Accounts Commission recruitment information session 29 July 2026

Andrew Burns   0:00
I'm really delighted that you've shown an interest in joining the Commission. I mean, I would say this, wouldn't I? But it's a really good role. It's very fulfilling, very varied.
And I would encourage you, unless we all put you off terribly tonight, to submit an application and give it a go because it's a really genuinely fulfilling role. 
I'll introduce the top table in a second. We've got an hour and a half allocated for this evening up to 7:30. We do not have to take all that time. We can if we need to, but if we finish early, that's absolutely fine as well. 
So on the top table is myself as the Deputy Chair. On my right, which will be your left, is Helena Gray, who's the Controller of Audit for the Accounts Commission. I won't say any more about that role at the moment because Helena will explain all that in a second. And then on my immediate left, which will be on your right, is Sarah Watters, who's the Director for the Accounts Commission. And then next to Sarah is Joe Chapman, who's the Senior Support Officer for the Commission, I got his title wrong, but Joe does all the serious work! And then next to Joe is Simon Ebbett, who's Head of Communications for Audit Scotland, which again in a second we’ll explain the sort of Chinese walls and the differences between the Accounts Commission and Audit Scotland. 
We're also joined, you can't see her because the camera is focused on the top table, but I'll just mention that Ruth MacLeod is here, sitting on my left. You won't see her, but Ruth is one of my colleagues on the Accounts Commission. What year are you in Ruth now? 

Ruth MacLeod
Year 4. 

Andrew Burns
Year 4. So Ruth’s, I think, just been reappointed for a second term. So hopefully that gives you a flavour of who's all here for this evening's event. If you're online - obviously this doesn't apply to the two colleagues in the room – but if you want to ask a question, just raise your hand and by all means, keep your camera on or switch it off. It's entirely up to you, whatever makes you feel comfortable. 
We are going to record the session just so that we can include it in the recruitment pack, the online link to the recruitment pack in due course, but we'll edit out all the question sections. So don't hold back in asking any awkward questions! Please just interject at the question sections with any questions you want whatsoever. So I absolutely promise you we'll edit all out. So it will just be the presentation bits that will be recorded and kept and put up online. 
And I think that's probably all that I need to mention in terms of by way of welcome and introduction. And I'll just move on to the second presentation slide which just shows you what we're going to cover this evening. 
So we're going to talk a little bit about the background to the Commission, what it does and how it fits in with the broader Audit Scotland body and also with the broader sort of public sector in the country. 
What it's, then we're going to look at its current work programme, its current areas of interest, what it's focused on, the types of reporting and its key issues that the Commission deals with. And then thirdly and finally, we'll see a bit about being a member, what the role involves and how it works.
Between the people at the top table here, the five of us, we're going to be doing different sections of the presentations. We're going to do our absolute best to keep it as informal as possible. I think there's four different bits on my agenda where you can jump in for questions. But really, I don't mind if you want to put your hand up, whether virtually or in the room at any stage, if there's something particularly that we're saying that doesn't make any sense whatsoever, please do just interject and ask us to clarify it. Because there's always a danger in these events that the five of us as current insiders, including Ruth, might slip into some jargon that will mean absolutely nothing to you. So, you'll call us out on that if we do slip into that. So, we'll keep it as informal as possible with plenty of options for questions.
So I think without further ado then, we're going to move on to the first section, which Helena is going to take us through, which is how public audit in Scotland works. So that's basically what the Accounts Commission does. And Helena will, I think, speak to the next couple of slides, and then we'll have a pause after that for questions. Thanks very much colleagues and I'll hand over to Helena. 

Helena Gray   4:25
Thank you and good afternoon/evening everybody. Great to be here. So as this slide hopefully shows, the Accounts Commission is part of a tripartite structure. So we have the Accounts Commission which is responsible for the audit of accounts and performance of local government in Scotland.
So in numbers, that's about 30, that's 32 councils, 30 integration joint boards, which are the health and social care partnerships between councils and the NHS boards. And then there are various other small entities, including valuation joint boards and pension funds.
So as Andrew mentioned, I'm the Controller of Audit. That's a statutory role. And my role is to draw the Commission's attention to issues of concern or interest that arise through the annual audit of the accounts. So obviously, this can be about matters that are relating to accounting practices. But public audit is actually much wider than just the accounts. So that will encompass things around best value, which looks at governance, leadership, performance and those sorts of issues. 
And the role of audit, and when I'm bringing things to the attention of the Commission, it's not just about issues of concern, but it can also be about matters of interest and a key part of that is about supporting improvement. So if there are areas where there are wider lessons for the sector to learn from something that may have happened in a council or another public body in local government, it's about bringing those lessons to the attention of others. And we also use it as an opportunity, where we can, to highlight good practice areas too. 
Just in terms of the other parts of the system, so the Auditor General has a very similar statutory role to me and he is responsible for the audit of the accounts and performance of all other devolved public bodies in Scotland. So that's the Scottish Government and its agencies, NHS, police, fire, colleges and other non-departmental public bodies. 
And then you'll see in the diagram that underneath that we have Audit Scotland. So Audit Scotland is the public audit agency that provides audit services to the auditor and the Auditor General. So we do that through both our own internal auditors, so we have a number of audit teams. But in Scotland, we work a mixed market model at the moment in public audit, so we also procure the audit services of others, and they conduct the audits on our and the Auditor General and the Commission's behalf. So Audit Scotland plays that role in procuring those services for the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission. 
And then alongside that, we also deliver, in addition to the financial audit, we deliver a programme of performance audit, which is focused on the three E's of performance audit, so the economy, the efficiency and the effectiveness. 
I'll probably move on to the next slide then, which just sort of explains this in a little bit more detail as well. And forgive me, I don't always talk about myself in the third person, I promise, but I will, because it's about the role rather than the person, so that occupies it at that time. 
So I said that the Auditor General and I occupy similar roles, but there are differences. So, as I said, the Controller of Audit is a statutory role. It's appointed by Scottish Ministers to report independently to the Accounts Commission. 
The Auditor General's role is a Crown appointment, independent of Scottish Government and the Scottish Parliament. The Auditor General is accountable to the Scottish Parliament and reports mainly to the Public Audit Committee in Parliament, although obviously also other committees in Parliament as well. 
So why is it different? Well, as you'll hopefully know, local government and the elected members are elected and accountable to the public, not the Scottish Parliament. And so the structure that we have, whilst it might feel a bit confusing, reflects that. I'll be honest, it's not a structure that's always very well understood. People can conflate the Auditor General, Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission, which I suppose can at times be frustrating, but ultimately it's about the message of the reports, the message of the work and the impact of those reports that matter most. 
But yeah, just in case you've seen things and wondered why something has an Audit Scotland brand versus an Auditor General or an Accounts Commission brand. It reflects that that tripartite arrangement that we have at the moment. 
I'll probably just stop there and pause for questions, I think, at this point. 

