Education Scotland led on a collaborative project commissioned by the National Strategic Scrutiny Group to devise and assess a potential methodology for the evaluation and scrutiny of how well community planning is operating at a local level, with a particular focus on the four pillars of public service reform.  This was Project 4 of the Strategic Scrutiny Group work plan for 2014/15) and the outcomes of the project were shared with the Group  in April 2015.

The Place-based scrutiny pilot focussed on two key questions:

• What is it like to live in this locality?
• How well are services collaborating to improve outcomes for local people?

and a subsidiary question:

• Is our collective activity tackling /addressing inequalities?

The locality profile provided by the CPP contained a wealth of evidence upon which to develop the process.  ACORN segmentation presented a helpful way of looking at identified priority communities and their needs.