Housing, Care & Support: The challenge of best value Available to Purchase

AT THE HOUSING, CARE and Support Journal conference, the theme was the application of best value, the Government's managerial agenda for local government, to housing, care and support. It appears now in published guidance for housing and social services, but while supported housing and community care are well within the scope of best value, the significance is only beginning to be defined. The conference tried to help with this definition and to share the ideas with practitioners so that they could see how it might fit with their own activity. These notes summarise contributions to this conference from Ross Fraser of the Chartered Institute of Housing and Nick Ville of the Audit Commission.