Andrew Burns   9:45
That's great. Thanks, Helena. I did forget to mention one thing. If you want to just ask a question by text rather than in words, don't hesitate to use the chat function and Sarah and Joe are sort of monitoring that. So if there's something you want to just ask as we go through the presentations, not immediately, but just don't hesitate to stick it in the chat function. But as Helena said, we'll pause there. So if there's any specific questions about the couple of things that Helena has really covered there, the context of public audit, sorry, the structure of public audit and the difference between the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission, very happy to take any points on that just now. 
I’ll just pause for a second, see if there is anything.
You've explained it so well. 

Helena Gray
Or I’ve bamboozled! One or the other. 

Andrew Burns
But joking aside, if in ten minutes time when we get to the second presentation, whatever, you suddenly think I wish I'd asked that, don't hesitate to just open the chat function or stick your hand up and we're very happy to address anything as we go along.
Given there's nothing specific at the moment then, I'm just going to move on to the next slide and Sarah's going to talk us through how public audit is delivered in Scotland and how it's shaped. Sarah. 

Sarah Watters   11:03
Yeah, so just as Helena has explained the difference between the organisations, I'm going to kind of put them back together for a moment before we move into the Commission's business per se. 
So the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission have, I suppose, their overarching strategy, if you like, is in this document called Public Audit in Scotland, where it's written with a kind of five-year horizon, and it really sets out that vision for public audit in Scotland, as it says on the tin. 
And its vision is that public money is spent well. I mean, I think it's a really simple, compelling vision. I think, you know, you can easily, you can easily grasp that. I think when you get into the outcomes, I think there are outcomes that people would subscribe to. I want to know that my taxes are being spent wisely. I want to know that the funding that the Scottish Government provides is being transparently reported. So very much focused and that really is the kind of high-level vision, as I say, for both of them. And I think it is important that they both share a vision. And I suppose now more than ever, it's important because I think we're going into a period of public service reform. Many people will be very aware of that. And actually to have that kind of shared vision, I think is really important. So that's in the kind of high level document. The Commission and the Auditor General do have their own kind of strategies and work programmes, but it always looks back to that Public Audit in Scotland document. 
On the right hand side of this slide, though, is I suppose the things that kind of drive the way in which audits are undertaken. And it underpins how public audit is delivered. So Helena talked about the, or, yeah, Helena talked about the mixed market model. So we have auditors within Audit Scotland and we also have auditors out in the firm. They all need to look to the Code of Audit Practice. That is the thing that guides how they work. It kind of defines the purpose, it defines the scope of audit, so it defines that it goes beyond just the finances of organisations. It defines the principles, the legal requirements and the standards that they have to work to. 
Now, I suppose there's only so much that one document can do. There is a lot of guidance that accompanies it. But again, strong signal, there is one Code for both the Auditor General and the Accounts Commission. Now, I don't think it's always been the case where you've had one Code, but certainly since the 2021 code, it has been joint. We've actually just published the new Code of Audit Practice for the next audit appointment period, also going to be joint. And again, that was… 
We kind of went back to kind of first principles when we were doing the work on that Code to say, has that worked? Is that the most appropriate thing to be to be doing? And we consulted really widely. We had a really strong response to the Code consultation. So we’ve published a Code now that our stakeholders have bought into. It does propose some quite significant changes on the horizon about
more proportionate audit for smaller bodies, slight changes to the way that the Commission audits best value. So we've kind of listened and responded. So those are the kind of overarching things that absolutely there are two entities, if you like. There's the Auditor General and Audit Scotland, but we're both guided by those overarching documents.
So in terms of the Commission, we'll focus now that we’ve kind of set that context, we'll focus on the Commission now, because that's really what you're here to hear about. So there are kind of three, four kind of reporting areas that we're, that I will cover quite briefly. 
So the first, I suppose the first and kind of financial, the kind of bedrock of our reporting is really the annual audit, the annual financial audit. And for local government, this is done in the name of the Commission, so the work that comes out on local government audit is on behalf of the Commission. 
Now the Commission doesn't actively do the audits, it kind of discharge, it gives that duty to Audit Scotland to fulfil, and it doesn't actively review or approve kind of annual audit reports. There is a whole quality system, a delivery system that works on behalf of the Commission. And Helena gets the job of reading all the annual audit reports. And I think she mentioned the bodies, there's 32 councils, there's 31 IJBs and there's lots of others. And it's Helena's role to kind of keep her eye across those, and bring to the Commission any issues that she sees emerging, insights and intelligence, because sometimes you can see things happening, patterns of things that are happening that are interesting to bring to the Commission's attention, how, you know, councils are implementing things like new technical guidance or new standards or regulations, or whether they're having issues with that. And we do meet with auditors frequently to kind of discuss these key issues. 
So the Controller has a kind of key role in that first kind of part of the reporting and the annual audit to make sure that, you know, issues are brought to our attention. If there is an issue that Helena wants to raise – so I'll talk about her as Helena, she is the Controller of Audit! She can use what's called a section 102 of the Local Government Scotland Act to bring a section 102 report as we, as we affectionately know them. 
Most councils don't really want a section 102 report, but they are a way of Helena raising the issue. Stephen Boyle has the equivalent, but that's called a section 22 and that's in the Public Finance Act. So that's, you’ll maybe hear those terms being used. 
So that's a really important thing. It's the kind of, the financial reporting is the kind of bedrock of the reporting that the Commission does. 
We move down to the next layer, our best value reporting. Obviously, the Commission has a duty to secure, to make sure that councils are securing best value. That used to be done separately to financial auditing. There was a team in Audit Scotland that did best value auditing. They descended on a council, they crawled all over the documents and the governance and the vision and the leadership. That's now actually integrated into the annual audit. And I think, certainly from feedback that we've had from colleagues across local government, whilst they don't love to bestow praise on audit, I think they do find that it is a better way of working, that more integrated. So I suppose what you could say is every year is a best value year, we'll be looking at best value every year. 
So on top of that, we pick a theme each year and we look at it in more detail. So when I say we, I mean the auditors on our behalf look at it in more detail. We've looked at things like leadership, we've looked at workforce, we've just looked at transformation, and next year we are looking at asset management. And then we'll, you know, every year the Commission is consulted on the themes that we'd like to look at, and then we speak to the local government sector and say, well, what would be useful from your perspective about what we are doing in our audit work? 
Also in the current Code of Audit Practice, it also says that for every council, they will get one best value report in the five-year period. We will be changing that in the new Code. It's going to be more risk-based so that we, you know, you won't get a report just for the sake of getting a best value report, it will be done on a risk basis. So that's quite a significant change, and again, listening to what people have found helpful in the best value auditing. 
And finally, well, not quite finally, but overview reporting. These are probably some of our most well-used reports, certainly within the local government sector. The financial bulletin is a kind of in-depth, an in-depth summary of the kind of state of local government finance. It looks at the settlement, it looks at the kind of budgets that are being set, how councils are bridging the budget gap. So that kind of whole suite of overview reporting is really important to both the Commission and we hear from our local government stakeholders and of course MSPs as well. We've spent some time in the Parliament back at the beginning of June trying to get new parliamentarians interested in our reporting because actually for them, for their constituents, it is important that they know that we're doing this kind of reporting on their behalf.
And unsurprisingly, we're looking at the same types of issues, budgeting, budget gaps, transformation, etc, for IJBs as well, as they can, you know, they are such a big part of council budgets that they absolutely need to be looked at. 
Then the other kind of audits that again, you'll have seen some of these in the press, you'll have seen people like Andrew on TV talking about these, well Parliament TV, not sure if you've actually made it to, you'll hear Andrew on the radio a lot talking about various reports. These are the kind of theme-based performance audits. So we'll come on to some of these and they're done by Audit Scotland's performance audit team. And these are the kind of issues of significance and national importance. And again, we'll come on to talk about some of the key themes that the Commission is covering in the next period. 
But really in a nutshell, that's what we do. And my apologies, IJB stands for, and we've already started, integration joint boards. So those are the basically the legal entities that sit between a council and an NHS board in a local area and deliver integrated health and – or, don't deliver, sorry, commission integrated health and social care services. Really, really challenging environment at the moment, as you can imagine, giving cost pressures and also demand pressures as well. And I know there are people in this room and people on the call who have a very, very acute experience of the pressures that are being felt in that environment.
I'll pass over to Helena to say a wee bit more about kind of the Commission's kind of areas of concern and the kind of section 102 side of what we do. 

