This Economic Outcomes Programme Overview Report sets out a highly positive message regarding the major contribution that local authorities make to Scotland’s economy. The purpose of the work was to look beyond traditional economic development interventions to begin to examine opportunities for further enhancing impact via ‘levers’ that typically do not feature explicitly in economic development strategies. The Overview report focuses on three major corporate economic ‘levers’ that councils control/influence, in terms of their role as major employers, procurers of goods and services, and asset owners.
The report pulls out and summarises key points that have emerged from the 32 local economic footprint reports, which were produced for each council. The report also highlights a number of areas where there is likely scope for councils to further enhance their positive impact across each of the three areas considered. The SOLACE economic development leads, SLAED, IS and CoSLA have agreed to work collectively to take forward a number of the key issues highlighted in the report. For example, this will entail further close working with others, such as local government procurement colleagues.
The Improvement Service (IS) is the national improvement organisation for local government in Scotland.
Our purpose is to help councils and their partners to improve the health, quality of life and opportunities of all people in Scotland through community leadership, strong local governance and the delivery of high quality, efficient local services.
Through a series of principles, the IS works to promote improvement in local government and among its partners to support them improve outcomes and reduce the outcome gaps within populations and within areas.
The IS delivers a range of products and services that support CPPs to build their capacity to deliver the public service reform agenda.
The IS has a non-partisan role to support all elected members in Scotland.
As well as news from the Improvement Service other news relevant to local government improvement in Scotland. is also published. The Improvement Service welcomes contributions from Scottish local authorities and partner organisations. If you have a story you would like to share, contact us.
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Find out about all the events and activities organised by the Improvement Service or of interest to Scottish local authorities here. If you would like to add an event to this calendar, please contact info@improvementservice.org.uk
You can quickly browse events from the calendar opposite, or go to the events page for full details of all events.
The SLAED Indicators Framework Report 2017-18 has been published, along with the Headline Report and news release. Download them all below:
The Economic Outcomes Programme (EOP) was established in 2012 with funding from Scottish Government and the Improvement Service. The original programme ran for two years with a focus on providing support to councils and partners to embed the key messages of the Scottish Local Authorities’ Economic Development Improvement Guide.
The second stage of the EOP is an evolution from the initial phase of work based on a review of the success of the original programme. The second phase will focus on undertaking detailed impact assessments of the current ‘economic footprint’ of councils/partnerships. From the ‘footprint’ analysis, a report will be produced for each area summarising current economic impact and setting out a range of ways that the impact could be enhanced. This will be accompanied by facilitated workshop discussions with the leadership teams from each council/partnership. The prime focus of these sessions will be to identify opportunities for further enhancing economic impact. This will result in fairly short, focused economic improvement plans, setting out key actions, timescales and responsibilities.
Following an initial piloting of the EOP2 methodology in Autumn 2014, the programme will be rolled out to all 32 Community Planning Partnerships over a two year period.
The EOP is funded by the 32 Scottish councils, the Scottish Government and the Improvement Service.
The programme is overseen by an Advisory Board, which is chaired by SOLACE and includes senior representatives from Scottish Enterprise, Highlands and Islands Enterprise, Skills Development Scotland, the Federation of Small Businesses and academia. More information on the EOP Board and Agendas/Minutes of previous meetings are available in the Project Board section.