrew Burns 34:32
OK. Thanks, Mike. Unless there’s any other queries on transformation then I'm going to go onto the third theme which was workforce and Jennifer, then I'll come to community engagement and back to Angela after that. Jennifer.

Jennifer Henderson
It's on the workforce… I’m going to try and divide my questions into sort of two areas if that's helpful. First of all, first, and I think probably worth saying up front, encouraging I think to see in your report, Helena, the sort of positive view about all the work the council is doing in its workforce, and then in the more detailed thematic report, lots of good evidence about how the council is working to try and develop its workforce plans and deliver its people strategy. 
The two areas I particularly wanted to pick up on, the first one is around the organisational culture piece. I was interested and I think a number of colleagues were interested in the cultural assurance model. We've had a number of conversations around this table about how do councils assess their organisational culture, so I'm just interested if we can expand on, kind of, what specifically prompted Renfrewshire to want to do this work, and how is it using the model to drive improvement, and is it doing anything to encourage others to adopt the model? Because, it’s the first time, I think, we've seen explicitly, yeah, calling out in an audit report how a council is assessing its culture. 

Helena Gray 
Yes, thank you. So I think the cultural assurance model is potentially the first of its kind that we've, that we've seen, and was developed with the Improvement Service using the Public Service Improvement Framework. And I see it as a direct response to the Commission's previous concerns, as expressed in their deliberation of my statutory reports on, on council culture and a direct response to it wanting to get more under the skin of that.
As part of the development, I understand that the Improvement Services and officers looked at examples elsewhere in private sector and looked at research that looks at what constitutes positive organisational culture, but Gary might want to say a little bit more about the model itself.
I think it's definitely something that we'll want to, to look into in in more detail, and I understand that the council are working with the national Heads of the HR group to discuss the approach with other councils who may well be interested in using the CAM model as part of their own self-assessment, so I think it’s definitely something that we’ll want to understand a little bit more of going forward.
In terms of the follow up, I understand that part of the process involved target groups completing a survey and response rate for that was high, followed by a series of workshops and that as a result of those workshops, five improvement actions were identified, they are being embedded into the corporate improvement plan.
And yeah, they’re mainstreamed, where necessary, in the service improvement plans.
So yeah, definitely a really interesting area that we’ll watch with interest.
Gary, I don’t know if you’ve got any points on the model itself.

Gary Devlin 
So the, I think this is indicative of a council that really is caring about council culture. So it's all trying to find a way that it can gain a better insight into council culture, which happens at different places in the council. There isn’t a council culture. You know, the roads department will be different from the corporate department and so on. But they want a model that enables them to have touch points, understand what's happening in relation to cultural issues across the council and to take action wherever they think needs it.
So there are four key themes, there’s leadership, people, collaborating, learning and listening, and ethics and governance. And they go out and do these touch points and they come back and say what, what do we need to learn or do differently, either in parts of the council or across the council. And then they have an action plan where they take actions that they think will make a difference. And this doesn't happen in one part and then it's done, it's a continuous process.
And hopefully through that, well one is, I think that's a council that’s showing a commitment to culture, positive cultures, and also continuous improvement. And it gives me a little bit more confidence if we can find models like that in the council. And so we were quite pleased to see that.

Andrew Burns
Thanks. Jennifer?

Jennifer Henderson
Really, really helpful. So the second area where I just wanted to explore was around the kind of whole workforce planning piece.
And I suppose it's a theme around the measuring of the impact of workforce plans, there's quite a bit of reference in your report, Helena and Gary and the Azets report, about, there's lots of good stuff happening, but are the council doing enough to have KPIs in place, measurement that the things they're doing are making a difference, and I just wondered whether you could give us an update on, is that, is, are the recommendations about needing to get those things in place to measure the benefit of things actually now getting there, are they, are they able to track that things they’re doing are working?
Because, do lots of fabulous stuff, but it's only going to make a difference to the council future workforce if they know it's all delivering what it should be delivering.

Helena Gray 
So I think a report was taken to the finance, resources and customer services policy board in February 2025, which set out the KPIs that will now be in place…

Jennifer Henderson
Do, I appreciate February isn't that long ago, but do we know if they've got baseline measures against those KPIs and are they, are they heading in the right direction or is it too early to say?

