Councils are being ranked ‘like the SPL’
A Perth and Kinross councillor has compared the tight margins affecting the ranking for Scotland’s 32 councils to the current situation in the Scottish Premier League (SPL).
Cllr David Illingworth compared the Local Government Benchmarking Framework (LGBF) to St Johnstone sitting 11th in the SPL but only five points behind seventh place Dundee FC.
He made his comments as councillors considered the findings of Perth and Kinross Council’s (PKC) Best Value Thematic Review Report 2022/23.
Cllr Illingworth convenes PKC’S Audit and Performance Committee which was asked to consider the report on Monday, December 11. The Conservative councillor expressed concern about the LGBF indicators. The Best Value Thematic Review 2022/23 - conducted by Audit Scotland - showed that while PKC’S performance had improved, its relative ranking compared to other councils had deteriorated.
Since 2018/19 PKC has dropped from third to 24th in the proportion of pupils entering positive destinations, from seventh to 25th for the proportion of care services graded ‘good’ or better in Care Inspectorate inspections and from third to 26th for its street cleanliness score in 2022/23.
It moved up from 24th in 2018/19 to third for the proportion of Scottish Welfare Fund budget spent, from 20th to fifth for the proportion of operational buildings suitable for their current use, and from 20th to eighth for the average number of days taken to complete non-emergency repairs.
At Monday’s meeting, Cllr David Illingworth said: “My concern is that you look at the rankings and in some rankings the differentiation between a first place and a fifth place can be very very small - tiny movements in the data can actually have quite large movements in your position in the ranking.
“I’m thinking of the Scottish football league where there are only five points between five different teams.”
Perth-based St Johnstone FC currently sit 11th in the SPL - on goal difference - but just five points behind seventh place Dundee FC with Ross County, Aberdeen and Motherwell sitting between them.
Cllr Illingworth added: “And so if St Johnstone won three matches in a row, they’d be well up in contention for sixth place. Is that a concern we should have about using these rankings?”
Audit Scotland audit director Brian Howarth said: “It can be a slightly blunt tool measuring rankings. There are some indicators which have got a very small spread - Council Tax collection rates or positive destinations of school leavers. Probably the worst performance in those is about 92/93 per cent and the best is about 96 per cent, so there’s a very small spread in those. So a very small movement can mean a very big change in relative rankings.
“But we do it because, in the case of Perth and Kinross Council, if we look at the performance at the last best value you can see you have improved over the years in your performance in terms of LGBF but relative to others, there’s not been the same definite increase in performance.
“We use it to get a feel for whether an individual council is getting better at the same rate across the piece as others but it needs to be taken in the context of other aspects - is your general direction of travel improvement positive and also against your own objections and that you have set in measures. So we need to take all those things in the round in terms of coming to a view about council performance.”