According to the latest figures from Swansea Council, 70% of performance indicators from fly-tipping removal and street lamp repairs to library visits and benefit claim handling were on target at the end of the 2009/2010 financial year.
As of April this year, 68% of service areas were improving or maintaining performance.
Cllr Mary Jones, Swansea Council Cabinet Member for Business Improvement and Efficiency, said: “There is no doubt that we are in a difficult financial climate.
“These indicators show that measures we took last year to continue to provide the best services possible were largely successful.
“That success is testimony to the dedication of Council staff and their efforts to put our limited budget to work to benefit communities.
“The end of year performance results need to be considered alongside the current financial situation of this Council. One hundred and ten performance measures show that services have been maintained or improved despite the changes in resources and workloads that staff have had to overcome during last year.
“The Council will continue to strive towards providing the best possible services to communities across the City and County.”
The End of Year Performance Monitoring Report is due to go before Swansea Council’s Cabinet on Thursday (July 1).
Some of the successes include:
- 100% of abandoned vehicles were removed within 24 hours from the point at which the Council is legally entitled to remove the vehicle.
- It took less than five days on average to repair reported street lamp repairs in 2009/10.
- Almost 1.5 million people visited Swansea’s public libraries in 2009/10, taking the total number of library visits during the year per 1,000 population up to 6,503. This is above target and an improvement on last year’s results
- Almost 85% of customers visiting the Council Contact Centre waited less than 15 minutes to be seen compared to 77% in the previous year. The team at the Contact Centre were able to resolve over 86% of customer requests within one visit.
- The time taken to process Housing Benefit and Council Tax Benefit new claims and changes to those benefits fell to just 5.1 days compared to a target of 16.1 days. The total number of new claims and change events processed during the year was 153,078.
- The Council paid 87.5% of undisputed invoices within 30 days compared to 78.9% last year and a target of 85%.
- The number of pupils receiving fixed-term exclusions from Primary Schools fell from 65 in 2008/9 to 40 in 2009/10 and for Secondary Schools the result achieved target and improved on previous performance.
- More than 93% of pest control and animal impounding service requests were dealt with within the target of three working days.
- The percentage of reported fly-tipping incidents cleared within five working days went up to 96.39%. There was an increase in the percentage of reported fly-tipping incidents which lead to enforcement activity.