Helena Gray   20:55
Yeah. Thank you. So I'm going to talk a little bit about, so, how does the Commission and the Controller then use the powers that they have?
So, as we've already mentioned, the Controller's powers relate to bringing a report on a matter that's arisen out of the, out of the audit. The Commission's powers, they’ve got powers as to what it can do with that report. So, it can state finding, it can hold a hearing or it can direct the Controller to do further work on an issue if it feels that there's more that needs to be, needs to be uncovered. 
But I think in addition to that, what the Commission has been doing over the last year is really thinking about the different ways in which its messages can be disseminated as well in sort of some of the softer spaces around its work. 
So the Commission published a document earlier this year. It's worth having a look for. It's their Response Framework. And this sets out its approach to how it will use its powers, role and influence, where it has concerns. And we set out here on this slide that there are sort of primarily two areas where its concerns are most likely to fall. So one is around actually audit delivery itself. So where it may have concerns that audits aren't being delivered in a timely manner and that there are challenges arising around that audit delivery. So on the left hand side of that slide, we've set out a number of ways in which the Controller and Audit Scotland initially can keep the Commission informed and be monitoring that audit delivery. But then as we go through where there are concerns, where it doesn't feel like the audit is getting back on track or action is being taken as the Commission might expect, it then goes, there's a process around the Chair of the Commission writing to the audit, audited body, etc.
And then there is actually in that case also, as I said, I have, the Controller has the power to bring a statutory report. And in this case, it would be where the Controller has concerns that significant delays persist. And I did recently bring a report to the Commission on delays at a council and the Commission then will, to go on to the right hand side, the Commission then made findings setting out its expectations on next steps that the council and others should be taking. 
It's not just about audit delivery, though, that I report. So as I said, where an issue has arisen through the audit, and that can be a variety of different issues. So just to give a bit of a flavour, I've recently done a report on an instance of fraud that happened at a council, or a gap in governance, or, forgive me, where there may have been a cyber-attack, where there are wider lessons to learn, another area was around exit payments of staff as well. 
In each of those cases, the Commission chose to make findings, but in addition to that, it also wrote to chief execs of local authorities, it wrote to elected members, it wrote to auditors, it wrote to audit committee chairs. So it has a range of different mechanisms in addition to making the findings to disseminate its messages. And as we said at the beginning, that's around supporting that continuous improvement and encouraging the lessons to be learned across the sector. So where something may have happened in one council or one other body, how that can be learned. 
I mentioned the Commission has the power to hold a hearing. It's worth just saying that these are incredibly rare. The last one was in 2010. And what the Commission's response framework does is emphasises that there isn’t one size that fits all and that the approach that the Commission will take is thinking about how proportionate the action might be, and the added benefit or value to be gained, using its role to seek solutions, support improvement and improve the outcomes for people. And when considering when to bring a hearing or have a hearing, it sort of takes that into account as well, thinking about, you know, what would a hearing result in versus the cost of a hearing and the burden around that. So it's about taking that proportionate approach in terms of responding to the issues.