Helena Gray 
So unless Gary and Adrian tell me otherwise, I don't think we've audited that work yet and that is something that we will be looking at as part of the follow-up work.

Jennifer Henderson
OK, Thank you, I’m happy.

Andrew Burns
Thanks Jennifer. Colleagues, anything else on workforce, Malcolm?

Malcolm Bell 
Yeah, it's a very quick question, Helena. There’s quite a bit in the report about blended flexible hybrid working in the council, and I just wondered are the council planning to, or have they carried out, any evaluation of benefits or drawbacks of the approach and any impact on productivity?

Helena Gray 
So again, this is an area that the auditors highlighted as a, as a recommendation in the best value thematic. And I think the council has committed to investigate what measures might help support a consistent and more robust understanding of productivity.
Again, I'm not sure that we've done the audit work to know whether that's happened, but again…

Adrian Kolodziej
We have, I think the start of it. So we have seen the KPIs in place, but we have also seen that the council is looking at the workforce profile and asking questions about this, to see, to match, to see what's the impact it has on different, different workers, how they work, and the working pattern.

Andrew Burns 42:04
Thanks Adrian. OK Malcolm? Is there anything else on workforce then? Colleagues, I'll move on to the fourth theme, which is community engagement, and Angela, and then I'll go onto performance after that and it's Nichola. But Angela first on community engagement.

Angela Leitch 
Thank you and thanks again for everything that's in the report.
There was a lot, understandably, on community engagement and I think it’s really reassuring just to see the steps that the council has taken and the progress that's been made in terms of the updated policy and the like. And I did note, you said it earlier, Helena, that there will be an annual review of how that’s … across the services.
I just wondered to what extent you're seeing or the council is seeing that consultation going in to active decision, decision-making and policy development?

Helena Gray 
There’s a couple of elements of this. I think there are particular areas of that consultation, or particular programmes designed around community involvement. So for example, my report talks about the participatory budget programme, which that has allocated 1.2 million over a three-year period, there’s also the Celebrating Renfrewshire fund designed by and for young people, so there are particular programmes, I think, that are around engaging communities in specific areas of decision making. 
I suppose the other part, as you said, is really around the consultation and how that informs and engages decision making and I think this is obviously an area I’ve highlighted previously. I think it's important to recognise as well that the council does have some difficult decisions to make, and those decisions won’t always be popular, but it's how communities are engaged as, as part of that. And I think that's really what I hope to see through the community engagement framework and the toolkit that's being developed. But I think the points that the audit team have also made around openness and transparency of decisions, it's really key here as well, and I know that the council is committed to take, to take that work forward. 
But Gary, I don't know if you want to kind of talk a bit more about what you’ve observed.

Gary Devlin
So what’s in the report is, speaks for itself. I think … to add in, additional to that. The council, like any council, can give countless examples of community engagement initiatives that are having an effect locally. I think there is something different, it’s in the report, if you step back from that and take a helicopter view of that, we're looking at a golden thread about what the priorities are for community engagement, how those translate into budget allocations, success criteria and then when you're doing your options appraisal and business cases, that's happening at a community engagement level as well, so you know the success criteria you're trying to achieve, the outcomes you're trying to achieve from community engagement, you’re needing to track and monitor those. It's not, not just finance that works like that, it should be all departments and services that work like that. 
And the policy has only just in the last six or eight months been reviewed and renewed, and lots of activity is happening, and as auditors we’re stepping back from that and saying well, the council, let’s, you tell us the story of whether or not you think you're achieving, from all that activity and all that spend, the outcomes you’d hoped for, is having the impact that you… or if it's not, how is that going to change your approach. That’s a work in progress.

Angela Leitch 
OK. And I take the point about transparency, I think that is, is key because the decisions are just going to get even more difficult, aren't they? And we do know the impact that that's having on the behaviour of citizens towards elected members. So I think as a Commission just to reflect on that as well.
Just one final thing on that then from me anyway, is, in terms of that engagement, how representative is it of the geographical communities or communities of interest?

