All local authorities participate in the Local Government Benchmarking Framework (LGBF).The aim of the Framework is to present a range of indicators that can be used to compare performance across all Scottish local authorities. By clicking on the above link you will be taken straight to the LGBF and can view the latest report.
There are many differences to take into account when comparing our performance with other councils. To help make these comparisons more meaningful and share good practice we are part of a 'family group' of eight other councils with similar characteristics such as the type of area and levels of deprivation.
There are two sets of Family Groups -
- People's Services: Children, Social Work and Housing
- Corporate Services: Environment, Culture & Leisure, Economic Development, Corporate and Property
Within People's Services we are part of Group 2 along with Angus; East Lothian; Highland; Midlothian; Moray; Scottish Borders and Stirling.
Within Corporate Services we are part of Group 1 along with Aberdeenshire; Dumfries and Galloway; Eilean Siar; Highland; Orkney Islands; Scottish Borders and Stirling.
Further information on family groups can be found on the Improvement Service website.
We have analysed our LGBF data and present our performance with supporting commentary that only gives some context to our performance but also what we expect our future performance to be.
Read the full report for 2016/17.
Read the full report for 2017/18.
Read the full report for 2018/19.
Read the full report for 2019/20.
Read the full report for 2020/21.
Benchmarking Tools
Benchmarking is crucial to helping us to improve. Whilst we engage with the Local Government Benchmarking Framework we also constantly review, explore and share good practice to help us improve.
The detail of how we plan to deliver our services is contained in our Service Plans as success measures. Here you can find out more about our Service Plans. The Service Plans also contain the targets and benchmarks of our success measures. The majority of our success measures are quarterly measures. This means that the data is provided and monitored every financial quarter. The performance is regularly reviewed by Managers, Senior Officers and Elected Members. We also use a variety of information to help us improve what we do and how we do it. This ranges from internal and external good practice case studies to customer complaints, from customer surveys to council committees. We work collaboratively with our partners, other local authorities and actively participate in local benchmarking groups.
Each Service also engages with appropriate bodies and organisations. Here are some examples.
Our Education Service has a dedicated website where every school can share good practice. We have an Annual Plan and Progress Report that we are committed to delivering. Here you can read the Plan called Our Children, Their Future. We're also very proud of our Children’s achievements, the following link will show you some of their achievements.
Our Planning team fully engages with the Scottish Government’s Planning Performance Framework. This framework contains a range of indicators that we benchmark our performance and monitor our improvements against. You can view the latest report here. We are also part of Scotland Housing Network and the Scottish Energy Officers Network. These networks help us to to drive up performance, meet the demands of Best Value and deliver quality services by means of benchmarking, self-assessment, good practice exchange and information sharing.
Since 2010 we have had a Customer Service Charter. Here you can read the full Charter and supporting information regarding our activities to continually improve. Additionally we have received the highest ranking for our website by SOCITM, our website is recognised as being ‘customer focussed’. For further information on SOCITM this link will take you to their website. The Local Government Digital Office has recently assessed us as being well advanced in customer engagement technologies. We work collaboratively with others to progress our digital improvements. Several of our Services have been awarded the Customer Service Excellence Award. As our performance is assessed against the Customer Service Excellence standard the Award is both a valuable benchmarking and improvement tool.