The Audit Commission rates St Albans District Council as a fair Council with potential for improvement following its Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA).
The Council is one point short of achieving a good category. The categories are excellent, good, fair, weak and poor.
Following the week long assessment in January, inspectors from the Audit Commission praised many of the Council’s services including recycling, housing, building on brownfield sites, benefits, museums, dealing with abandoned vehicles, and council tax collection. They also reported that the Council is improving in the areas of protecting the environment, fly-tipping, providing decent homes, housing repairs, community safety, building control and helping elderly people to stay in their own homes. The inspectors praised the Council for making its services accessible to local people.
However, they considered that performance needed to be improved in areas such as processing planning applications, affordable housing, keeping the district clean and reducing crime. They reported that the Council had had a limited impact on traffic and transport issues within the district. They also saw slow progress on e-government, tourism and economic development.
Service satisfaction amongst residents
Overall, the inspectors acknowledged the Council's ability to provide good services, with high satisfaction levels amongst residents, in particular for the refuse, recycling and benefit services. The inspectors specifically praised the overall public satisfaction with services, with 71 percent of residents satisfied with the Council overall (MORI residents’ survey 2002).
The Council's success in protecting and sympathetically developing the local environment is noted in the report, with references to work on protecting the greenbelt, quality new developments and high public satisfaction with parks and open spaces. Improvements in Vintry Gardens, Clarence Park and Westfield Road Park are high profile projects, along with the introduction of CCTV in Harpenden and St Albans.
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The maintenance and management of council housing stock is a strength, with high satisfaction levels amongst tenants, good performance in rent collection and most homes in good condition. Securing an £18 million grant to build 200 additional affordable homes is highlighted in the report as a major achievement.
The Council's prudent management of its finances is commended as is its record of being open to challenge and looking at alternative methods of service delivery to ensure value for money and quality service. More work needs to be done to ensure finances are allocated to priority issues and to develop a medium term financial plan. The Council's use of consultation to identify and respond to local needs and priorities is recognised as a strength. However the report highlights the fact that residents are dissatisfied with the Council’s efforts to communicate with them.
The key local Issues of traffic congestion, parking and alternative transport are identified as needing more attention from the Council (working closely with the County Council as the lead agency for these services). The Council also needs to clarify its priorities for leisure, tourism and economic development and ensure it focuses on them in the future. It must address the poor performance in processing planning applications and produce an up-to-date Local Plan. It also needs to focus on community safety and ensure its partnership working delivers positive outcomes.
The inspectors stated: "the Council is aware of where it needs to develop and is putting appropriate building blocks in place to underpin future improvements…."
The preparation of a draft improvement plan is already underway to address the concerns raised by the inspectors. The Council has put a great deal of effort into improving over the last year, which was recognised during the inspection, and intends to build on this using the CPA report to decide where to concentrate its efforts in the future.
Inspectors undertook a week long assessment in January, when all ten Hertfordshire district and borough councils were inspected. The assessment looked at what the Council is trying to achieve; how it set about delivering its priorities for improvement; what the Council achieved to date and what the Council plans to do next.
Following the publication of the draft assessment the Council appealed against the CPA judgement of fair arguing that the authority deserved the extra point, which would have taken it into the good category. The Council submitted additional evidence but the Audit Commission decided not to allow the Council to appeal.
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The full version of the CPA Inspection Report is available from the Council's website: www.stalbans.gov.uk/local-democracy/cpa.htm and the Audit Commission www.audit-commission.gov.uk
For more information contact Jane Ratford, public relations on 01727 819317; j.ratford@stalbans.gov.uk