Gary Devlin 
We’ve had a wide spread across a range of communities. So each council area has a fund they can apply within their local area and it's like a bidding fund for community engagement work and all of the wards in the council bid for that work, and you can see community engagement activity.
And there’s some great examples actually, whenever you see this, wonderful examples, and it's spread across the Renfrewshire area.
So we, so we were able to observe that. You know, the amounts are, you can imagine, these things, compared to the overall budget, not, you know, can be small amounts, but they can make big impacts in a local area.

Angela Leitch 
Thank you.
 
Andrew Burns 47:00
That's OK. OK anybody else on community engagement? We’re happy with that theme. So I'll move on to the fifth theme then which is performance and Nichola’s going to lead on that. Then we'll come to the last one leadership and Malcolm will take us on that in due course. But first on performance.

Nichola Brown
Again just to echo my appreciation for the suite of reports, I think they're really excellent reading, and I do think that, you see that Renfrew’s on an upward trajectory from, from everything that, that we've seen.
And so, I liked what you just said, Gary, in respect of that helicopter view, and that's where my thinking was around the council's overarching priorities being on inequalities, tackling inequalities and, and then climate change. So in respect of inequalities, what specific actions are there in place to tackle inequalities, and I suppose as you've described, there are lots of different areas of activity, but I guess in terms of that overarching priority, where does it all hang together? What's the strategic overall action around inequalities, and is there any evidence of the impact of, of all of that breadth of work taken in the round, I guess?

Helena Gray 
So, a couple of things and then I’ll bring in Gary as well. So I think Renfrewshire has a, has a Fairer Renfrewshire programme which is aimed at interventions to tackle poverty and inequality and this brings together a range of different activities, and there are a number of examples set out in the leadership thematic, I think, which, which give evidence for that and Gary might want to talk about some of those.
I think the question around impacts is always a difficult one. There's lots of different metrics and measures within that. But I suppose just to pull out a couple that feel important and of interest, one would be the poverty-related attainment gap. So this has widened, widened since the council first started reporting on it in 2018/19, but I think since then improvement can be seen and in 23/24, the gap narrowed for both literacy and numeracy and has returned to pre-pandemic levels. So I think in terms of one of those areas of focus, I think that feels really important. 
Percentage of leavers going to positive destinations is another, I think, area of focus and Renfrewshire now has the fifth highest leaver destination figure in Scotland, as set out in the follow up report.
But Gary I don't know if you want to say more about actions.

Gary Devlin
Not very much, Helena, I think that answer covered the important areas. 
Areas of local, there is a project in the Galahill area of Renfrewshire which is a relatively poor area and with, child poverty rates were quite high, and Renfrewshire as a, as part of an overall approach went in and came up with a range of actions, community-driven, to try to impact on child poverty outcomes in that area, to make an impact on it.
So that's, that's one level of, of that.
At a more strategic level, they are doing, they’re undertaking a lot of actions.
One of the challenges, I guess from the external audit team, has been, on those attainment outcomes, if your strategy is, this golden thread idea, if your key strategy from a policy perspective is to impact on educational attainment levels, then you need to be really clear about what your outcomes are going to be. So what does success… so you may be in the top tier, but if you've got a very, if you come from a very wealthy area that may only be an acceptable rather than an outstanding achievement.
We've been saying to this council but I think it may apply to lots of councils, you need to articulate to us as auditors, your own view of what good is, rather than whether this outcome is good, is it good enough? Maybe attainment, I think, and areas like that, I think it's an area where the council, all councils I think, should be really clear about, outcome, what level of spend and resources they're putting into that, why that's appropriate and what output?
So still work to do in that overall area.

Nichola Brown 
Just to say, thank you. I think that's really helpful. I particularly agree with your point about, you know, what does good look like, and more that, in the round, this is a council that, that does benefit from relatively low levels of poverty. So, you know, in my view, and I appreciate it's, it's early days in terms of the sub-group of the leadership group, as I understand it, that is focusing in on the, that kind of inequalities agenda overall. But I do think it's important that there is a focus on cohorts of individuals who may be left behind, and, and that's certainly where I would be looking to, to see progress over, over future years.
The only other question really in relation to the performance and it kind of connects in with everything I guess.
It's just about the linkages between service improvement and financial performance so, you know, certain service areas, for example, we know that education has particularly ring-fenced budgets, as do social care. Is there an impact on other service areas as a result of dedicated focus on, on those examples.

