Council’s moving in the right direction

Aspects of Denbighshire County Council's work have been highlighted as example of best practice in a national report that looks at the performance of local councils across Wales – but there is still room for improvement.

The Local Government Data Unit - Wales has issued statistics on how councils performed against specific indicators during the 2008/09 financial year.

Highlights relating to Denbighshire include:

• Best performing authority in Wales for statements of special education needs being issued within 26 weeks.
• Fourth best out of 22 local authorities for the average number of days taken to repair street lamp failures
• Third best in the average number of days taken to complete urgent housing repairs
• Denbighshire was one of the authorities that had no primary school classes with more than 30 pupils.
• Top performing authority in initial Children's Services assessments being carried out within 7 working days (90%) , taking an average 12 days to be completed (again the best performance in Wales)
• Fourth best performance in the percentage of core assessments in Children's Services carried out within 35 working days
• Second highest performance in the number of adult protection referrals where the risk has been removed or reduced
• Fourth lowest number of delayed transfers of care for social care reasons.
• Denbighshire was in the top 10 performing councils for cleanliness of highways and other land inspected.
• The Council is one of the best at collecting rents from tenants in temporary accommodation.

Leader of Denbighshire, Councillor Hugh Evans, said: “We are proud of the fact that Denbighshire has been cited as an example of best practice in aspects of this report.

“However, there is always room for improvement and the report has highlighted areas of our work where we are not performing as well.

“Earlier this year, the council made a commitment to bringing the council closer to the community and our aim is to continue improving services to the public . This has the buy-in from both councillors and staff and we look forward to working towards our ambition of being one of the top performing authorities in Wales”.