The following elements need to be considered in preparation for the audit inspection of cultural services;
Document review- A list of requested documents will be sent to your council by the Audit Commission . These will need to be reviewed and strengthened where gaps are felt to exist or where improvements to the quality of documentation can be achieved. In particular preparing a summary form of your Cultural Strategy and / or your Sports Strategy might be considered, together with work around the Equalities Impact Assessments for the service. (this is important in current inspections) These will need to be indexed for the inspectors and, where possible, précised
Staff Briefings – These need to happen with as many of your staff as possible to ensure that the process is understood and that all staff are aware of their possible contributions to a good outcome. This may include an exercise contextualising day to day activities within the section as these support corporate and community aspirations. Ideally these will be undertaken some 6 weeks prior to inspection. Audit commission inspectors may ask to speak to anyone during the inspection and staff briefings will need to extend to senior managers outside the service, and to key elected members.
Service Focus Workshop
Purpose and approach
As a first stage in preparing for the Audit Commission inspection of cultural services this workshop will be held to orientate managers in determining how their day to day activities contribute to community and corporate objectives, and in particular those aims in the Corporate / Improvement Plan.
The workshop will be a model for mangers to use with their own staff in order that the full range of activies in Cultural Services at all levels can be seen in terms of their contribution to the wider corporate picture. This will help to provide evidence of the “Golden Thread” of service priorities matching community objectives.
Typical agenda
Introduction – Background to Cultural Services Inspection – What we can expect. – Give an overview of the requirements from inspection, self assesent, critical friend, gathering evidence, tour and interviews.
Presentation - Summary of Corporate Improvement Plan, pull out the main corporate priorities across all areas.
Discussion – Service objectives in relation to National agenda, Community Strategy, Corporate improvement Plan.
Timetable for preparation for inspection – roles and responsibilities.
Exercise – Establishing corporate fit for departmental activity – This is to make the links between what individuals do on a day to day basis, and how these contribute to the delivery of the corporate or community plan objectives. At first people may find it hard to make these links, so it helps to give one or two examples in discussion before the exercise starts. To prepare for the exercise you will need to list either the corporate, or the community plan objectives and head up at least one sheet of flip chart paper for each objective. These are then put up on the wall for staff to write their day to day activities under each. Staff are asked to work in small groups, four or five, and to go around the room listing their activities against each heading. At least two facilitators will be needed to help with this, and it’s useful to give each group a separate coloured felt tip pen, to identify who said what.
The exercise should take no longer than ¾ of an hour, probably less, and at the end each group will have a chance to feed back on where they though they’re main contribution was being made. Type up the results and feed this back to the groups. If possible, get the staff to repeat this exercise with their own teams.
Completion of self assessment – Against the key lines of enquiry, including the collation of evidence to support the conclusion of the self assessment. This needs to be undertaken when the known gaps have been addressed, but in time to allow for a critical review and for action to be taken as a result of the review. Evidence will need to be indexed against the Key lines of enquiry and made available in précis form for the inspectors to enable them to draw down on request.
Critical appraisal of self assessment – This is best done by an external “critical friend” and will need to identify weakness and areas of strength to inform the approach to the inspection. This needs to be undertaken approximately six weeks prior to inspection to allow for actions to be taken to address significant issues.
Scheduling the inspection event – Once the scope of the inspection has been established, and a list of officers to be interviewed and sites to be visited agreed, it is advisable to present the inspectors with a draft schedule. This ensures availability of officers and maintains a focus for the inspection in line with your ideas of how best to present the service.
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