Welcome to Liverpool City Council’s corporate performance plan 2006/09.

This plan sets out our targets to sustain the improvement of council services for the next three years.

Over the last year, despite major changes at the top of the organisation, we maintained our drive to improve the quality of life for Liverpool’s people, highlights include:

the Paradise street development – the £900m retail-led project is on schedule, with new car park and bus station now open

theKings Dock – the main arena and convention centre works have started on site the opening of the new Met Quarter as a venue for top designer names, including Timberland, Armani, Hugo

Boss, All Saints, Flannels, Molton Brown and Coast the Edge Lane regeneration scheme being given the go-ahead the cruise liner facility – legal agreements have now been signed with works due to start on site in 2006 the best GCSE results by 16-year-olds ever the country’s first community justice centre opened in north Liverpool, working with local people to tackle

offences such as vandalism, anti-social behaviour, fly-tipping and graffiti the 50m Olympic size swimming pool at Wavertree - construction contract signed housing – maintained progress towards unlocking investment of £690m for private and £300m for public

housing in the city

We have taken great strides to improve over the last six years. The latest figures show that over a quarter of our service indicators are top performing. Our rate of improvement slowed however over the last year compared with other councils. We are taking steps to further strengthen our leadership and management so we can work more effectively with partners to deliver quality, cost-effective services and an improved quality of life for our residents.

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I want to express my thanks to our staff and partner agencies for all their hard work. We still have much to do, but we remain committed to our ambition to take Liverpool to its rightful position as a premier European city.

Cllr. Warren BradleyLeader, Liverpool City Council

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Leading Liverpool

This, our corporate performance plan 2006/09, sets out the high-level priorities that will focus and steer our work over the next three years. These priorities state the ambitions against which the council’s leadership, both members and officers, will be judged and will direct the financial strategy and spending of the authority.

Integrating national and local priorities

The improvement agenda presented in this plans is drawn from:

national local government service agreements established by the Government

priorities outlined in the city’s community strategy, Liverpool First 2005/08, produced by the Liverpool Partnership Group. Which represents public, private and voluntary agencies across the city

improvement priorities identified in recent inspections including: the comprehensive performance assessment published by the Audit Commission in December 2005; the annual audit letter 2005 and individual service inspections

The council’s vision, aims and priorities

We have reviewed and updated our vision, aims and priorities for 2006/09.

Our vision:

“We aim to build and safeguard a fair, prosperous and open city where no-one is in poverty; where our citizens are well educated and take part in the decisions that affect them and where the cultural and religious differences between people are valued and celebrated.”

To achieve our vision we will work in partnership:

to create stronger, safer communities to enable local decisions to be taken at a local level to deliver value for money, high-quality services to support active, healthy and independent living to create a growing, vibrant and diverse city economy to be the greenest city in Europe

Our aims will be taken forward by our corporate priorities:

Aim 1: To create stronger, safer communities

Contribute to the reduction in crime, disorder and anti-social behaviour and the harm caused by drugs and substance misuse

Enhance feelings of safety and reduce the fear of crime Promote community cohesion Restructure the city’s housing market to improve choice Achieve national road accident casualty reduction targets

Aim 2: To enable local decisions to be taken at a local level

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Strengthen neighbourhood accountability and governance

Improve residents satisfaction with their local area Improve customer engagement at the local level Improve how we handle customer complaints Empower communities and improve their quality of life

Aim 3: To deliver value for money high quality services

To keep council tax fair Increase customer satisfaction with council services Provide services equitably across the community Improve the quality of council housing Improve the achievement of children in care,

underachieving Black and racial minority communities and young carers.

