Corporate Assessment Key Lines of Inquiry

Q3 What has The Council achieved / not achieved to date?

Achievements in Quality of Service

88. As an organisation the Council recognises the importance of meeting or exceeding national performance indicators and in setting local targets for service delivery that reflect community expectations and the capacity of the Council to deliver such services. This is evidenced by the reformatting of the 2003/04 PIP19 which incorporates bar chart trend analysis of a range of Best Value performance indicators comparing targeted and actual performance with that of the best performing Councils.
89. Analysis of those 38 of the 2001/02 BVPI’s which can be compared showed that 13 indicators fell into the top, 14 in the median range and 11 in the lower range.

    Top and Second Quartile of BVPIs for 2002/03
    Priorities/Objectives	No. of BVPIs	No. Relevant	No. Top or 2nd	%
    Forward looking and confident organisation	20	16	12	75
    Economic well being	8	7	6	85
    Community well being	19	17	14	82
    Environmental well being *	7	6	2	22
    Lifelong learning	4	3	3	100

    * The lower performing ones relate to refuse collection costs and recycling where improvements are ongoing and investment proposed.
     
90. The Council met or exceeded 21 of the 44 national Best Value performance indicator targets in 2002/03.
91. Service quality is externally validated in both Building Control and Land Charges through the ISO 9000 standard which have been accredited since 1998. Office manuals for legal services are being prepared that will be Lexcel compliant and the Darwin Country website won an award in 2002. The Council in partnership with the community won the national Philip Lawrence Award in 2003 for community safety/development initiative. Preliminary investigations are under way on the introduction of ISO 14001 Environmental Management systems to underpin the waste and grounds maintenance service standards and work towards the EFQM model.
92. The Council is able to further demonstrate the provision of quality services through:
    • Achieving a gold award for Britain in Bloom 2003.
    • Being nominated by Government as an example of good practice for the Community Safety Partnership.
    • Achieving Beacon status in Town Centre Regeneration (2001).
    • Achieving a Beacon shortlisting for Community Cohesion for our work with young people (2003).
    • 2* Good Best Value for waste management
93. The Council has reached excellent service standards in line with the Council’s priorities and are realistic having regard to the local context and constraints such as the high level of rurality (one third of the population live in 93% of the District’s geographical area) and the listed buildings and heritage assets. It has achieved the service standards even with reduced management and administration resources. It has dealt with major emergencies such as flooding in 2000 and 2002, implemented a flood alleviation scheme, carried out LSVT and transferred the highways agency. The cost of refuse collection reflects a large geographical area and an increased travel distance to the disposal facility following closure of the tip in 2003.
94. Local people appreciate the services that the Council provides. Although the most recent survey (September 2003) showed that satisfaction levels had dropped slightly from the 2000 survey, the 2000 survey itself produced results that were considered to be good when compared nationally. The 2003 results have only recently been received and the task of fully analysing and comparing these results has not yet been completed. Individual services, e.g. Leisure, carry out their own customer satisfaction surveys on a regular basis and these have consistently shown good results, however it is acknowledged that some of these surveys are not carried out on a statistically sound basis.

Achievement of Improvements

95. Improvements in service quality are flowing from a far more systematic and joined-up approach in priority setting drawn from the aims of the Community Strategy, the review of the Council’s Corporate Plan (2002-2007) and the Budget Strategy. Through this work and the high level of engagement the Council has, by partnership working and through community consultation, improved the quality of service. Service improvement now relates more closely to community aspirations and is therefore in line with the Council’s priorities. The consultation on budget 2002 identified community safety and flooding as being two key areas for improvement. A permanent flood alleviation scheme has been carried out in Frankwell, temporary flood alleviation measures purchased in partnership with the Environment Agency and other alleviation work is being done by Severn-Trent. On community safety the Community Safety Partnership has bought more CCTV cameras, improved CCTV service generally and reduced shoplifting by 16%.
    
