I always treat these kind of league tables with a huge dose of caution, but nonetheless it is nice that East Cambs is deemed to be doing well.
The Times newspaper (“Worst-performing councils in England revealed — where does yours rank?”, thetimes.co.uk) carried out and published its analysis of data from Oflog, the Office for Local Government. Oflog was set up by the Government last year to increase understanding of the performance of local authorities, to warn when authorities are at risk of serious failure and to support local government generally to improve.
Oflog has published data about the performance of local authorities, measuring performances of services such as finance, waste, roads, social care and planning. Despite Oflog warning that data is not easily comparable and should not be used to rank Councils, The Times newspaper has placed 317 Councils into a league table with East Cambridgeshire coming in at second place.
District Councils are not responsible for roads or social care, which are dealt with by County and Unitary authorities (Oflog publishes the data by District area) so District Councils were allocated an average score across the country for these services so that Councils could still be ranked.
Here’s how all the Cambridgeshire Councils ranked out of 317:
- East Cambridgeshire District Council — 2nd
- Huntingdonshire District Council — 77th
- South Cambridgeshire District Council — 86th
- Fenland District Council — 141st
- Cambridge City Council — 155th
- Cambridgeshire County Council — 224th
- Peterborough City Council — 271st
There is always more to do and improvements to be made, but I am proud of our little Council, which is one of the smallest District Councils in the country, and thank our staff, Members and our residents who all have a part to play in helping it to do well.
You can view the Oflog data set here: Local Authority Data Explorer – GOV.UK