Helena Gray 
I think it's difficult to do that question justification without, without a full econometric model that's looking at controlling for cost and other factors to understand the impact spend on, on outcomes. As you know there's, there's a number of different areas that could, that could affect outcomes. 
I guess a couple of things that I'd highlight, though, in that regard. One Gary has already mentioned actually, which is interesting that on cost for education, across the, the three LGBF indicators, Renfrewshire actually does, does very well with a low cost of education. And I think as my report highlights, again using the LGBF indicators, for education, Renfrewshire's performance is among the top 10 councils on 14 out of 18 indicators, with the four remaining indicators being close to the, close to the national average. 
On the social care side, I suppose I’d just highlight that Renfrewshire has consistently been one of the best performing areas around delayed discharge. On the LGBF indicators more generally, I think it's probably that performance hasstayed , more constant compared to the base year. But I think without an econometric model, I think that might be the best that I can offer in that regard.

Andrew Burns 55:47
Thanks Helena. Gary’s got nothing to add! 
OK thanks. Nichola OK? Derek, you OK? Yeah. Any other queries then, colleagues, on the performance theme? If not, that then takes us on to the final sixth theme which is leadership, and Malcolm, you’re going to lead us off on this.

Malcolm Bell 
Yep. Thanks, chair. Yeah, obviously, thank you for the report, really very easy to read, appreciated.
I note that a lot of good work in terms of officer training and development, which I think we’ve noted in the past, and it’s also good to see now reference to member development now. I think you can enforce training to a certain extent with officers, but members it's more difficult save for some, you know, statutory requirements such as licensing training. So I just, with that in mind, I just wondered, what has been the uptake, how well has the training development been taken up by members? And, early days I accept, but is there any noticeable impact on how members are undertaking their scrutiny role.

Helena Gray 
I’m not sure that we’ve audited specifically, member take-up of training programmes, although my report does outline, I suppose, what the training offer is, but I don’t know whether we’ve looked specifically at take-up. 
But Gary, I wonder if it's helpful if you share some of your observations from the audit risk and scrutiny board in particular, which was obviously an area of focus.

Gary Devlin 
This is, take up is patchy, so that some, some of the training is fully attended and fully engaged in, and other parts of the training are less well attended. It's not, not one size fits all. In relation to ARSB – which is their audit risk and scrutiny board – training, that was about 100%, everyone attended that training.
Adrian and I are delivering a training course for them in external audit and the role of audit committees in local government external audit, 19th. So they are much more coming to us and to others, internal audit and other providers, to ask us for training. I think that's a marked difference, that positive change. I don't think that would, that may not have happened, three or four years ago.
So we're seeing members asking for training that otherwise they would not have asked for. So I think that's positive. But, possibly we should get back to you in a future audit report, the member take-up of training looks like this and do a little bit more analysis of that.

Malcolm Bell 
Very quickly, I mean it’s maybe, maybe unfair to ask, I don’t suppose you probably have the answer to it. Is there any notable difference between new, newer members, members of… 2017, or 2022, or those that have been there for a long time, the old souls if you like! Are they less inclined…

Gary Devlin 
I don't think I can answer. You know, it is something potentially we can look at in a future audit.

Andrew Burns
I'll not take that as an offensive comment… as a previous old soul!
Thanks Malcolm. Anything else on leadership, colleagues? Jennifer.

Jennifer Henderson 
Malcolm rightly signalled, we've seen a lot in the past on the kind of officer leadership development and I noticed that featured in your report. I just wondered whether you've got anything about how the council is assessing the improvement in its overall leadership effectiveness as a result of that training and in particular, whether there's any emphasis on them thinking about succession planning. 
I mean quite a lot of what we’ve talked about today is clearly being driven by a leadership cohort in the council who are very committed to thinking about the culture and everything else. Therefore, I would hope that thinking about who their successors will be on that journey as and when the current leadership, you know, move on to other things. 
Is there anything you've seen in your audit work around succession planning for leadership?

