Mr. Michael McCarthy:

We have had a couple of in-person visits, and we would have had more had it not been for the pandemic. When we go to local authorities we do the validation visit or the scrutiny visit we build a profile of the local authority before we go out. There will always be a few items that stand out as being really impressive. For example, one local authority had a rate of motor tax collection online of approximately 90% where most others would be at approximately 70%. I thought there was something really important going on there. It turned out that in that local authority, when people came to the county hall to pay their motor tax, there was a designated booth where there was electronic equipment. It was generally older people who might be more security conscious about online payments. The staff would sit them down, start the account, run them through the process and that reduced the number of people who physically came in. We would take that as an example and showcase it at the annual good practice seminar. It is less about carrot-and-stick but very much carrot. It is about encouraging good practice across the other local authorities. We run that in conjunction with the local government management agencies.