Supporting Local Authorities

In the last year GOSW has helped Plymouth, Swindon, Torridge and Torbay to tackle issues highlighted during assessment by the Audit Commission and to become more efficient and effective local authorities.

Torbay is one of the most improved councils nationally over the past two years. Yet, in 2002, it was one of only 15 councils (out of 150 upper tier councils) assessed as ‘poorly performing’ by the Audit Commission. In only two years it had improved its performance to achieve a ‘fair’ rating – providing much better services across the board for its council tax payers. Whilst much of this success is undoubtedly due to the tremendous efforts of the council, GOSW also played a part. Our specialist teams worked together to help the council address the issues and participated in the Government’s Monitoring Board responsible for supporting and challenging the council’s efforts to improve.

More specifically, GOSW collaborated with Whitehall departments and external regulators both to define the problems and the potential solutions. After this, we helped the Lead Official - appointed to Torbay by the Government - to oversee the delivery of the improvement plan. We helped Torbay to secure more than £600,000 for improvements and to obtain financial expertise from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister to assist the council with budgeting. Torbay improved so quickly, that GOSW lobbied for its status to be re-assessed ahead of the planned timetable.