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Economic Development Improvement Guide

The Economic Development Improvement Guide was developed by the Improvement Service, Scottish Government and the Scottish Local Authorities Economic Development Group (SLAED).

The Improvement Guide provides a practical toolkit to encourage councils to ‘raise the bar’ in economic development by critically reviewing their activities and identifying areas for improvement. The aim is to help councils achieve greater and more sustainable economic impact.

Download the Economic Development Improvement Guide

Self-assessment Checklists

The Economic Development Improvement Guide contains a number of checklists  (see p40) to assist councils to systematically review their economic development service. The main purpose of these is to stimulate discussion on the key elements of effective outcome based economic development. These are a starting point to generate debate on key issues, with a view to identifying improvement actions that can be implemented.

How do I use the checklists?

It is important that the checklists are used in a flexible way. A review could utilise all or simply one of the checklists for example. Likewise, it could be led by an independent facilitator, a peer review panel or by the EOP team.

The checklists can be downloaded below for ease of access. Economic development teams and partnerships are encouraged to work through the checklists and, where appropriate, contact the EOP team for assistance.

The Checklists

  1. Economic Profile
  2. Economic Strategy
  3. Appraising Economic Development Interventions
  4. Assessing the Council's Corporate Economic Potential
  5. Assessing the Monitoring and Evaluation System
  6. Assessing Economic Development Partnerships
Hannah Brown - Project Manager, Economic Outcomes Programme