Improve family support for disabled children and children with special educational needs

Aim 4: To support active healthy, independent living

Develop services to improve choice and promote independent living

Improve the quality of provision for service users Tackle homelessness and reduce the numbers living in

sub-standard housing Provide a range of opportunities to promote improved

health and well-being Reduce childhood obesity and promote a culture of

physical activity

Aim 5: To create a growing, vibrant and diverse city economy

Increase inward investment Develop enterprise within the city Increase the employment opportunities, particularly for

those in most need Deliver a successful European Capital of Culture 2008 Improve educational attainment, skills and qualifications to

achieve economic well-being

Aim 6: To be the greenest city in Europe

Minimise waste and increase recycling rates Contribute to the development of better public transport

facilities Develop a cleaner and greener environment Improve environmental enforcement

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The following measures and targets will help us assess our progress against our aims:

Measure Targets2006/07 2007/08 2008/09

Aim 1: To create stronger, safer communitiesBV127a – the number of violent crimes per 1,000 population 30.2 26.5 to be set with

GONWYOS0015 – the number of first-time entrants into the youth justice system 399 379 360Aim 2: To enable local decisions to taken at a local levelLPSA21a – percentage of adults who feel they can influence decisions affecting their local area

30% 31.9% 31.9%

HMS0009 – percentage of residents satisfied with the overall standard of service provision for streetscene measures specified within customer charters

62% 57% TBC

Aim 3: To deliver value for money, high-quality servicesBV3 – the percentage of citizens satisfied with the overall service provided by the authority

60% 63% 65%

CFM0035I – improve the overall annual cost-effectiveness of the city council (against 2004/05 baseline)

102.5 105 107.5

Aim 4: to support active, healthy and independent livingSRS0017 – percentage of 5 to 16-year-olds in schools sports partnerships engaged for at least 2 hours per week on high-quality PE

75% 78% 85%

LPSA20b – older people aged 65 or over moving permanently into residential care

575 545 540

Aim 5: To create a growing, vibrant and diverse city economyLBC0002 – job creation through BusinessLiverpool assistance 515 520 520LPSA19 – percentage of young people achieving NVQ level two by age 19 60% 63% 67%Aim 6: To be the greenest city in EuropeBV89 – percentage of people satisfied with cleanliness standards across the city 59% 60% 61%BV82a(i) – percentage of household waste recycled 11% 11% 14%

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We will report on the progress achieved in our 2007/2010 corporate performance plan, which will be published before end of June 2007

Our performance trend

Six years ago, despite charging the most expensive council tax, Liverpool City Council ranked in the bottom three in the quality of

services provided to its residents. Since then we have made great efforts to improve both the quality and cost effectiveness of our services. We have increased the number of top performing services from 7% to 27%, however, at the end of 2005/06, 56% of our indicators still performed below a rising national average. We continue to improve, but our recent rate of improvement compared to similar councils has slowed a little, so we are not overtaking them as we aimed.

The percentage of performance indicators above and below metropolitan average performance between 1999/00 and 2004/05.

Performance Trends 1999-2005 - against other Met councils

44%46%50%

41%36%

22%

56%54%

50%

59%64%

78%

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40%

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60%

70%

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90%

1999/00 2000/01 2001/02 2002/03 2003/04 2004/05

% of KPIS above average performance % of KPIS below average performance

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Going forward we need to refocus our efforts to reach our goal of becoming a top performing council. For 2006/07 we aim to further reduce the number of poor performing performance indicators (i.e. bottom quartile nationally), whilst increasing the number we have in the top performing band. Some of our

indicators, however, are a directly related to the deprivation of the city and, as such, it will take us some time to move performance out of the bottom quartile, though each year we aim to keep on improving our performance.

Comparison of top and bottom quartile performance indicators

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1999/00 2005/06 f'cast 2006/07 f'cast

Year

%

LCC's top quartile LCC's bottom quartile

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Comprehensive performance assessment 2005

The local government watchdog, the Audit Commission, confirms that we are moving in the right direction but we still have some way to go to fulfil our ambition. In their 2005 report they judged

us to be ‘improving adequately’ and gave us two stars for performance out a maximum of four.

Performance against other councils 2005

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1 star

2 star

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Star Rating

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This year we have made good progress in key services such as: education, children’s social care, benefits, community safety and street cleaning. However, our performance in housing, waste management, recycling, adults’ social services and our services

to help vulnerable people live independently has not improved sufficiently – see Appendix 2 for full details of our performance on national performance indicators.