Andrew Burns   26:00
OK, thanks very much. I'm going to pause there, colleagues. I think, and just to see if there's any more questions at this stage.
OK, I'll just pause for a second and see if there's any other questions in the room or online. I can't see anything. If there's not, I'll move on if that's OK. And we'll just go to the next slide. It's myself that's just going to talk a bit now about the types of reports. I'll give you an example of each of the type of report.
Actually, most of them have been mentioned in the last sort of 20, 25 minutes, and just try and make them a bit real. And then I'll also talk about recurring themes that come up, and then I'll say a bit about the actual role of a Commission member. If you've got any difficult questions about the role of a Commission member, I'm going to pass you straight to Ruth, my colleague! 
But firstly, firstly, example of the recent publications. So I think these have all been touched on. So the annual, just taking, looking at this slide, just taking it from left to right, the annual local government budget report is the sort of flag, one of the flagship documents that we produce each year. It highlights just what it says on the cover there, the budget for local government in Scotland for a certain year. And I'm sure you'll have noticed it does get a very significant amount of attention with, you know, my colleague Jo Armstrong, sometimes myself and other colleagues on the Commission almost invariably being before Parliament, usually before the
PAC committee, giving evidence on elements of that report and also with support from Simon and his colleagues speaking to the media. So every, I think around about February, that gets a very significant amount of report, attention and coverage just before the Scottish Government or just after the Scottish Government publishes its own budget.
And then just moving along, the example of our standard, if that's not the wrong phrase, best value report, Inverclyde Council, that's a very recent one. You might have seen some coverage of that. A bit like Borders that Simon just referenced, that was a very positive best value report. It didn't get a huge amount of national attention because it was good news, but it did get lots of local attention and I was on a local TV station for that, because I was lead sort of Commissioner on that best value report just a few weeks ago, maybe a month ago. 
So they come out, as Sarah and others have said, fairly frequently, but we're going to change how that works in the future. So every council won't be guaranteed a best value report every five years, but it will just be done on a risk basis. So that's quite a significant change coming up to the way that these best value reports will be produced by the Commission in the next few years. 
And then in the middle there is an example of, and I think Sarah touched on this in her earlier comments, a performance audit report. And this one here, is, references back to what Helena just said about joint work with the Auditor General. So this is about delayed discharge. So that obviously impacts not just local authorities, which is the responsibility of the Accounts Commission, but it also impacts the National Health Service, which is the responsibility of the Auditor General, because it's a national body. So that's a joint report that Stephen Boyle as the AGS, the Auditor General for Scotland, and the Commission chaired by Jo and the Deputy Chair with the other 10 members, you know, we’ll be involved. I'll say a bit more about this in a minute, but there's usually at least a couple of sponsors for each performance audit from the Commission, and we'll work jointly with Stephen and Audit Scotland officers. And that's an example of one that again got a lot of press attention just very recently. And I think Sarah mentioned just a few moments ago, it's an area of pretty acute financial pressure in the local government framework at the moment, but obviously has impacts on the national arena as well. 
And then just coming over to the right, there's one of the thematic national reports that you just asked a question about in the room a second ago. And this one was on the theme of transformation and it was entitled Delivering for the Future. And one of Ruth and my colleagues, Jennifer Henderson, I think, was one of the sponsors on this who led for the comms and that also got quite a bit of attention recently when it was published. 
And then finally, but not least, is the section 102 reports that Helena mentioned in her opening section comments. And these are the reports where Helena, as Controller, has been alerted to an issue that has, that she deems deserves a separate report that comes to the Commission. And this one that was earlier last year, I think, it was about Western Isles Council response to a cyber-attack. And again, I'm sure you saw some press coverage from that. 
I hope that gives you a quick flavour of the breadth of the Commission's work. Because I have to say, it's something that really surprised me in a nice way when I came on the Commission and I say this is something who spent 18 years as an elected member in local authorities before I came on to the Commission in 2008. And obviously I was very, very familiar with best value work and some of the performance audit work. But even as a senior elected member, I didn't realise the breadth of the work and the depth of the work that the Commission actually undertook. And I was very, very pleasantly surprised when I got on the Commission and saw the breadth of the work that was undertaken by the Commission. Because we as Commission members, I'm pointing at Ruth across the table here, we get involved in all these aspects of work and it's really refreshing to do so because you're not just looking at best value or just performance audits or just thematic reports. It's a really big breadth of work that keeps you engaged, and as I said right at the start, I generally think it's a very fulfilling role.
