Community and living

The council undertook a best value review of its support to the voluntary and community sector.

Aim of the review

"To ensure that the council's support to the community and voluntary sector is effectively and efficiently provided, meets the needs of users and is in accordance with the council's priorities."

In practice, this meant that we focused on the process of how we provide support, how this support is monitored and evaluated and how we can ensure that it helps deliver quality services to the community and contributes to our own visions, values and priorities.

Recommendations and implementation plan

The main recommendations of the review were that:

• through the development of the local compact, the council should have a clear strategy for its support to the voluntary and community sector
• the application and evaluation process must become more open and transparent
• a new funding agreement should be adopted as both a philosophy to underpin consideration of the way funding is dealt with and as a practical and proportionate approach to providing and monitoring funding
• the council should encourage and support funded organisations to work towards implementing a recognised quality assurance scheme. All organisations funded by the council were be expected to have implemented, or have made progress towards implementing, a quality assurance framework appropriate to its level of funding and services by April 2006. The level of monitoring of organisations depends upon the progress made in implementing quality standards
• the council should revise and enhance arrangements for the provision of premises to the community and voluntary sector
• the council should establish a corporate framework for community development
• the council should ensure that council staff are appropriately trained to carry out monitoring and the evaluation of quality systems
• regular consultation should be undertaken with funded and non-funded groups after the best value review is over - this should not be seen as a one-off exercise.

These main recommendations were underpinned by more detailed recommendations and an implementation plan, which can be downloaded along with further best value review documents below.