Learning, Improvement and Innovation in Local Government: Final Report of the Beacon Scheme Evaluation evaluates the impact and effectiveness of the Beacon Scheme for all English local authorities, whether as authorities holding a Beacon award or as learners through the sharing of good practice with Beacon authorities.

The Beacon Scheme for local government was established in 1999 to help raise standards of services across English local authorities. It has two key objectives as a policy instrument:

• to provide national recognition to those authorities seen to be the best performing in terms of innovation and excellence.
• to share good practice between public services through learning from the innovative and/or excellent practices of the Beacon.

The evaluation of the scheme set out to establish:

• why local authorities engage with the Beacon Scheme
• how local authorities engage with the Beacon Scheme
• processes of knowledge creation and learning through the Scheme
• impacts of learning on authority processes
• impacts of engagement on corporate and service performance.

Over the course of the evaluation more than 40 reports have been published. The final report summarises the key findings from the whole evaluation and series of reports and provides information aout where more detailed understanding and evaluation of the Beacon Scheme can be found.

For further information, visit the Communities and Local Government website .