Performance management

Performance measurement is an important part of local authority management. The information influences local and national decisions, including setting budgets.

Several government departments have issued national standards which we must aim to meet. Our performance on many of these standards is reported publicly.

How do we measure our performance?

This is done in a number of ways:

• Our Sustainable Community Strategy
• Our Strategic Plan
• Individual Service Plans
• Performance indicators
• Single Data List

Our performance management arrangements have developed over recent years with the introduction of our performance management system Covalent, Performance Management workshops, Comprehensive Area Assessment, the Lancashire Local Area Agreement and an improved focus on our management arrangements for good quality data.

However with the coalition Government laying the foundations for more localised scrutiny of our performance, this has brought about significant change and, indeed, rationalisation of national performance management regimes.

The Government has introduced a single, comprehensive list of all data that central government would require from local government. This is known as the Single Data List and aims to provide in one place a single, clear list of the minimum data central Government needs from local authorities.

Following the abolished National Indicator Set and restructure of the Council, we have reviewed our performance indicators (PIs) with a fresh start. A revised set of PIs have been introduced to move towards being more productivity based. This will help to establish how things are working more effectively with the resources that we have, and will be used to improve and drive our performance.

All our action plans/strategies contain challenging targets and performance indicators so we can measure progress. This helps us work towards continuous service improvement.

Every three months we produce a report showing what progress we've made against our performance indicators.

Our vision is:

"We want Pendle to be a place where quality of life continues to improve and where people respect one another and their neighbourhoods. We want Pendle to be a place where everyone aspires to reach their full potential. We want to be recognised locally, regionally and nationally as a great place to live, learn, work, play and visit."

Our aim is to continually improve. This means we will continue to deliver the high quality services that residents deserve.

To achieve this, we have to make sure our performance is up to the mark. We have plans and strategies in place which help us to meet our strategic objectives. They contain many tasks and targets which, when completed effectively, will drive our success. If we fail to achieve something we've set out to do, then we tackle it. We call this performance management.

Performance management works in a structure which we call the Performance Management Framework (PMF).