The Times / Sunday Times have just published results of a league table of relative performance of Local Authorities based on government performance statistics. And this exposes huge variations in public sector efficiency across the country. Of the 318 Local Authorities, Wiltshire isn’t occupying position 318 (that’s the privilege of Nottingham City Council, which declared itself bankrupt in November last year) but it is in a basement propping up area of 298th best.
According to The Times ‘the data, published by a new agency, the Office for Local Government (Oflog), reveals that some councils have recycling rates that are twice as good as others and that some authorities are failing to process half of planning applications on time while others are not late on a single one.’
‘Oflog’? Never heard of it? Set up by the Government only in mid-2023 it is there to provide ‘authoritative and accessible’”’ data regarding performance. For this survey The Times looked at five areas of performance – Finance, Waste Management, Roads, Social Care and Planning. Councils were ranked on a ‘best to worst’ basis for each, points awarded according to position for each and then totalled up. These areas were selected to get some broad comparison between performances of individual Councils.
Overall, it’s ‘The Times’ making this judgement but it is backed up by Government (Oflog) data, and, according to the publisher – balanced – in so far that ‘each category was given the same weighting’.
Great Bedwyn CofE School graded Outstanding in all areas by OFSTED