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Inspectors scored individual services as follows:

Service Performance (1 lowest, 4 highest)Children and Young People 3Social Care (adults) 2Housing 1Environment 3Culture 3Benefits 4Use of Resources 2

As we go forward the overall leadership and management of the council, and our work with partner agencies such as the health service and police, will be strengthened in order to deliver a better quality of life for residents – with improvements in employment and skills, health, and reduce crime and antisocial

behaviour. During 2006/07 we expect to agree a local area agreement with our local partners and Government – setting out the specific priorities, measures and targets over a 3-year period starting in April 2007 that we will collectively work to achieve to improve outcomes for local residents.

Performance management framework

The overall performance management framework within the council is illustrated in the diagram on page 11

We use the discipline of service plans to ensure that our corporate aims and priorities drive our improvement at service level – with services asked annually to:

specify key improvement priorities define measures (performance indicators) to monitor

progress towards their improvement priorities and establish stretching targets

identify key actions to advance corporate initiatives such as the council’s equality agenda, managing risk, actively consulting with customers.

We are continuously working to strengthen our performance management systems and culture. While our inspectors have acknowledged that we have a robust corporate performance management framework we need to ensure this tool is used effectively to drive service improvements, design and delivery across all council services. We recognise that more needs to be done to ensure that performance is improved in key areas and

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for example that risk management is an integral element of corporate, portfolio and service planning. We also need to strengthen our approach to evidence that services are delivery good value for money and work more effectively with partners to address the needs our residents. We are to continue to develop

our management training and practice to ensure managers play their part in establishing an appropriate performance culture and staff receive regular feedback and support to continually improve their performance.

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Liverpool City Council’s Performance Management Framework

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Government priorities

NLGPSAs*

Service plans

Actions to achieve the service’s key performance indicators

Service’s key performance indicators (national and local)

Team plans

Individual work programmes (and personal review and development)

Individual tasks and targets

Targets to be reached by March 2009

City council’s corporate performance plan

Community strategy(Liverpool First)

Multi-agency local targets

* National local government service agreements

Plans and actions

Performance indicators

Responding to inspectors’ findings

Inspection of services by statutory agencies such as the Commission for Social Care Inspectorate, the Audit Commission, OfSTED and the Benefit Fraud Inspectorate have assessed the quality of the services we deliver and helped us to identify how they can improve. The regular monitoring of service improvement

plans, following inspections, ensures that we maintain our momentum for improvement.Information on these inspections, including their recommendations, are available on our web site at www.liverpool.gov.uk (choose ‘service inspections’ from A –Z).

Service review

A comparative analysis of the 2004/05 performance indicators and 2005/06 budgeted spending has identified a number of services with low or below average performance and high or above average cost elements. The analysis cannot be more exact than this due to the lack of comparative cost date directly associated with specific performance indicators – but, nevertheless, it represents a reasonable approach to further review.

The following services, therefore, will be considered for a review during 2006/07, with a view to identifying actions to improve performance and reduce costs:

Revenues and Benefits Community Safety Education Waste collection Highways maintenance Housing services

Review and update

During the year we will work with members to review and update the specific measures to take forward our priorities. This work will proceed in parallel with that of our three-year financial strategy

so that for next year we expect to publish an integrated performance and financial plan.

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Letting service contracts

In letting service contracts involving the transfer of staff over the last year, the council has complied with all the relevant statutory and other legal requirements relating to such transfers, including

the Code of Practice on Workforce Matters in Local Authority Service Contracts.

This plan has the following appendices:

Appendix 1 – Achievements in 2005/06 against the corporate aims, priorities and measures published in May 2005

Appendix 2 – Performance 2005/06 against national indicators (with targets through to 2008/09)

Appendix 3 – Excellence through equity – corporate equality plan 2006/09 (performance achieved in 05/06 with targets through to 2008/09)

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