Local authorities to be rated on quality of service

They may be frowned upon in education circles, but all local authorities are to be rated on a league-table basis.

Their performance will based initially, for example, on their provision of housing, roads maintenance, processing of motor tax, planning application efficiency and success or otherwise in environmental services.

Their revenue collection abilities, corporate health in terms of working days lost to sickness and library services will also be rated.

The Minister for the Environment, Mr Dempsey, has defended the move, part of the new package to improve local authority management and efficiency, on the basis that "the public service must deliver services of high quality, on time and cost-effectively", and do so in an open and transparent way.

"Of course, they will allow for inter-authority comparison and facilitate learning from each other. But, more importantly, they will ensure the focus remains firmly on delivery of quality service to the public," he told county and city managers.

The service must also develop a set of tools and yardsticks by which it can demonstrate the commitment to "best practice" and by which the public can make judgments on the performance of "those it entrusts with providing public services".

Mr Dempsey, in consultation with local authorities, has drawn up a set of service indicators which they will have to embrace. Initially, this will focus only on service delivery. The process would be of great value to management, elected members and the public, he predicted.

The Minister said local authorities were often exceptionally good in particular areas. The service indicators would indicate "where best practice is" and act as a spur to council managements to step up performance.

Delivery of the best public service was at the heart of his Department's modernisation programme, he said. "The aim is to continually improve service delivery, and each local authority will report on their performance in relation to the given indicator headings in their annual reports for 2000 (and in subsequent years)."

Service indicators are designed to help provide a tangible indication of performance, he said, and complement a requirement that all local authorities complete new corporate plans by September including the setting of targets for all services in their ambit.