96. Some key achievements based on our priorities have been:

    Environment

    • Achieving the urban renaissance of Shrewsbury through brownfield site redevelopment achieving 66% in 2001/02, 87% in 2002/03 and anticipated 75% in 2003/04.
    • Improving food premises inspections to include 100% of high-risk land category C premises.
    • Increasing the number of community woodlands to 11 with a combined total area of 45 acres.
    • Improving our abandoned car services with quicker response times which was taken up by the Local Government Association.
    • Improving development control performance on national PIs for the purposes of Planning Delivery Grant with response times for two categories of application type.
    • Increased recycling rates to 18% in 2003/04 and 24% predicted in 2004/05.

    Community

    • Progressing 178 units of social housing with a target of 500 units by 2006.
    • Obtained largest increase in government funding for Disabled facilities Grants in the West Midland enabling; the approval of 71 and completion of 63 disabled adaptations in 2002/03 (against a target of 60).
    • Pursuing a wide range of partnership and community initiatives relating to ‘Raising Aspirations’ for young people; removal of abandoned vehicle through operation CUBIT; drug awareness; serving 15 acceptable behaviour contracts to young people, launching Pubwatch; and, developing outreach recreational schemes.
    • Achievements support the Council's wish to move towards a more sustainable and cohesive community linked to priorities which are recognised by the community.
    • A MORI survey undertaken to evaluate the innovative e-voting pilot, which improved turnout from 41% to 54.5% at the last local election in 2003, shows that 89% found this form of voting more convenient than traditional methods.
97. Improvements have taken place with provision of new town centre car parks at St. Austin’s Street and Barker Street. With Britain in Bloom as a priority there have been improvements in litter enforcement with 33 notices issued and improvements to areas of the town. Service Legal Agreements have been entered into with the Town Centre Management Partnership and voluntary sector52. The Council cinema in the Music Hall closed and a new improved service provided in the Old Market Hall. Improvement has been made in the Arts with the Council commissioning a £50,000 public art feature in the West End of the town centre.
98. As mentioned in the previous section, the Council has recently conducted a BVPI survey on customer satisfaction and this has revealed that satisfaction levels have not improved in six out of ten areas. The detailed analysis of this survey has yet to be completed, so the Council is unable, at this time, to use these findings as part of its improvement planning. It will, however, do so as soon as this is possible.

Investment

99. The Council has invested heavily to ensure that it has the right building blocks in place to achieve its aim of performing at a level consistent with the top 25% of Councils, and to enable future improvements in its services and cross cutting issues. Examples of this investment are set out below and these, together with some case studies, illustrate our determination to succeed.
100. The Council is more advanced than many authorities in having effective local strategic partnerships in place at the County and Borough levels. The Shrewsbury & Atcham Partnership (LSP) is chaired independently from the Borough and has been effective in challenging and supporting the direction of the Council. Partnership representatives now meet with the Cabinet to have an open dialogue ensuring that the partnership and the political leadership have a shared understanding of priority areas. The Shrewsbury Town Centre Management Partnership is supported financially by the Council (at about £40,000 p.a.) and the effectiveness of this organisation contributed considerably to the award of Beacon Status for Town Centre Regeneration.
101. We have invested considerable time and effort in community engagement and capacity building, evidenced through the Shrewsbury Conference, Question Time and People's Panel. We also engage in regular stakeholder meetings. For example:
     • A Development Services Liaison Group meets quarterly – this group consists of representatives of local organisations with an interest in planning, conservation and heritage issues and provides valuable feed back on current development and planning policy issues to the Council.
     • Centre of Environmental Excellence Stakeholder Event 2003 – this met to steer our approach towards achieving standards of environmental excellence and provided a platform for the community strategy.
     • Landlords Forum established
     • Team Litter Partnership with local businesses and Probation Service generates £60,000 - 400 hours of labour per month for extra litter removal and local environmental cleaning projects.

