26/04/2024
Slough council has seen a decline in performance in about half of its key goals, according to latest comparisons.
Slough council has seen a decline in performance in about half of its key goals, according to latest comparisons.
A document showing Slough’s data under the lens of key performance indicators (KPIs) came before full council on Thursday (April 25).
KPIs give an indication of where an organisation is at in terms of effectiveness in several vital areas – especially pertinent in SBC’s case, given its financial struggles and impact on services.
Council Leader Dexter Smith said this data will help the council establish a baseline for comparison, so it can keep track of its performance moving forward.
“We’re breaking new ground here, putting in the public domain figures detailing the performance of the council,” he said.
In the document, various goals have been colour coded according to whether Slough is delivering to target (amber), above target (green) or under (red).
The latest position shows a mixed picture: 23 per cent of KPIs rated overall as green,14 per cent amber, 33 per cent red.
Compared to last month or similar period from the previous year, performance has improved for 37 per cent of the KPIs, remained the same for 14 per cent and declined for 49 per cent.
Health, young people and education
One of the declines, marked as red, is in the number of new Education, Health and Care (EHC) plans issued completed within the timescale.
These set out a young person's special educational needs, the support they need, and what they'd like to achieve.
Four out of 21 finalised EHC Plans finished within the statutory 20 weeks’ timeframe.
Meanwhile, more than 160 children are waiting for a late running EHC needs assessment.
The percentage of eligible two-year-olds receiving 15 hours of free early years education or childcare has also declined.
Meanwhile, the proportion of children obese including severely obese at Year 6 (age 10-11) has decreased slightly but remains in red.
In 2022/23, 635 of children were classified as obese (about 27 per cent) compared to 660 the previous year.
It is still ‘significantly worse’ than the national average of 22.7 per cent and South-East region average of 19.4 per cent.
A public health officer specifically for children and young people is now in post.
In addition, there has been a reduction in the rate of adults aged 40-74 offered a health check.
During the second quarter, 0.9 per cent of eligible people were offered an NHS health check in Slough, a reduction from the previous quarter of 6.6 per cent.
This is below the national average of 5.6 per cent and South-East average of 3.8 per cent.
To tackle this, there are planned visits to GP practices in Slough to learn what barriers there may be to offering these health checks.
Environmental, antisocial behaviour and customer service
The number of anti-social behaviour and environmental related service requests to the council that were open for more than 90 days increased since the last measure.
Teams continue to target hotspots for household fly-tipping.
Complex cases require investigation, which means there could be an increase in the number of cases taking longer than 90 days.
There was also a reduction in the number of housing repairs completed on time during December. This ‘remains a major issue.’
A high number of damp and mould cases continue to impact the service.
Meanwhile, the percentage of household waste sent for reuse, recycling, or composting dropped and remains ‘well below’ the 40 per cent target.
Part of this is down to contamination of recycling bins, the main source of which was the wrong types of plastics.
Slough now accepts plastic food trays and similar items, which ‘should reduce the number of [recycling] bins rejected due to contamination’.
Food waste collection to commence during 2024.
Missed bin collection rates improved over the last two months – as did the percentage of customer service calls answered by the council.