The Performance Plan 2005

How we compare with other councils

Table 7 summarises how we compared with all other English district councils on national performance indicators for  four years from 2000/01 to 2003/04. (Note: 2003/04 is the last year for which national comparative information is available) Table 7 shows:

• How many of our performance indicators were in the top 25% of performers among  district councils;
• How many were in the bottom 25%;
• How many were in the quartiles in between.

We feel that comparing our performance with all other district councils gives the most realistic assessment of  our comparative performance.

Table 7: The 2000/01 to 2003/04 Quartile Comparison

An average authority would have 25% of its performance indicators in each of the 4 quartiles. In the three years 2000/01 to 2002/03 we successfully achieved more than half our performance indicators in the top 50% of local authorities and gradually improved our comparison with other councils on a year by year basis. This was a real achievement for the Council in the light of the relatively low spending per head of population.

In 2003/04 our performance slipped in comparison with other councils. The chart at Table 8 represents how we compared using this measure in 2003/04.

Table 8: 2003/04 South Cambridgeshire's Quartile Performance

Although our improvement against other district councils was not sustained in 2003/04, we nevertheless continued to improve our own year on year performance, with 62% of national PIs improving or remaining the same between the years 2002/03 and 2003/04. The trend of improvement was stronger in the following year as the next section demonstrates

Is our Performance Improving?

The next table shows changes in performance between the years 2003/04 and 2004/05.

Table 9:  Changes in Performance between 2003/04 and 2004/05

Change in PI Performance	National PIs only		National and Corporately Important PIs
	Number	%	Number	%
Improved Performance	32	48%	53	53%
Stayed the same	18	27%	29	29%
Lower Performance	17	25%	19	18%
Total	67		101

We are pleased at the continuing number of PIs which are improving. Indeed the picture is slightly better than shown in Table 9 because a number of the PIs which stayed the same were incapable of further improvement (e.g. the number of properties with kerbside recycling facilities remained at 100% and the percentage of land charge searches completed within 10 working days also remained at 100%).

A number of performance indicators improved by more than 15% between 2003/04 and 2004/05. These included:-

• BV183a & b - Homeless people having significantly shorter stays in B&B.
• Benefits PIs - There were significant improvements in almost all areas.
• BV82b - The amount of household waste composted increased by over 200%
• Planning PIs - The time taken to process all applications
• BV156 - 100% of Council buildings are now accessible to all residents

The overall picture

Up to 2003/04 our performance when compared with all other district councils improved year on year, with greater numbers of PIs in the top two quartiles. However in 2003/04 there were significant factors which directly affected our performance or had an indirect effect because of the additional demands they created on our limited capacity. For example:-

• The introduction of a number of new ICT systems to replace out of date legacy systems, which could no longer be maintained, with joined up and web-enabled systems which will improve our capacity in the future but which adversely affected performance during the implementation period.
• A roll out of wheeled bins to the whole district
• Full staff reorganisation and grading review in order to address recruitment and retention difficulties.
• Comprehensive Performance Assessment and benefits inspection
• Consolidation of our offices on the new site at Cambourne

Nevertheless, we have continued to achieve improvement on most of our PIs, even during 2003/04. In 2004/05 the level of improvement has increased as can be seen in table 9 above, despite other pressures such as Travellers issues and Stock Options appraisal. We will not know whether our performance has improved in relation to other councils in 2004/05 until national data is available later in the year.

Overall in the last two years the Council has successfully addressed  a huge programme of change. Some of this has been initiated by the Council and some the result of external forces. This has put severe strains on the organisation and particularly on our lean management structures. As seen in other parts of this Plan there will be further major external pressures facing the Council in 2005/06

We recognise that we need to focus more on performance management and avoid being distracted by other matters. In particular, we need to be sure that we improve performance on our priority PIs and reduce the number of PIs where performance is likely to fall. We will do this by effective monitoring and timely intervention. For this reason a number of milestones are included in this plan to improve performance management - for example:-

• Review and implement the staff appraisal process to ensure links between individual staff objectives and performance indicators
• Review all performance indicators and their definitions and collection processes
• Support an Audit Commission inspection  of our performance management systems and implement the recommendations.