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Best Value

Best Value is a national initiative, introduced in the Local Government Act 1999, which seeks to improve public services.  The legislation requires all councils to review the way in which they provide their services and to challenge whether they could be provided differently with regards to cost, quality and efficiency.

Best Value places greater emphasis on local people and local choices.  Councils must seek the views of their residents and to consider feedback when developing their policy direction and future services.

Under Best Value legislation we have to carry out an annual programme of 'Best Value' reviews of our services, report our performance against a series of national Best Value Performance Indicators and produce an annual Performance Plan  and Corporate Plan which reports our performance over the past year and plans for the year ahead.

Performance Management

To support continuous improvement councils are required to put in place effective performance management systems.  Our performance management system means that we can measure performance  and our progress in achieving improvements in services.  The performance management system consists of a number of high-level Strategic Objectives , key aims for what we want to achieve and a number of targets against which we measure our progress in achieving our aims.  Performance reports identify progress to date, and enable us to focus on areas where performance is below target.  

For more information on Performance Management, please contact Business and Information Systems.

Policy

The Corporate Plan is the document which brings all of the Strategic Objectives, key aims and measures together and sets the broader policy direction for the Council.  It is set within the context of the South Oxfordshire Community Strategy, 'Our Place, Our Future' and shows the things which the Council will focus on over the next three years to improve its services.  Supporting the Corporate Plan there are a number of more detailed strategies.  These set out proposals for the future of a particular service e'g. sports and recreation or across a broad theme e.g. rural issues.  The detailed actions which each team and individuals will take to implement the Corporate Plan are included within teams' annual Service Plans.

 For more information please contact the policy team.