So I'll move on and just talk a little bit about the recurring themes and areas of interest on this slide. Some of these have been touched on, so I won't dwell on them too much. I'll just talk about them briefly. I mean, obviously, you will not be surprised to hear the first one there in the current, you know, not just UK, Scottish, but global climate, you know, financial sustainability is very strongly a key issue that comes through in every annual audit every year for every single council, balancing the budgets, reducing expenditure, raising income. We've just seen in the last few days, you know, Edinburgh's introduced a hotel tax, a tourist tax, whatever you want to call it, but it's the first one, I think, in the UK. It's going to be fascinating to see how that plays out. Big additional revenue stream for Edinburgh, open to other local authorities, obviously, maybe not as pertinent to other local authorities, but is open to other local authorities to look at as well. So all of that feeds into the financial sustainability theme, area of interest, which is absolutely recurrent through all of the work that we undertake.
Second one there, transformation and service redesign. I just alluded to this in the earlier thematic report on transformation. You know, I know it can come across transformation sometimes as a bit of a buzzword, but it's really critical to ongoing financial sustainability to the sort of topic or the theme above it. And if there isn't genuine transformation of how services are going to be delivered, then given that we ain't going to see increased budgets in the next two, three, four, five, six years, unless something dramatic happens that none of us are sighted of at the moment, there is going to have to be significant service redesign and transformation , potentially using technology and other avenues to try and make sure that budgets are used to best effect. So that certainly is an area of interest or a theme that recurs quite frequently for us as well.
Maybe less obvious, the third one there, but really does come across very, very strongly is community engagement. You know, councils need to try and explain everything that they're doing. And actually just referring back to that Inverclyde report that was on the previous slide that I said was very positive and got lots of positive coverage. One thing that they got really big plaudits for was the fact that they did engage very positively with the local community. They were reducing services, they were having to cut back on things, but they were being upfront about it and going out to the local community, explaining why they were doing it. It didn't mean the local community were agreeing with what they were doing, but it meant they were at least informed and understood why the council was taking the decision it was taking.
And we get that as a recurrent theme. And often it's the opposite of what I've just described in Inverclyde. It's a lack of communication that comes through as a strong criticism of how a local authority is dealing with issues. And if local authorities are going to have to, which it looks like they are, be dealing with reducing budgets or reducing pressure, increasing pressure on and increasing demand, on a static budget, you know, we can argue about the details of all that, but it looks like there's going to be tighter and tighter pressure over the forthcoming years, then how local authorities engage with their communities about the decisions they make is becoming increasingly crucial. 
And then the final one there is just about leadership and governance. I think in many ways that underpins everything that sits above it, financial sustainability, service redesign, community engagement. If there isn't really clear, both, you know, at an executive and a non-executive level, so political and executive, positive leadership, both at councils and at integrated joint boards, then it's really difficult to see how
local authorities are going to be able to deliver under the constrained situation we're currently in. 
And obviously that, you know, if any of you on the call today or in the room were to come on to the Commission in December/January, you're going to come on just before local council elections in May 2027. It's a fixed five-year term, so. But those elections will see a big turnover, if previous elections to go by, probably up to 40, 50% of elected members will turn over. So it's about 1200 councillors, about 600 of them will go, either voluntarily or because of the public voting them out. So it'll be a really interesting time to come on. I think I mentioned I came on 2018, so just after the 2017 local council elections, and it was an interesting time to come, to come on to the Commission then. 
So I hope that gives you a flavour of the recurring themes and areas of interest that come up across all the Commission's work and do feed into what was on the examples of the previous slide of the types of reports that we produce. 
So I’ll maybe we move on to the next area, which is the members of the Commission and what we actually do. So you can see there, a lovely mugshot of all 12 of us.
Ruth there is third from the left, as you can see. Andy Cowie, the tall chap on the far left, is just about to leave. He's actually leaving on Friday, which is one of the vacancies, which is partly why you're here tonight. And I won't try and point them all out, but Nichola and Christine, two of the other members who are in that current picture, are another two members who, one is going in October and one is going in December. And those three people are all just leaving because of rotation, you know, they've come to the end of the four-year or eight-year term. …
So that's why we've got three vacancies. Now as a regular member of the Commission, so that’s everybody except Jo Armstrong, the Chair, and myself as Deputy Chair, So the other ten members, so Ruth and our other nine colleagues are expected to be remunerated or to do 2.5 days’ work per month. Now, you know, like a lot of non-executive boards, if you want to classify, this is not strictly a non-executive board, if you want to classify is that, it fluctuates enormously. You can do 3.5/4 days, one month, and you can do in July, frankly, you know, probably half a day, you know, if that.
I mean, I've not done a huge amount of work in July because it's the one month the Commission doesn't physically meet. It meets 11 times a year outwith the July month. But the average is 2.5 days a month for a regular Commission member. And you'll see that in the application pack. That's the level that the ten regular Commission members are remunerated for.
And the meeting schedule, if you want to be successful, if you want to have a glance at it for 2027 is available, if you haven't got that, we can we can send you a copy of that. So the meeting schedule for next year is already published. We generally meet on a Thursday in the office here in Edinburgh, but we sometimes meet a couple of times a year in Glasgow, and a couple of times a year now also we meet online. 
