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A summary of the key findings from our review of local government commissioning arrangements in Wales.
Commissioning is the process where councils decide if and then how to deliver services. Delivery models can include a range of options such as delivering services themselves (often called ‘in-house’ delivery), awarding contracts to companies or other organisations to deliver services, delivering in partnership with other councils or public bodies, or the creation of ‘arms-length’ companies.
Commissioning involves identifying intended outcomes and deciding on the preferred delivery models. Once a delivery model has been chosen and put in place, it would also involve monitoring how well a service is delivering value for money for local communities.
Commissioning arrangements can help to ensure services are delivered economically, efficiently and effectively. Conversely, weaknesses in commissioning arrangements can reduce both the impact and value for money of services, even if the processes which follow, such as procurement and contract management are robust.
To provide assurance that councils have arrangements to secure value for money when commissioning services and that they were applying the sustainable development principle. We also sought to explain how councils approach the commissioning of services and inspire councils and other public sector bodies by identifying and sharing examples of notable practice where relevant.
In our reports we identified areas where we felt that councils could strengthen their arrangements. As a result we made recommendations to councils, these covered areas including:
Commissioning is the process by which the council designs services it intends to deliver. It starts with defining the service and the desired outputs and outcomes and ends when the council organises its method of delivery.
We found several examples where councils have put in place approaches to commissioning which may be of interest to colleagues across public services. Examples include:
The council has arrangements to ensure it clearly defines the services it intends to commission. It has a commercial framework business case template that prompts officers to set out perceived benefits of the commissioned service, and demonstrated a clear rational behind the length of contracts for the services we reviewed.
The council is part of the Gwent Public Services Board which has adopted the Marmot Principles. The council’s well-being objectives are linked to the national well-being goals and it is using the Marmot principles to understand how to deliver the biggest impact on improved well-being in Torfaen against its objectives. This demonstrates its commitment to achieve wider impacts when delivering its well-being objectives.
Gwynedd uses a broad range of information from internal and external sources to develop its understanding of the current and long-term factors that are likely to impact commissioned services. It has also identified information sources that will be useful when making commissioning decisions in future and how it could improve its use of data.
Conwy conducts options appraisals across service areas to consider a range of delivery options before commissioning. The council also uses a broad range of information and engages with external partners and service users when considering commissioning options.
The findings in our reports are based on document reviews, and interviews with the senior officer(s) responsible for the development of the Council’s strategic approach to commissioning. We also interviewed senior officers with responsibility for services that the Council has commissioned externally.
Given the wide range of council services, we also focused on a small sample of service areas in each council.
The audit criteria we used to assess councils’ arrangements against is included in each of the twenty two local reports we published for each council. You can all of these reports on our publications page.