I will introduce the report and, as always, we will jointly answer any questions that members have.
Some of you might remember that, in March 2013, the chair of the Accounts Commission and I gave evidence to the committee on our previous report on community planning. The new report provides an update on progress since then and gives a sense of the direction of travel on community planning in the context of the statement of ambition.
Community planning is really important because the Government sees it as a central plank in its plans for public service reform, in making the shift to prevention, and in meeting the continuing pressures on public finances. Therefore, how well community planning partnerships are working is a central part of the plans for all those important areas of reform.
In our report, we state that aspects of community planning are improving. All the partners are more actively involved than they were at the time of our previous report and are now agreeing shared priorities that they can work on jointly in the context of community planning. There is a better understanding of the resources that they have available to them, and they are recognising the importance of prevention and thinking about what they can do to make that a reality. Those are really important building blocks, but there is much more to do.
For example, this time around, we still found little evidence of effective leadership, scrutiny and challenge in community planning partnership boards, and many community planning partnerships are still not clear about what they are expected to achieve or about the specific improvements that they are aiming to make.
The Scottish Government, the national community planning group and the Convention of Scottish Local Authorities have an important leadership role in overcoming those shortcomings, and they have taken steps to promote the importance of community planning.
In July, the national community planning group issued a set of principles to partnerships, focusing on prevention, joint resourcing, community engagement and the reduction of inequalities. That was intended to set out an ambitious but realistic improvement agenda for community planning, based on the experience so far of implementing the statement of ambition.
The national community planning group, Government and COSLA now need to work together to set out what the refocused approach means in practice, what they expect of community planning partnerships and how their success in implementing the new principles will be assessed.
We think that two important aspects of that work will be: addressing the uncertainty about the extent to which the focus of community planning should be on local needs or on national priorities; and providing greater clarity about the role that community planning partnerships should play in public service reform.
We found that committee planning partnerships have begun to identify the resources that they have available to deliver their priorities, but they are not yet targeting those resources as effectively as they could. That is particularly important as pressures on budgets and staff tighten, and partners will have to make difficult choices about allocating their resources between competing priorities. They will also have to work closely with local communities to ensure that the significant changes that are needed to how public services are delivered command public support.
In addition, public bodies are held to account mostly for the performance of the mainstream services that they deliver and the achievement of national targets. That can create additional tensions. As I have recently reported, the focus of national health service boards on meeting challenging financial and performance targets each year makes it difficult for them to think about longer-term outcomes and to do the necessary long-term financial planning to move in that direction. We think that competing pressures on resources might hold back the shift to prevention, as partner organisations will initially need to continue to deliver their current services while investing in the new services that are needed for the future.
The lack of a coherent national framework for assessing the performance and pace of community planning partnerships is another hurdle. It means that there is no overall picture of how individual community planning partnerships are performing and what progress is being made towards the implementation of the statement of ambition. The lack of that clear national picture makes it hard for Government and COSLA to identify which community planning partnerships need the most support and which particular areas they are finding it hardest to get right.
The report makes a number of recommendations for the Scottish Government, the national community planning group, COSLA and community planning partnerships themselves. I will focus on the ones that are directly related to Government, but members will see the rest in the report.
First, we would like the Scottish Government and COSLA to work together to set out what their refocused approach means for the statement of ambition and what they expect of community planning partnerships across Scotland. That includes developing a national framework for assessing and reporting progress and implementing the statement of ambition.
Secondly, because this is complex and challenging work, we would also like the Scottish Government and COSLA, working with the Improvement Service and others, to put in place a programme of well-targeted, practical support for community planning partnerships in the areas that most need improvement.
Finally, we would like to see the Scottish Government holding central Government bodies and the NHS to account more consistently and directly for their contribution to community planning as well as for delivering the services for which they are primarily responsible.
As always, Douglas Sinclair, Antony Clark and I will be happy to answer questions from the committee.