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Street Cleaning Best Value Review

The review has been conducted in accordance with Council’s Best Value Service Review framework. The review started in January 1999 and was completed in June 2000. The Assessment Team has gathered evidence to explain and cost existing service delivery, demonstrate that the defined range of services deliver Best Value and identify continuous improvements which will help assure this objective. Managers are now involved in the completion of their action plans.

Within the Final Report the Assessment Team detail:

• the range of services, the Litter Code within the Environmental Protection Act 1990, staff and equipment resources and the CCT (Compulsory Competitive Tendering) background;
• the main costs for providing the defined range of services;
• the context of benchmarking, the main indicators and issues investigated, progress to date and the outcomes thus far.

The report also identifies benchmarking issues the Assessment Team recommend for continuing work.

• Innovative co-operative work on assessing service delivery outputs within a common framework.
• Progress to date on engaging and educating customers. This will detail the efforts made by the Service to deal with customer input.
• Reviewing the client / contractor relationship and assessing balance and the priority given to each function.
• Alternative service delivery options.

The report contains several key recommendations for improving the Service under the headings of:

• monitoring arrangements;
• management information;
• performance management; and
• customer information.

Improvements to monitoring arrangements include:

• Adoption of Keep Scotland Beautiful framework. This will require service delivery outputs to be assessed against independent standards set by Keep Scotland Beautiful. These standards have also been accepted and adopted by our ABC Benchmarking partners.
• Regular independent inspection and validation of operation of Keep Scotland Beautiful framework by officers from our ABC partner authorities. Adopting the Keep Scotland Beautiful system will cost between £2000 & £3000. Clackmannanshire Council will benefit by having service delivery independently confirmed. New performance and management information will also be produced; the Service intends to monitor this regularly as well as producing periodical trend analysis to promote continuous improvement in the future.
• Purchase of hand held computers to operate Keep Scotland Beautiful framework. This will allow monitoring officers to record information on site as they assess service delivery, saving further processing time when they return to the office. Over the past few years the Council has greatly reduced the resources it devotes to monitoring the street cleaning service, so much so that much of current monitoring goes unrecorded.
• Provision of appropriate management information following the introduction of Automatic Vehicle Logging onto Street Cleaning vehicles. The system is capable of proving where and when street sweeping has been delivered.

Improvements to Performance Management:

• Implementation of the Balanced Scorecard will include the preparation of new business plans as well as an integrated performance management system. The system will include clear performance indicators with defined levels of performance and improvement targets. This innovation will help to improve service planning as well as transparency and accountability. We will prepare and analyse regular performance reports and present them to elected members and customers.

Improvements in customer information:

• displaying information on the level of service areas receive, and how the public can comment and access the Service;
• seek to develop the ELSA facility in conjunction with IT (Information Technology) Services and officers involved in the Modernising Government agenda.

It is fair to conclude that this review reflects a developing and continuing commitment to improvement in public service.