Helena Gary 
Gary, do you want to come in specifically on succession planning? 
I suppose just skipping back a little bit to the leadership development programme, which we've talked about before and I think as one of my previous reports highlighted, after the first cohort went through that programme, the council and the Improvement Service did work to evaluate the programme and adapt it based on feedback for subsequent cohorts. 
I think now that a number of cohorts have, more cohorts have gone through that there is work underway to assess and evaluate that leadership development programme. I think really important actually that that’s done alongside the work around the cultural assessment mark, model, as well, and how they bring all of that together with employee engagement, too. And then think about what the next steps are around that and I believe that that work is ongoing. 
But Gary, do you want to say anything about succession planning?

Gary Devlin 
Maybe two things. The first is that there has been quite a, quite a meaningful change at leadership level within this council in the last three or four years. Quite a number of senior posts have changed, and that's changed the tone of the council and what's, what you see in our report reflects new minds and new thinking within the council.
And in the Reform Renfrewshire programme, part of that inevitably includes, you're going to change working practices, you're going to change systems and processes, potentially structures, will also be in there, and part of that I think involves the workforce planning element of the Reform Renfrewshire programme. And so they are thinking about succession planning but not for the same role, it might be different skills that are needed or a different type of leader that's needed in future.

Andrew Burns 
OK Jennifer?
Unless there’s anything else on leadership – Mike?

Mike Neilson
It’s not on leadership…

Andrew Burns 
Just general, that’s fine. 

Mike Neilson
I was just reflecting on the performance stuff. The, because one of the questions for me was, over time, they’ve slipped by a material amount in relative terms. Did I understand you correctly, to be saying that, as it were, in in those areas which they've given priority, they haven't slipped and it's in the areas which they've decided to almost deprioritise that they, that explains the slippage.

Helena Gray 
So I didn't cover wider areas, I suppose, so I didn't offer commentary on wider performance outcomes, I just focused on performance within educational attainment and social care. I think, I need to remind myself of the general LGBF performance.

Gary Devlin 
Yeah I mean the general answer is no. So if you take educational attainment as a policy priority area that has some slippage, for example, so it's not a clear picture across the board. And one of the things they’re best at, for example, it’s a high performing council is in delayed discharges which requires working across a range of sectors and stakeholders … One of the things we've said is that going forward and golden thread, you need to be really clear about why some outcomes from LBGF are, whether or not you're happy with them.
That's something we can look for in a future audit report.

Helena Gray
I think, sorry, I just referred back … Paragraph 32, which is a commentary on all of the LGBF performance indicators, shows that 57% are in the top 2 quartiles, compared to 63%. But again, we know that across the sector overall …

Andrew Burns 
Thanks Helena. Mike, OK?
Unless any other questions, then, colleagues, I think we've covered all of the six themes, finance, transformation, workforce, community engagement, performance and leadership.
Thanks very much, Helena, Gary and Adrian, for a very full and wide-ranging discussion on all those topics.
And thanks to colleagues, I think you've managed to help me keep on time and thanks also to our colleagues from Renfrewshire. I know there's some online and a couple of colleagues from Renfrewshire in the room as well. As I said at the start of the topic, we're going to have a break in a minute and you're very welcome to stay, have an informal chat with us over coffee if you want, or you can escape, it's up to you!
But thanks everybody for helping me keeping that structured and on schedule and I think we will obviously now, after the break, come back to this and discuss in private how the Commission wants to take this forward.
But I think with that, I'll hand back to, the chair to Jo. Thank you.

Jo Armstrong 
Thanks, Andrew. Clearly, they're more scared of you than me!

Andrew Burns 
I don’t know if that’s good or bad!
No, I know.

Jo Armstrong 
Thanks. I think, yes, it's handed back to me to actually say, we're definitely going to have a coffee break, and invite everybody back in the room by 11:20 please, if that's possible.

Jo Armstrong 1:08:51
OK, welcome back. Now on to item 6 on our agenda. Local government policy update and hand over to Joe Chapman, policy manager.

