Flintshire council services are doing OK says report, yet doom and gloom is just around the corner.

The ninth annual Local Government Performance bulletin published yesterday – 3rd September, show many council services across Wales continue to improve despite a backdrop of unprecedented cuts to local authority budgets.

The report by the Local Government Data Unit compares the performance of each of the 22 local councils in Wales, measuring 44 specific areas across 8 service sectors, comparing them to last year, other councils and the Wales average, the 8 sectors measured are:

• Education
• Social Care for Children
• Adult Social Care
• Waste and Recycling
• Housing and Homelessness
• Food Hygiene
• Roads and Transport
• Library and Leisure Services

Across all whole of Wales 70% (31) of the 44 measures comparable with the previous year showed an improvement however,  the Welsh Local Government Association said it will become ‘increasingly difficult for councils to maintain this level of improvement as cuts to funding and services begin to take effect.’

Commenting on the figures,Denbighshire Councillor Hugh Evans OBE, the WLGA Spokesperson for Improvement and Performance said:

“The public is already aware that the availability and quality of some services is reducing in response to budgetary pressures and it is important that we continue to engage with the public to maintain realistic expectations and priorities going forward. A number of ‘big debates’ have already been launched as councils seek to work with their communities to identify and prioritise those services that are needed the most, and councils are doing all in their power to find further efficiencies.

“Councils’ performance is always under scrutiny, but it has been under the spotlight in recent months with some suggesting that local government reform is necessary due to a perceived lack of quality in services. The latest performance figures challenge that narrative by demonstrating how councils have not only maintained improvement but are performing more consistently across Wales, with marked improvement in some of the poorer performing service areas.

Performance of those services measured in Flintshire remained fairly consistent in versus the previous year, you can read the report here: Local Government Performance 2013-14 

New Interactive Website

To coincide with the publishing of this years report the Wales Data Unit launched a brand new interactive website allowing you to compare all the services relative to the published report. – link here

The “My Local Council” website allows you easily compare Flintshire County Council’s’ performance versus the previous years, against also the other 21 councils in Wales, it also benchmarks Welsh average scores.

With the promise of more twitter ‘Big Budget’ debates from Flintshire County Council, the new interactive tool offers fast access to some valuable information around current services.

Heres a ‘flavour’ of the previous debate on twitter from last Monday: