Nottingham City Council Achievements 2004-5
Respect for Nottingham - reductions in begging and street prostitution and big improvements in the public's confidence concerning anti-social behaviour and crime.
Best ever exam results.
More help for the needy.
The tram.
Better library service and better parks.
Highest recycling rates.
Housing benefits much improved.
Best Value Performance Plan
58% of service indicators have improved on the last year.
Developing our neighbourhood focus
A cleaner and safer Nottingham
· A successful 100 Day Clean-Up;
· The establishment of five anti-social behaviour task forces;
· Six Green Flag Awards for parks;
· 20% increase in funding for street cleansing;
· 20% improvement in customer perception of cleanliness in the city and an actual improvement in the cleanliness of relevant land and highways since 2003/04;
· £1m Local Transport Plan funding allocated for footway resurfacing. The reactive maintenance backlog and third party claims (for trips etc.) reduced;
· There was considerable expansion of kerbside recycling schemes. 92.9% of households are now served compared with 46% in 2003/04.
Respect for Nottingham - This is one of the City Council’s most important and continuing initiatives - focused on improving the quality of the local environment & community safety. We have:
· reduced begging by 83%;
· increased arrests of kerb crawlers leading to a significant reduction in street prostitution;
· exceeded the challenging targets agreed for the arrest and conviction of drug dealers;
· seen a reduction in the overall crime figures and specifically figures in respect of burglaries, vehicle crime and robbery;
· added 40 community safety wardens and have consolidated the anti-social behaviour team;
· re-organised the management of the Anti – Social Behaviour team to include Nuisance and Harassment Officers and established a pilot hotline;
· Established an Enviro-crime Unit and increased enforcement action.
Enhancing the quality of life in neighbourhoods
· There has been a significant improvement in dealing with unfit private sector properties;
· The City Council has the potential to secure funding worth approximately £165 million to refurbish its housing stock;
· The number of housing patch managers has been increased from 60 to 90.
Building local services around local people
· Nine Area Action Plans covering the city were established;
· Community safety working groups were appointed in each of the nine areas as part of a wider approach to ensuring community safety within the Respect for Nottingham framework;
· Streetscene service level agreements were put in place for each area committee, which set local standards for street cleanliness, graffiti removal, tackling fly-tipping, tackling fly-posting and removing abandoned vehicles. DEVELOPING
Improving performance
Educational attainment
· Nottingham has achieved very significant improvements at Key Stage 2, 3 and 4 between 2001 and 2004, although the authority remains in the bottom 10% of authorities nationally;
· the recent Comprehensive Performance Assessment/OFSTED scorecard demonstrates significant improvement in Education services by moving it from a one star ranking to the ‘two star upper’ category;
· The City Council has been successful in accessing around £140 million funding to support the transformation of secondary schools.
DEVELOPING THE CITY
Housing repairs
· The percentage of repairs for which an appointment was made and kept has increased from 88% to 92%;
· The percentage of customers indicating that they were satisfied with the responsive repairs service increased from 88% to 95%;
· The percentage of non-Decent Homes Standard compliant houses reduced from 44.2% to an estimated 37.8%;
· The backlog of properties with gas appliances awaiting an annual service was reduced from 30% to less than 2%.
DEVELOPING THE CITY
Housing Benefits service
· The average time to process a new benefits claim reduced from 63 days to 35 days, which is better than the national standard and puts us in the top quartile for unitary authorities (based on 2003/04 quartile data);
· The average time to process a notification of change in circumstances for a recipient of benefits reduced from 16 days to just over 10 days;
· The Benefits service is now rated at three out of four by the Benefits Fraud Inspectorate in relation to the national Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) standard (where 1 is the lowest score and 4 is the highest).NG
Debt collection
· Overall, there was an improvement in debt collection with a significant improvement in rent collection, national non domestic rates, sundry income collection and adult residential services collection;
· The percentage of rent collected for council houses in the city increased from 90% to 93%;
· A database to provide consolidated information on individual debts owed to the City Council has been introduced;
· It is now possible to pay all City Council bills via the internet.
NG THE CITY
Other areas of achievement
· Social Services scored two following the recent Performance Rating of the Department, which means is serving most people well and that Social Services has the capacity to improve. There was:
An increase in take up of Direct Payments;
Increased numbers helped to live at home & reduced admissions to residential care;
An increase in assessments achieved to timescale;
Continued good performance on stability of children’s placements;
Continued good performance on adoption.
· The Supporting People programme received a “Good” rating (2 out of 3 star rating) from Government inspectors and was considered to have promising prospects for improvement. This makes it one of the highest ranked of this type of service in the country;
· The Library and Information Service improved its assessment score from two (fair) to three (good)
· Nottingham is the only Core City to achieve Centre of Excellence status for Local Transport Delivery;
· Local Government Association/Department for Transport Public Transport Pathfinder status was awarded;
· We were shortlisted for Transport Authority of the year and also for the National Transport award, Travel, Information & Marketing category;
· A Charter Mark has been awarded for the City Development Environmental and Public Protection Division;
· Nottingham once again received the maximum Planning Delivery Grant which reflected its continual performance above target for planning PIs.
OVERALL PERFORMANCE COMPARED WITH THE PREVIOUS YEAR
Trend comparison between 2003/04 and 2004/05
Over the last year, performance has improved or remained the same for 73% of the BVPIs.
Over the last year performance has improved in 59% of BVPI’s
Achievement of targets
The proportion of BVPIs on or above target was 53% in 2003/04 and is now 51% in 2004/05.
Quartile placement
The proportion of BVPIs in the top three quartiles compared to all unitary councils based on the most up-to-date (2003/04) has improved over the last year with PIs in the top quartile increasing from 32% to 34%. There has been a significant fall in the proportion of BVPIs in the bottom quartile from 38% to 27%.
Quartile movement
Nearly one quarter of the BVPIs (for which there was quartile information) improved their quartile position in 2004/05.
Local Public Service Agreement
Projections based on performance to the end of March 2005 indicate that good progress is being made against 9 out of the 12 targets that have been set. The targets which have been performing particularly well and are on track to achieve 100% of their ‘stretch targets’ include the increasing number of derelict properties being reused for housing and the improving quality of life for older people. It is unlikely that we will achieve our educational attainment targets due to an increase in the ’stretch’ on already demanding targets.
Respect for Nottingham
April 2005 Successes
Additional 40 Neighbourhood Wardens brought to the City
The establishment of a dedicated multi-agency team to tackle kerb crawling which has made over 130 arrests for kerb crawling
Double the capacity of the Prostitutes outreach workers service to assist and support prostitutes exit street prostitution
The establishment of a centralised Anti-Social behaviour unit to co-ordinate multi-agency responses to anti-social behaviour
A 32% increase in convictions for Class A drug supply
A highly effective enforcement and support to change campaign against begging
The issuing of over 300 Fixed Penalty Notices for litter and waste offences
The removal of over 4000 square metres of graffiti
Achievements
85% reduction in begging, as measured by the Survey Unit, University of Nottingham
80% reduction in street prostitution, as measured by covert patrols of the area
6% reduction in the number of residents reporting street drug dealing to be a problem
40% reduction in the number of residents affected by anti-social behaviour in their local neighbourhood
14% number in the number of residents reporting litter to be a problem in the city
18% reduction in the number of residents reporting graffiti to be a problem in the city.
Other points
Leadership programme for senior managers
Procurement strategy
Nottingham Stands Together
Local people to local jobs
Tram system – above target passenger numbers
100 Day Clean up
[Last updated 2005-08-22]
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