Joe Chapman
Thanks very much, chair. 
Just a couple of verbal updates to give on this one. You'll be aware of course, that the Programme for Government was announced last week by the Scottish Government. I'll do a brief summary of the sort of local government related aspects in the June report. In the meantime, there are some useful analyses by LGIU, by the Fraser of Allander and in particular depth by Spice, the Scottish Parliament Information Centre.
As Spice sets out quite clearly that's relatively little that's significant and new, certainly in relation to local government, but some would say in general in the, in the Programme for Government although the Fraser of Allander did make the point that might be something to do with the fact that because the timing of the programme is sort of within a year for which the budget's already been set, whereas it would normally fall in a sort of pre-budget stage, that’s perhaps why it sort of largely, restates or brings together existing, existing policies and initiatives.
Second update is around the Scottish Government's medium term financial strategy and sustainability delivery plan, so that was originally due to be published on the 29th of May. That's been pushed back to the last week of June. Now the reason given is because of the timing of the UK Government spending review in June, although that had been known about for some time, the government did still intend to put out the MTFS before that.
The Scottish Fiscal Commission, obviously we have Professor Roy with us later in the, in the day, they have responded, it’s fair to say they’re not particularly happy about the delay and they intend to still produce their forecasts on the 29th of May as planned. And will then do a follow up that goes alongside the MTFS when it comes out. And I know that the Scottish Parliament's Finance Committee has also responded, it’s fair to say, to the, to the delay as well, in a similar, similar way.
They're the only two verbal updates I wanted to give. Happy to take any questions on anything in the report.

Jo Armstrong 
Joe, thanks again and a really helpful summary and lots of good links that gives us a chance to understand some of the issues.
Does have, does anybody have any additional…? Carol, and then Derek.

Carol Evans
[Inaudible]… Sheltered housing complexes. Have they looked at whether they could be repatriated for some of the homeless…? [Inaudible]

Joe Chapman 
It's difficult to know what the sort of outcome will be in terms of the accommodation. Obviously they're looking to give up ownership of those complexes and there’s a range of options they're considering in terms of where, where, what's going to happen to people who are living there. And so I think it's at quite an early stage. So hard to know whether that's going to be something that can be used for the homelessness situation.
Yeah, they certainly said it's going to happen over a long period of time, saying they're going to do sort of tailor and consult with people … first of all.

Jo Armstrong 
Derek.

Derek Yule
Thanks, chair. A few comments and observations on the report.
First one was section five on the media and Parliamentary, the second bullet point about funding of IJBs. Now this might be my ignorance so I’ll maybe start off on that qualification, but the minister pointed out that the current model is as set out in legislation.
What is the current model? Given the funding goes through NHS and councils, I wasn't necessarily sure there was a funding model per se. And I suppose a flippant comment would be if what you’ve got is set out in legislation, it’s within ministerial power to change the legislation.
So I'm not sure what the current funding model is. So I don’t know if you know anything more Joe, would be my question.

Joe Chapman 
I think on the legislative point because it's set out in primary legislation, which is the Public Bodies Joint Working Act, that was what was being referred to, it would require primary legislation to amend that, so it wouldn't be within the power of the government to single-handedly change that and obviously would take a period of time.
So I think that the meaning of the response in a way was around, it's not something that can be changed overnight, it would need to go through that process.
As for the detail of how much of it is as set out in legislation and how rigid that is, I’m not too sure. Obviously we have a couple different models in place, obviously Highland do it in a different way to the rest of the country.
But yeah, I think it was, I think it was a response to almost a request to consider, as a government policy, changing the…

Derek Yule .
Well, that's OK. I didn't think there was a rigid funding model as such. OK, thanks. 
The second question I had was paragraph 28. I suppose it maybe links to whether we have an update on the Verity House Agreement, but I suppose I was concerned when I read this, MSPs calling for a revaluation, and I think probably everybody would say that a revaluation is long overdue, but it would have huge implications for the grant distribution model within local government, I don't think it's something you could do in isolation. So I don't know if this is something that's been taken forward under Verity House Agreement.
I don’t know if we know where that's perhaps got to.

