The duty of Best Value is a significant responsibility which covers all local services. It applies to local authorities and has been introduced to ensure that they achieve and demonstrate the best possible service for their communities.

Providing improved and cost-effective services

Local services play a key role in determining the quality of life of millions of people. Best value provides a major opportunity for authorities to provide and to improve on the quality, efficiency and effectiveness of local services, focused on the needs of local people.

As such, Best Value is a key element of the Government's programme to modernise local government. The Local Government Act (1999) sets out the legal framework. (Further guidance in England is provided in DETR Circular 10/99 Local Government Act 1999 Part 1 Best Value; and in Wales guidance is available in NAW Circular 14/2000 Guidance to Local Authorities in Wales on Best Value and NAW Circular 15/2000: Guidance on Best Value Performance Indicators in Wales, 2000-2001). Best Value is a duty that is owed to local people. In delivering that duty best value authorities should seek continually to improve the way in which they exercise their functions. An ability to measure performance is therefore critical to each and every local authority.

Performance indicators

The Government has prescribed, under the powers set out in the 1999 Act, a set of national Best Value Performance Indicators (BVPIs). In addition local authorities can identify their own local indicators. Help in identifying local indicators is available from the Library of Local Indicators Project, set up jointly by the Improvement and Development Agency (IdeA) and the Audit Commission. This aims to identify standardised sets of indicators which authorities can adopt on a voluntary basis with some confidence that the definitions will be robust and that comparison will be possible with other authorities using them. The library draws on existing indicators (such as those on sustainable development produced by the Central and Local Government Information Partnership and those in the Audit Commission's Quality of Life pilot project).

The indicators proposed in ALGE's document are also intended to be robust and should likewise ensure that comparison of activity is possible between local authorities. The guidance should help local authorities and their partners measure the economy, efficiency and effectiveness - and sustainability - of their actions for biodiversity conservation. Wherever possible, proposed indicators link to national priorities, such as those identified in statute and in such policy documents as the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (1994), Biodiversity: The UK Steering Group Report (1995 and subsequent volumes); Quality of Life Counts: Indicators for a Strategy for Sustainability Development for the UK (1999) and Sustaining the Variety of Life: 5 Years of the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (2001).

Recently there has been a significant rise in interest in devising performance indicators for what have been termed "cross-cutting" issues. Many of these may be difficult to capture and measure as they require co-operation across traditional departmental, and agency boundaries. However, at the same time, they are often the most important issues in peoples' lives.

Local Agenda 21

At the local level, local communities, usually led by local authorities, have developed Local Agenda 21 strategies on sustainable development in their area. In June 1997, the Prime Minister set a target for all local government to have such strategies in place by the end of 2000. Most local authorities now have Local Agenda 21 strategies and these will contain important priorities and actions for quality of life issues that are of local importance and which often cut across "departmental" boundaries.

Community Strategies

Section 4 of the Local Government Act (2000) develops this idea of working to address cross-cutting issues further, and now places a statutory duty on local authorities to prepare an overarching community strategy for the economic, social and environmental well-being of their area. Community Strategies must contribute to the achievement of sustainable development in the UK. Local authorities have been given a new power to promote economic, social and environmental well-being.

National indicators

At a national level, the Government has published a Better Quality of Life: a strategy for sustainable development in the United Kingdom. The strategy includes a new set of about 150 indicators, which will form the core of future reports on national progress. An important new element is a subset of 15 key 'headline' indicators, intended to focus public attention on what sustainable development means, and to give a broad overview of whether we are achieving a "better quality of life for everyone, now and for generations to come".

The National Assembly of Wales has issued 'A Sustainable Wales - Measuring the Difference' (2000) sets out Indicators for Sustainable development in Wales for consultation, with the final results still awaited.

Local indicators

The Audit Commission is currently piloting with 70 plus local authorities a set of quality of life indicators. Also, there are several other projects involving the Audit Commission, central government, the Local Government Association (LGA) and the Improvement and Development Agency (IdeA) to improve our understanding of quality of life indicators.

What is biodiversity?
Biodiversity is the variety of life. It concerns the whole range of living things, from flowering plants to birds, from butterflies to mosses and lichens and even bacteria. Biodiversity also refers to the wide range of habitats which plants and animals depend upon. It is not just about rare or threatened species, it embraces all life, from the commonplace to the greatly endangered.

Protecting the variety of life around us is increasingly important, not just for the intrinsic worth of the plants and animals themselves, but for the needs of humankind. Biodiversity affects our quality of life aesthetically and spiritually, it boosts local economies, and across the earth, there are many species upon which we depend; not least those used in food and medicine production. In short, biodiversity ensures our survival.

Unfortunately, Biodiversity is disappearing at an alarming rate, both globally and in the UK.

The Convention on Biological Diversity (1992) addresses biodiversity decline at the international level. In line with Article 6 of the Convention, the UK has prepared a national Biodiversity Action Plan (1994) and Biodiversity: The UK Steering Group Report (1995). These documents emphasise the need to integrate biodiversity into all relevant programmes.

Biodiversity and sustainable development Circular 10/99 99 Local Government Act 1999 (Part 1 Best Value) requires Best Value reviews to "give effect to the principles of sustainable development".

Biodiversity is recognised by the Government as a crucial component of Quality of Life for the communities that local government serves throughout England and Wales. As such it is a key test for Sustainable Development. Sustainable development is likened to a 'three-legged stool', the legs of which comprise: social, economic and environmental factors. If any one leg is removed or becomes longer than the others, the structure becomes unstable and falls over.

Hence the loss of biodiversity, and the consequent negative environmental impact, runs contrary to the aims and objectives of sustainable development. In principle, sustainable activities should not lead to a net loss in biodiversity.

Indeed, properly regulated, planned and implemented social and economic activity may offer considerable opportunities to achieve a net gain for biodiversity.

A crucial characteristic of the Biodiversity planning process in the UK is that it is based on working partnerships - both at the national, country, regional and local levels. Indeed, the UK Biodiversity Action Plan (1994) recommends that Local Biodiversity Action Plans should specifically be encouraged to include a wide range of local stakeholders, since this will improve both their preparation and implementation. In terms of Best Value, participation in Local Biodiversity partnerships represents excellent value for the individual authorities involved.

The Government has stated that biodiversity is a crucial component of Local Agenda 21 strategies. (UK Biodiversity Steering Group Report, Annex D: 1995). Section 48 of Circular 04/01 (Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000) also states that Biodiversity Action Plans should form an integral part of a local authority's Community Strategy.

It is widely acknowledged that biodiversity action plans represent a continuing process. Local government services that are associated with LBAPs should therefore be subject to continuing service improvement through the Best Value process.