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Audit Scotland publishes the National Scrutiny Plan for Local Government 2010/11

Audit Scotland has today published the National Scrutiny Plan for Local Government 2010/11. The Plan delivers a new streamlined scrutiny system for Scotland’s councils.

Following the Scottish Government’s review of scrutiny led by Professor Crerar, the Scottish Housing Regulator participated fully in the strategic review of joint scrutiny of local authorities led by the Accounts Commission. We worked with Audit Scotland (on behalf of the Accounts Commission), and a number of other scrutiny bodies, to develop a shared risk assessment process to determine what engagement we will have with each local authority.

We are committed to continuing our risk-based and proportionate approach to scrutiny and welcome the opportunity that the shared risk assessment has brought to streamline and co-ordinate scrutiny. We and our scrutiny partners have developed an Assurance and Improvement Plan for each local authority which outlines all the planned scrutiny activity for 2010/11. These local plans support the National Scrutiny Plan and set out in more detail the reasons behind the planned scrutiny activity for each council. We will meet with our scrutiny partners annually to review and update these local plans and the National Plan.

Protecting the interests of tenants is still a core part of our purpose and we will continue to work with our Tenant Assessors and to seek the views of landlords’ service users.