And the current, I won’t take you through everybody's, you can look, you can look on the Commission website and have a look at the skill set of each of the 12 Commission members, the current skill set is really mixed and varied. But with the rotation of members coming off, we lose some of those skills and varied strengths and that's why we're having to look to replace specific skills. 
And I think you'll have seen that there's a couple of, actually three isn’t there, priority criteria listed in the recruitment pack. You only have to fulfil one of those. Don’t get freaked out by having to be an expert in all three of them, or even an absolute expert in one of them. You just need to be knowledgeable in one of them. I really wouldn't be put off too much by those sort of requirements. You obviously do have to have some expertise or track record in one area of the priority criteria, but don't, I really would say, you know, don't get too hung up on it and just put in an application, even if you're slightly unsure of it, because we really do want to try and keep the breadth of the skill set on the Commission as broad as possible. 
And then there's also, I think there's four criteria that are all down as essential. But they're all general and you know looking at some of the people on the call and the people in the room, I know that you've got these skills, you know, it's a commitment to drive improvement in public services, and the ability to scrutinise and challenge constructively and supportively, sound judgement based on analysis of a large volume of information, and effective communication skills. 
Now, obviously, all four of those, you don't need to be an expert in local government to have had lots of experience of those four essential criteria. They're quite generic and you can pick them up in all sorts of environments. So again, you know, if you've
had no experience directly with local government, that's absolutely not a barrier to coming on to the Commission, because the 12 people you can see on this slide are not all from local government. I mean, I am, Ruth, not directly, you know, she's worked in local authorities, but not primarily in local authorities. And certainly the other ten people on the slide, not all of them have got local authority direct experience. 
I think I've mentioned the main monthly meetings. That's the principal thing that happens once a month. The 12 members of the Commission supported by Sarah, Joe, Helena and other colleagues, Simon and his communication colleagues meet physically or remotely, and that happens every month, except July as I've touched on. And we'll look at a host of the reports that you've just seen, the best value reports, the section 102 reports, and there'll be other agenda items as well. And you can just, if you're interested, look back on the website and see some of the previous meeting agendas that will give you a flavour of what we have looked at in the last few months. 
And just for an example, in a couple of weeks’ time in August when we actually meet again for the first time for a couple of months, we've got the best value report on the biggest council in Scotland, the city of Glasgow. We've got a discussion on local government benchmarking framework. We're scoping out the forthcoming school education performance audit. We've got draft guidance related to the Code of Audit Practice, which I think Sarah mentioned earlier on. And we've got updates from Jo Armstrong, my colleague, the chair, from the Controller of Audit, Helena, and from the Policy Manager, Joe. So that just gives you a little thumbnail sketch of what we'll be discussing. In addition to those sort of more formal items, we'll quite often have a members’ forum. We might have a speaker coming and talking to us about an area of particular interest, directly or indirectly related to our work.
And I think the only other thing to mention is just performance audit and sponsor role, which has been touched on a few times this evening already. And I think I mentioned it in response to one of the questions as well. So those performance audits that are undertaken, whether they're just for the Commission or jointly with the Auditor General for Scotland, usually have at least two sponsors from the Commission. So two of the people on this slide here will be sponsors for a performance audit report. I'm currently sponsoring two performance audits and I'm thoroughly enjoying those. You know, you’re guided obviously by the work that's been undertaken by Audit Scotland officers, but you bring your individual expertise from outside to those performance audit roles. And Ruth’s done a lot of those in the last four years as well. I've lost count of how many I've done. And some of them that I've undertaken I have got no specific expertise in whatsoever. And that's not an issue. It's the generic abilities and skill sets that you can bring to sort of just scrutinising what officers are producing in that arena that you bring to bear on the performance audit reports. I’d really just highlight and underscore the breadth and the variety of work that Accounts Commission members undertake. 
And I think sort of penultimately on this slide here, strategy and planning, it's worth just flagging up that twice a year we have a strategy meeting. So I think it's once in September and once in March. So I've got two more strategy meetings left, one in a couple of months’ time and then my final one will be in March. But I'll have been to about 18 of them now, across the eight or nine years I’ve been on the Commission. And that's when the whole Commission with senior audit Scotland staff and the Accounts Commission Support Team get together and work on specific issues and projects and they plan out our year's work as well and we keep up to deal with topical issues and policy developments just generally as well. 
And they recently have been, the strategy days have been here in Edinburgh, but I think there's a move to take them off site. So I think the September one is going to be off site, which personally I think is better if we get out of the Audit Scotland environment for all the positive reasons, not for negative reasons. But they are generally really enjoyable events and they are generally also on the Wednesday before the Commission meeting. As I say, twice a year. 
And the final area under Commission member role is communications and engagement and media work. And we've touched on that a little bit, this evening already also, but I'll maybe hand over to Simon just to talk about that for a second and then we'll have a pause again for any questions. 