     Other examples of investment include:

     • Street cleaning partnership
     • CCTV
     • Implementing Electronic Government (IEG) Strategy33
     • West End regeneration
     • Performance Management
     • Risk Management
102. The Council has also enjoyed considerable success in attracting additional resources to enable it to facilitate a number of Quality of Life initiatives, e.g.:

     • Securing AWM funding for a visitor Economy Strategy
     • Developed in partnership robust Supporting People Strategy with implementation from April 2003 of £7m of services at no extra cost to the Council
     • Developed Homelessness Contract with Severnside Housing and secured extra 123% funding increase
     • Launching our Community Strategy in June 2002 and developing active community involvement through Question Time and Shrewsbury Conference events
     • Developing three Heritage Economic Regeneration Schemes achieving over £2½ million of investment in historic buildings locally in addition to major English Heritage grant aided schemes at the Old Market Hall and Flaxmill and using Planning Delivery Grant to support the HERS schemes
     • The change in social housing grant has led to a rethink in the way the Council provides social housing. For a short period of time priority effort was given by the Housing and Development Control staff to progress corporately applications for social housing development to maximise a short window of opportunity for funding. The Council also reallocated £10 million as an investment which will facilitate and provide social housing in partnership with RSLs
103. Our Asset Management Strategy is being delivered by a corporate team lead by a dedicated officer in a recently created new post. Similarly, a Procurement Strategy has been adopted and the implementation of the action plan is being similarly delivered through a new post funded from savings. Risk management is being developed through interdisciplinary working across the organisation.
104. Investment in organisational development and training has increased substantially over the last three years with the preparation of an HR Strategy coupled with increases in the training budget to £75,940. The number of FTEs for 2003/04 is 453.6 and the training budget per FTE is £167.42. Our managers have been trained in the EDS and this provides constructive feedback from all levels of the organisation on service delivery training and personal development issues. We have also invested heavily in our target of achieving single status in employees' terms and conditions and we are currently introducing a new job evaluation scheme. The organisation has prepared an action plan based on the 2003 employee survey.
105. In addition to our organisational building blocks the Council has a prudent but robust Treasury Management Strategy which seeks to maximise investment income and keep borrowing costs to a minimum whilst ensuring there is a spread of investments to minimise risk to the Council. We also seek to manage the Council’s funds to ensure that debt free status is maintained.
106. Our revenue priority is to keep annual council tax increases to no more than inflation – we achieved a 3% increase for 2003/04 through organisational savings and a reassessment of priorities based on service delivery colloquially known as "more broom pushers and less pen pushers". An increase in council tax limited to inflation continues as a priority for 2004/05.
107. Despite being debt free, the Council seeks to maximise external funding through partnership working and grants. £3,589,753 has been raised in grants from a wide range of sources over the last three years even though the majority of the Borough does not benefit from any European or national designations that attract grants. The Council has produced a funding guide to assist the organisations within the Borough to secure grants from a wide range of sources.
108. Our Best Value reviews and EFQM work is described under Theme 6.
109. Other examples of effective investment which relate to our stated priorities are the £5 million community and environmental initiatives, Capital fund, regeneration of Frankwell, investment in affordable housing, potential for recycling receipts from disposals to fund new depot, member support of Shropshire County Council Battlefield waste centre proposal - vital to this Council.
110. The Council is open to internal and external challenge. On external challenge, for example, the Council has the annual Shrewsbury Conference and Question Time public consultation events on policy proposals such as the Town Centre Strategy. It also has held open forums in public venues on "Big Issues" such as new Council offices (held at Wakeman School) and cultural facilities held at Shirehall. The Council also invites the public to ask questions at Council and Committee meetings, and has public involvement through scrutiny.
111. On internal challenge the Council has visioning events and seminars for members where different ways of providing services are considered, i.e. waste, IEG, Big Issues42. There are annual employee briefings/facilitated workshops where ideas come forward. There is a staff suggestion scheme and team meetings where ideas are rewarded.