Best Value Notice - Data requests

A Best Value Notice was issued to the Council on 3 November 2023 for a period of six months. You can read more about this at the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC). This notice requested that the Council end the four-day week trial, or commit to ongoing weekly submission of performance data with a one-week response period, and for retrospective data for the previous five years (with a one month response period). Councilors voted to comply with the data request at an extraordinary meeting on 20 November. 

Data requests are made via the DLUHC online portal, called DELTA. The Council inputs data into the portal to be submitted. Data can include figures, uploaded files and notes. 

After considering five sets of weekly data and the retrospective data, Local Government Minster Simon Hoare MP decided to expand the initial data request and revise some previous questions. DLUHC issued notice of this request on 29 December; this added new data sets and replaced some previously requested data. This applied to weekly data (requested back to week one and applicable to future weeks) and to retrospective data. The request had a two-week deadline.    

All available data has been provided or will be provided when available. Explanations have been given where data does not exist or cannot be extracted. Where data cannot for technical reasons be provided weekly and can be provided monthly, that data is submitted as soon as possible. 

As part of the Council’s commitment to reporting on our progress, the data submitted to DLUHC is published here and will continue to be updated with future submissions. If changes are made to data previously submitted, then the latest version will be provided here. Please read our explanatory notes [XLSX, 22Kb] about the data first as it will help to provide useful context.

 

 

Questions and answers 

Why have you provided the data in this format? 

We are providing the data in the format it has been supplied to DLUHC as it is efficient to do so – this is the only version of this particular data set as it does not exist for any other purpose.  

 

Why is some data missing? 

There are different reasons why we may not be able to provide data. In some cases, data never existed, in others it was not a data set we recorded, it is no longer held before a certain date, or it can no longer be accessed (in older IT systems). We give reasons for this in the data submissions and in the explanation of data. 

 

What does this data show? 

This data is not analysed – our assessment of the four-day week trial will continue using key performance indicators (KPIs) and other analysis which are not all part of this request. This data has simply been made available to DLUHC at their request. 

 

When will you stop providing this data? 

The Best Value Notice is initially in place for six months and may be reviewed at any time. We plan on the basis we will provide data weekly for this period.