Simon Ebbett   45:38
So, at its most basic, or the typical approach is that the role of the Commission member when it comes to a report is generally being the face and the front of it. So that involves, typically, we will produce a video for social media and the website or ...
A video for social media or website, or we'll produce an animation that you will voice over, but also be available for media interviews. Second side is the engagement side, and that's for things like a best value report or a section 102, will be two to three commission members going and visiting that council after reports come out to
just to talk about, you know, their response to it, what happens next, but also quite recently using that as an opportunity to know more about the council and see some of their initiatives. So, was it Fife that was checking out a lot of the community facility work there?

Sarah Watters
North Lanarkshire. 

Simon Ebbett
North Lanarkshire., right yeah. And that tends to go quite well, particularly if it's been a critical report, to actually go in and talk them afterwards to say, OK, we've done that, you've seen stuff in public, now let's talk about what happens next. 
But also looking at other opportunities. So sometimes Commission members, sometimes this is audit team members will be looking for conferences or seminars and that sort of thing to go to.
There'll be occasional stakeholder roundtables that we’ll hold. But also generally also attending things like the Solace, that's the Society of Local Government Chief Executives. And then there's also COSLA, as the organisation of local government, attending their major flagship events.
And then on top of that, occasionally there's, not for every report, but for someone who's giving evidence in Parliament, typically to Public Audit Committee, but also quite often to the Local Government Committee. 
In terms of how we go about sort of planning and work behind this. Each report that we're going to do media on will, or publicity on, has its own agreed bespoke communications plan. Now, we're not going to do that for every single annual audit report of the financial audit, there's 125 of them. Should point out that there’s 125 sets of public accounts, we did three Section 102 reports last year, so we do media around those, but yeah, 97% of the accounts in Scotland are actually doing OK. 
So we have a bespoke plan for that, and then one of the two sponsors, their role
will be to be the publicity lead. 
Now, when we do that, what you'll get there is a lot of prep beforehand. So if we, we’ll go out and try and drum up media interest. If you are going to do TV or radio, don't worry, you don't go on there unprepared. We will do, we do a practice interview. We have lots of support materials, lots of, which we talk through from, you know, briefing packs, everything, but mock interviews beforehand. I'm quite proud of the fact that I think as of yet, every member’s come back to say that the mock interview is much harder than actual interview. Which might be an odd thing to say, but actually a really important point. We take quite a bit of pride in the fact that we've been, prepared you all quite hard. On top of that, there is, when you become a member, more general media training and social media training as well, and we run courses on that when there's enough people that need it, and the techniques of that.
As a sponsor, sorry, so what does that mean in terms of being the front? You'll be the person quoted in the news release, you'll be the person that speaks to camera, you'll be the person that does the radio interview. The radio interview, that can range from doing a pre-recorded 15 second clip with a local radio station, through to being live on what used to be called Good Morning Scotland and is now Radio Breakfast Scotland. So that can range. In terms of TV, always pre-recorded and can either come into the office or as you'll see up on the screen, sometimes outside Parliament or somewhere else.
Then also, if it's giving evidence to Parliament, being the person that goes along to Parliament, to give evidence there. I think that's pretty much all to say on that. I mean, all of this, we work, in the comms team, we work very closely with Sarah and Joe and the support team. One of my colleagues, Joanna, on my team, she's the comms advisor to the Accounts Commission. So underneath me, we have 3 comms advisors, one of which is dedicated to the Accounts Commission. You know, there is some crossover for resilience and this continuity, but I think the important thing to know about Joanna is she's a former City of Edinburgh Council employee. She's also served on a housing board as a non-exec. A lot of commitment and deep interest in the subject matter.
I think that's about it, really. 

Andrew Burns
That's fine.

Sarah Watters   50:42
If you end up going to Parliament to give evidence, there will always be an audit, a member of Audit Scotland staff there to accompany. So when Jo and Andrew have gone to the Local Government Committee to take, to give them evidence on the overview reports, there's always a member of the performance audit team with them. So you're not alone in any of the media and Parliament activities. 

Simon Ebbett
I should also point out that any time anyone goes to Parliament, again, full practice session, we do that pretty much every week in here, full practice sessions. So if you ever see the Auditor General or the Accounts Commission being grilled, don't worry, we grilled them harder! 

Andrew Burns
Thanks Simon, Sarah. Helena, you want to? 

Helena Gray
I was just going to say, I suppose, in terms of that subject matter point, if there is a point at which there are very specific questions that are coming, I suppose, from, from the press, and it's not a live interview situation, you know, there can be that opportunity to, for Audit Scotland staff or others to provide that more detailed analysis and evidence. 

Simon Ebbett
Yeah, and I think probably two points to cover there. Firstly, that kind of question is far more likely to come from the print media. So if you're doing, if you're doing radio, they just want a 15 second sound bite, similar TV. It's the print media that ask the detailed stuff. But also one of the things we produce for every single report is a, like comprehensive question and answer in which we've sat and thought, what are all the questions you're going to get asked and the answers.

Andrew Burns
OK, unless there's any other questions, I'm going to move on, colleagues, if that's alright, just conscious of time. We've still got plenty of time left, but we've got one other section that Joe is going to take us through, a couple of slides around Commission support and the public facing nature of the commission. Joe. 

