Viewing Council Reports:
To enhance the economic and social future of
the Borough to meet the needs and aspirations of the community.
Key aims to support the vision:
- Effective community leadership.
- Investing in our economic future.
- Creating an enhanced quality of life for local residents.
- Developing a safe confident and socially inclusive
community.
- Delivering high quality accessible
services.
Performance Management.
Introduction to the Performance Management Framework
The Council has developed a performance management framework
to link the activities and tasks, that we undertake on a daily
basis. to the more aspirational aims of the Community Plan and our
own corporate aims. The framework is based on identifying a number
of improvement activities that will help us to achieve the aims of
both the Community, as set out in the Community Plan and the
Council. A number of improvement ideas are synergised to give a Key
Priority that will deliver tangible benefits to the community. For
each of the Key Priorities there is an action plan that includes
annual objectives, action and measures so the progress can be
measured.
Key Priorities 2011-15
Barrow Borough Councils Key Priorities for
2011-2015.
The Borough Council’s Key Priorities provide
structured management and direction of its efforts and
resources. However, in the new economic reality, faced with
massive withdrawal of central government grant, the Council must
reorganise itself into a leaner organisation which focuses on only
the most significant strategic issues.
The Council’s main objective must be to
achieve a balanced budget and our overall priority must be to
establish an effective and responsible deficit reduction
strategy.
Revising our Key Priorities must give
recognition to this, but it must also give scope to direct any
surplus capacity, including capital resources which remain
relatively strong, to the most urgent and important issues in the
Borough. To this end we have identified the key issues
as:
- Efficiency
- Housing
- The built environment
- The local economy
The scale of resources the Council can bring
directly to some of these issues may be reducing, but there is
still much the Council can achieve through partnership and
influence. That said we must be realistic as to the scale of
intervention and positive action we can implement and our key
objectives must be realistic.
The Council has identified four Key Priorities
as follows:
1: Provide good quality efficient and cost
effective services while reducing overall expenditure.
2: Continue to support housing market renewal
including an increase in the choice and quality of housing stock
and the regeneration of our oldest and poorest housing.
3: Work to mitigate the effects of the
recession and cuts in public expenditure and their impact on the
local economy and secure a sustainable and long term economic
recovery for our community
4: Continue to improve and enhance the built
environment and public realm, working with key partners to secure
regeneration of derelict and underused land and buildings in the
Borough.
These four Key Priorities will be used as the
basis for all future business planning and to direct the activity
of any spare capacity and resources.
Development Plan
As a result of the Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004,
the national system for producing planning policy documents has
changed and we are presently in a transitional phase between the
old and the new systems.
The old development plan system of County Structure
and Borough Local Plans and Supplementary Planning Guidance
has been replaced by a new system comprising a Regional Spatial
Strategy (RSS) and a Local Development Framework (LDF). The
Local Development Framework is a portfolio of spatial
planning documents prepared by the Local Planning Authority.
Under the transitional arrangements, the old style Local Plan
and Supplementary Planning Guidance and is saved for 3 years (or
longer if the Secretary of State agrees), or until such time as it
is replaced in whole or in part by the new LDF documents as they
are produced. Each year the Council will publish a report - an
Annual Monitoring Report (AMR) setting out the progress of the LDF
and indicating which policies and guidance continue to be
saved.
Comprehensive Performance Assessment Report
Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) is part of the
wider agenda set out in the Local Government White Paper Strong
Local Leadership Quality Public Services. The White Paper
encourages greater focus on improved services for local people by
freeing good councils from central government controls and
restrictions, and providing poorer councils with more, and better
focused, support for improvement. CPA is the first step in this
process, that of making an overall judgement of where each council
stands.
This report presents an analysis of the councils overall
performance as well as two short diagnostic assessments which cover
important areas of responsibility. It also includes an assessment
of the councils benefit service by the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate,
and the appointed auditors assessment of performance on each of the
main elements of the code of audit practice. The appendices to this
report set out further details on the findings of these assessments
and the framework for CPA.
In its assessment the report states that:
"Barrow in Furness Borough Council is
a fair authority that has achieved much in
relation to its main objective to regenerate the area. However,
core service performance has been weaker and there are variances in
quality. The council has plans to improve performance management
and to strengthen corporate processes to achieve more consistent
levels of performance."
The full text of Barrow's Comprehensive Performance Assessment
is available below.
The introduction, summary and recommendations sections of the
report are also available:
The effective and secure delivery of Local Authority Benefits
is one of the means by which the Council aims to support delivery
of the objectives set out in our
Community Plan.