So what's the real answer?
Certainly it does not hold that distinction in the eyes of the Local Government Chronicle – the magazine which has been the bible for town hall groupies since 1855.
The other day it published its 2011 “Recognising Innovation” awards in which the honour of being declared the “Most Improved Council of the Year” went to North East Derbyshire District Council for an overhaul of its management and departmental structure.
Not only did East Derbyshire snatch the title, but Boston did not appear anywhere in the list of nominations – in this or any other category.
Even the BBI seems reluctant to go the whole hog with this claim. In the party political retrospective which is being handed our in place of election campaign literature, it calls itself “The Most Improved Council” – as if the additional capital letters will somehow reinforce this hard-to-establish claim. But elsewhere, the claim is modified by the addition of small print which inserts the words “claiming to be” before the headline.
In September last year, a borough council press release said “Boston Borough Council has gone from being one of the worst local authorities in the country to one of the most improved inside just nine months (our italics).”
Chief Executive Richard Harbord said this meant “the threat of Government intervention had been lifted, there had been no Audit Commission qualifications in any category, all were now ‘adequate.’”
As we have previously said, so much of this is down to the wording.
Mr Harbord is quoted as saying “To move from where we were nine months ago to where we are now is excellent. It is virtually unheard of and means we are one of the most improved councils in the country this year.”
This sounds like definitions within definitions.
Certainly, Boston has made an improvement - but precisely where to is the issue under debate.
Although the BBI would have us believe that Boston is now free of all external influence, Mr Harbord said at the time that “the independent improvement board, which had been formed to advise the council after the commission found the council to be performing ‘poorly,’ will continue in an advisory role until May.”
Last year’s press release told us “the Audit Commission recorded failings against the council and issued a damning report for Value For Money and use of resources. The council’s future hung in the balance with the ever-present threat of being taken over by officials from Whitehall.
“’We were in a dire situation,’ Mr Harbord reminded staff.
“By the end of the year the threat of intervention had grown and warnings were being sounded that it would take years for things to improve.
“Intense improvement activity took place between January and March, when Audit Commission inspectors began their next examination.
“Mr Harbord made a special plea for the result of those inspections to be the subject of a detailed report after the news broke that the Audit Commission inspectors’ work was to cease with immediate effect.”
So the situation becomes even more confusing.
The Commission was kicked into touch by the government, and the report issued as a “special plea.”
We have searched the report on the council’s website an cannot find any reference to it being the most improved – or even among them – and in fact the “I” word appears only ten times.
We couldn’t find the report on the Audit Commission website - instead there was a copy of what it calls its annual audit “letter” – and again there is no reference to Boston being “most improved.”
We understand that apart from the report on the borough website, the rest of the message was been delivered “personally” to Mr Harbord following his appeal for the inspection results following Eric Pickles' decision to scrap the Audit Commission.
As the say in the X Files - The truth is out there I - it’s pinning it down that’s the problem.
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