Best Value in Public Services Sustainable Development Toolkit
Foreword
Sustainable development matters in ensuring a strong, healthy and just society, and a society that lives within environmental limits. It is the key organising framework for bringing into alignment our economic, social and environmental policies. It is about a more joined-up, integrated approach, recognising wider responsibilities and longer-term implications of actions. Sustainable development is about making common sense connections that are not yet commonplace.
Public services play a central role through leadership and support: setting the scene for others to play their part, and then enabling them to be able to do so. The requirement to contribute to sustainable development is now mainstreamed within public service reform and is integral to the duty of Best Value.
Best Value and sustainable development bring together two central themes of government policy in Scotland. The Partnership Agreement of May 2003 opens with commitments "to improve public services" and to see "a Scotland that delivers sustainable development." The Best Value framework is one of the key programmes for the delivery of the Public Service Reform Agenda. It has improved the quality and effectiveness of local authorities, and is now being rolled out across the whole public sector. The commitment to mainstream sustainable development is set out in Choosing Our Future, Scotland's Sustainable Development Strategy launched by Ministers in December 2005.
The need for guidance on how public services should meet this commitment did not arise solely as a top down initiative. Extensive consultation with public services in Scotland following the draft Secondary Guidance on Best Value issued in 2003 has consistently sought further clarification on the requirement to contribute to sustainable development. This request led directly to a consultation workshop and seminar held on 27 March and 3 May 2006, both of which were major influences on the development of this work.
This Toolkit aims to help public bodies in Scotland meet that part of the duty on Accountable Officers "to ensure arrangements are in place to secure Best Value" which relates to the requirement "to contribute to the achievement of sustainable development". Compliance with the duty of Best Value is an auditable requirement under the terms of the Public Finance and Accountability (Scotland) Act 2000.
The toolkit fulfils part of the commitment (at paragraph 15.4 of Choosing Our Future) to produce new guidance, training and support materials to support delivery of sustainable development by the public sector. It is advisory and supplements the revised Guidance and Secondary Guidance, and the new Self Assessment Questionnaire, on the duty of Best Value issued on behalf of Scottish Ministers in May 2006. In the spirit of continuous improvement, it will be updated as lessons are learned. While the challenge of sustainable development is urgent and far-reaching, the requirements set out here are not new. Much that is underway by public sector bodies already contributes to Best Value and sustainable development without being recognised as such. At the same time, there are also implications for doing things in new ways, and doing new things.
The toolkit also tries to show that sustainable development is not a separate and discrete topic, but closely inter-related with the other characteristics of Best Value. Effective mainstreaming of sustainable development in public services depends on it becoming owned by all those involved in its delivery. This means the approach has to be tailored to fit the circumstances of each organisation, and always with a focus on the requirements of the people who need and use public services.
If you are unable to access any of the information contained in this toolkit, please contact Susan Duncan of the Scottish Executive Best Value Team by phone on 0131 244 7183 or by email. A printable version of the toolkit is available here.