Performance Indicators
Statutory Performance Indicators (SPIs)
As well as asking you what you think of the Council in our Annual Performance Survey, we must also report on our performance. The Accounts Commission specify which information councils must publish about their performance, in the form of nationally agreed statutory performance indicators. We must publish the full set of indicators each year and these are available from our website. We use these indicators as well as other performance information to plan what we will do to change Services. The indicators are just that and must be reviewed and analysed regularly to determine what action to take.
However the indicators do relate to the Services we provide and how we perform them. Below we have shown an illustration of some of the indicators for commonly used Services. Hopefully these illustrations are useful when you view the full set of indicators which are accessible from the SPI link.
Recycling
The percentage of municipal waste collected by the Council during 2006/07, that was recycled or composted increased by over a third from previous the year to 17.3%.
School Places
Across the Highlands, 51.1% of our 184 primary schools and 69% of our 29 secondary schools have a ratio where the number of pupils to places available is between 61% and 100%.
Public Access
The Council delivers services to the public from 168 council buildings. 61.3% of these in which all public areas are suitable and accessible to disabled people.
Council Tax Collection
As we all know, payment of the council tax is due within the financial year that the charge relates to, during 2006/07 the Council collected 95.4% of the monies due. This shows that for the eleventh year in a row, Council Tax "in year" collections have shown an improvement.
Various factors can affect the performance of a Service. It is essential to be aware of these, to gain an understanding of why results may vary. These factors can be beyond the control of a Service. Some factors can be specific to a particular Service, to the groups of people or areas that they serve and can then be identified as local factors. At first glance, a performance which appears to be worse than that of another has, in fact, done better given the circumstances it faces. Further information is available on the Audit Scotland Website.