Joe Chapman
I'm not aware of anything being taken forward other than the process that's underway between the government and COSLA to consult and explore, you know, options and different ways of doing things in the future, but especially given where we are in terms of parliamentary schedule, not something that's likely to come to fruition before the next election, that sort of to an extent, kicks it a bit further down the road. 
Certainly the committee was basing its recommendations based on the evidence that it had taken as part of the inquiry and obviously there was quite a groundswell of opinion that … leaves a lot to be desired that you know it's based on valuation from 1991, and so you know, something should be done about that. 
Yeah, I can see it being, another, another addition to the list of positions on that but I don't think there's anything imminent going to happen to change that.

Derek Yule 
The problem is that valuations across Scotland have moved significantly and not to the same level so it would distort the whole funding mechanism.

Joe Chapman
And there's a series of recommendations in the committee report around things that would have to be put in place to mitigate the impact of that. I think Sarah is also wanting to come in on that.

Sarah Watters
I'm now slightly distant from the Verity House Agreement, but Derek, we're meeting with Jane O'Donnell and Mirren Kelly from COSLA next week and we could pick that up and feed back to the Commission members if there's any update on that.

Derek Yule
My only other question was the council leadership change. 
Probably more for Helena, have we got an eye on what’s happening at South Ayrshire and should we be concerned about.

Helena Gray 
So I’ve spoken to the auditors … [Inaudible] 

Derek Yule
Thanks.

Jo Armstrong
Any other questions for Joe?
Nichola.

Nichola Brown 
Just in relation to the Programme for Government. Appreciate it came out after the paper was written, so I know that you've said you'll bring some more information to the next meeting, but I did wonder, given our recent publication around additional support for learning. There is a commitment in the Programme for Government to a £100 million fund, which across 32 authorities we know is, is not huge, to fund wrap-around childcare and holiday provision for children with additional support needs.
I've not been able to find out from anyone that I’ve asked so far whether it's new money or re-badged money, devil in the detail etcetera. I just wondered whether you knew of anything further around that Joe? I did read the LGIU analysis and it didn't appear to be able to, you know, they hadn’t been able to determine whether it's new money or rebadged or whatever.
Just wanted to flag that.

Joe Chapman
Thanks, I’ll take that on board in terms of the information in the, in the next month's report, and also I don't know if you've looked at the Spice report, they do go through in a lot detail and are quite objective around what is and isn’t new and what is and isn't included that has been mentioned in the past and things like that so they’ve got quite a, an in-context view … [inaudible]

Jo Armstrong 
I think we're getting slight problems back from the other room to make sure people just speak up. Some, microphone is sitting in the centre of the table, but if you could just make sure you're clear, that would be helpful, thanks. 
No other questions for Joe?
Again, it’s a good report, thanks Joe.
No doubt if you look through it and read more and you've got questions, go back to Joe, you're happy to answer further questions.
So that takes us to item 7, which is my update, Chair’s update.

Jo Armstrong 1:18:50
I have been ill and I have been doing appraisals but I have also done a fair bit of stuff so I wanted to highlight specifically attending COSLA’s 50th anniversary reception at Scottish Parliament. Interesting that they held it in the Scottish Parliament but nonetheless it was at Scottish Parliament.
Other members were there too, and it was a well-attended session with senior civil servants, politicians and the Perm Sec, although I didn’t manage to speak to the Perm Sec, so I think that's something we do want to probably address in the next two or three months.
The speakers were Ariane Burgesses….  Ariane Burgess, Shona Robison, the COSLA President, Shona Robison herself, and the dep.. the vice president of COSLA Steven Heddle, and then Sir Neil McIntosh, which I thought was absolutely fan… fascinating. He was the original chief exec of Strathclyde Regional Council who helped set up the parliamentary process, and in doing so disbanded himself in his role and we were wondering what age he was because he was, he was fantastic and articulate and interesting, so it was, it was, it was very interesting.
I'm looking forward to the Graeme Roy session because it's an area of work that help us understand the broader context within which our challenge on transformation and our challenge around efficiency savings and our challenge around budgets becomes even clearer.
And then finally, I just want to confirm the members are coming with me and Sarah to the Argyll and Bute best value report on 28 May will be Derek and Ruth. Mazars auditors with us.
I'm happy to take up any questions anybody has from Chair’s…
That takes us to item 8, any other business in public session.
That takes us to end of the private session. Can I make sure that the camera is off?