Thuringowa study team looks at Best Value
Thuringowa City Council officials believe several aspects of Local Government modernisation programs in the United Kingdom can be applied to Queensland. This is the view of Thuringowa City Council Chief Executive Officer Lyn Russell, who joined Mayor Les Tyrell and Bill Gilmore from the Department of Local Government and Planning, on a tour of Councils in the UK last year. As winner of the ‘In Search of Best Practice Grant’, Thuringowa City Council was awarded $10,000 to assess best practice in the delivery of Local Government services to the community.
All UK Councils reviewed by the team had participated in the Best Value pilot program during 1999/2000. However, Ms Russell said she was not recommending that Queensland follow the prescriptive and legislatively driven approach to reform that is being followed in the UK.
“There are a number of aspects of the UK modernisation program which we believe could be usefully applied in the Queensland context,” Lyn Russell said. “It would certainly be valuable to measure and compare key aspects of performance across Local Government authorities in Queensland.
“Once that has been successfully undertaken, Councils could be involved in a voluntary approach to improvement by utilising some of the other aspects of the UK modernisation strategy. These could include the development of community strategies and action plans in partnership with other agencies; and/or a Local Government peer review program facilitated by an agency, such as the Local Government Association of Queensland.”
Unlike the majority of Councils in Queensland, in the UK they operate under a party political system with a government/opposition model.
Ms Russell and Councillor Tyrell were initially interested in reviewing the effectiveness of the Best Value program in the UK. But their discussions with central and Local Government agencies took on consideration of a broader range of issues.
“We found other aspects of the modernisation agenda equally relevant and discovered that many authorities were attempting a more strategic and holistic approach to improvement and reform,” she said.“We discovered that while many local authorities were still grappling with the overwhelming requirements and demands imposed on them by Best Value, others were already looking to move into a less centrally regimented improvement strategy implied via public service agreements with high performing Councils.”
The team also examined self generated improvement strategies implicit in the voluntary Local Government Improvement Program, involving peer reviews. They soon saw the Best Value approach in a much broader strategic context and had begun to share the reservations of many of those organisations visited about its capacity to affect local authorities’ performance as a stand alone or ‘one size fits all’ strategy.
“We could see its value as a tool to instigate change by forcing authorities to measure their performance and compare themselves with others,” Lyn Russell said. “From Best Value, central governments could gauge which local authorities were doing well and which needed significant intervention and help to improve their service delivery “By the end of five years of Best Value Reviews, many local authorities will probably have exhausted their patience with a heavily bureaucratic and costly centralised regime of audit and inspection and will be looking to move on into a climate of greater self regulation, more autonomy and innovative strategies for improvement. Perhaps at that point, central government can focus its attention on working with poor performers and encourage the good to high performing Councils to take responsibility for their own futures.”