Joe Chapman  52:28
Thanks, Andrew. So yes, just the last couple of slides and we've got like a closing image to finish as well. So we mentioned that Commission members do or expect to do an average of 2.5 days a month. That might be alongside a full-time or part-time staff role. It might be alongside other non-exec type roles that Commission members have. So to support them in that, we have a dedicated staff team of four, the Commission Support Team within Audit Scotland. We plan and schedule and coordinate and oversee the Commission's business, what it discusses at meetings, agendas, and also support the planning of the work programme, in terms of the audit work that's carried out. We keep the Commission informed of everything they need to know about internally and externally, and we manage the diaries, book travel and hotels and support their communications and the stakeholder engagement, all of which we've talked about.
So the support team is led by the Director for the Commission, which is Sarah, who has lead responsibility for that coordination between Audit Scotland and the Accounts Commission, direct support for the Chair and the Deputy Chair. Sarah is the standards officer, or the Director, I should say, is the standards officer for the Commission, managing any issues around conflicts of interest, and also leads on directing and coordinating and supporting that engagement with the sector.
Then there's me, the Policy Manager. So I oversee and coordinate the Commission's work programme, the publication schedule of the audit reports and the monthly Commission meeting business. I keep members abreast of all the relevant news and policy developments via a monthly report and ad hoc briefings. And I also support that communications and stakeholder engagement working with Simon and the communications team.
Finally, there's our Executive Assistant, and we also have a Modern Apprentice that we're just in the process of re-recruiting. The Exec Assistant covers all Commission members, the Director, the Controller of Audit. And the Exec Assistant and the Modern Apprentice between them coordinate all of the logistics around the formal Commission meetings.
And as I mentioned, we all work closely with other colleagues across Audit Scotland, in particular the communications team.
Just the last thing I want to touch on is the kind of Commission's public face. So how people often, most often hear about the Commission or Audit Scotland, the language is interchangeable as we've heard, is when we publish those reports. And we do that in a variety of different formats. So as well as the formal reports, and this is something we've touched on earlier as well, we do the different formats for different reports, depending on the nature of the report, the kind of audience that we think it's going to be targeted at. So a few examples. When we do the IJB finance reports, we also put out an interactive data dashboard using Power BI, and that allows people to kind of explore and dig into the figures that underpin the messages that are in our report. They might even dig into that and kind of look at their specific local area and see what the particular figures are for their local integration joint board.
We often produce easy read versions of reports. These are reports that are rewritten and illustrated for people who have learning disabilities, who are neurodivergent, or for whom English is a second language. They are produced by Disability Equality Scotland and are quite widely downloaded, often as much as the main report itself.
And that's really a way of just making sure that those key messages and findings, recommendations are as accessible as possible to as many people as possible.
And another aspect of how we inform the reports to make sure that the messages are relevant is that we have a youth advisory group who contribute their perspective to some reports. And they've done things like making a video recently talking about alcohol and drug issues when we had a report about that issue. Really bringing their perspective and making it relevant to a younger audience as well.
The other main aspect of our activity is the Commission meetings and we've made it easier within the last couple of years for people to observe those meetings. So the Commission works in public for the public. So we use Teams webinars, a form of Teams that allows people to register to watch the meetings, without participating in the meetings. We upload the recordings of the meetings within a week after the meeting, along with the transcripts. And although some of the business is in public and some is in private, the agendas are always published a week in advance of the meeting and the minutes are always fairly detailed, including of the items that are discussed in private, just to try and have as much transparency of what's discussed by the Commission as possible.
For any of those things, we don't expect big numbers and don't, to be honest, get big numbers of people, for example, watching the meeting, but that transparency is a really important kind of principle for the Commission.
And then the final word there is on social media. We have a range of different social media channels, using Audit Scotland accounts for most, but the Commission related content is clearly identifiable as such. And I think because a lot of it is quite locally focused, it often gets quite a lot of engagement, sort of comparatively, and kind of bucking the trend of engagement, particularly on places like X/Twitter being quite downward in general, but that's because of the work that the communications team do to make sure that the way that we make that content is adapting and trying to make it as targeted as possible.

Andrew Burns  58:13
Thanks very much, Joe. So just the final slide then, I won't take you through all these figures, but just to close on. So this is the year in numbers. These are the numbers for 24/25, so slightly out of date, but I think Sarah touched on this earlier on, the 25/26
Commission annual review is just about to be published later next month, in August, just in a few weeks’ time. 
And just to let you know that where that slide says 25.2 billion pounds of spend was audited by the Commission, it's 27.4 in the upcoming report, so it’s going up. Where the slide says there were 7 best value reports in 24/25, this coming, forthcoming year, it's nine, we've undertaken, best value reports. And I think there's two statutory reports, section 102 reports on the slide in front of you, and we've had three already in 25/26. So it just gives you a flavour of the
sort of breadth, and hopefully you've got that throughout the whole of the evening as well, the breadth of the work that the Commission undertakes and the scale of it and the fact that it seems to be increasing incrementally year on year as the pressure tends to increase on local authority spend. 
So I hope that gives you a flavour. You will undoubtedly be kept busy if you are successful in becoming a Commission member. But I know I've said it several times, but I really do mean it, it's a very, very fulfilling role and I hope that this evening has encouraged you to put an application in if you were still swithering. And I’m going to pause there and just see if there’s any other questions on what we’ve said in the last 5/10 minutes.