The Audit Commision released its organisational assessment of Welwyn Hatfield Borough Council in early December. Overall the Borough got an ‘adequate’ rating, with some areas being noted as working well and others not so well. Every local authority will have been through this scrutiny so it is a meaningful gauge and comparative view of how WHBC performs. Clearly there is much room for improvement though in some areas. Below is a paragraph from the summary which gives a flavour of the report:
“Performance overall is variable. There are services which compare with the best performing councils, such as dealing with housing benefits applications and planning applications. There are also service areas which compare badly to others, such as recycling. There are low levels of satisfaction amongst residents, especially around the Council doing a good job, local people feeling they belong to their immediate neighbourhood, and people not treating each other with respect and consideration. Residents also feel they cannot influence council decisions.” (Audit Commission, 2009, p.2).
The Society thinks that the performance level of the Council continues to be unimpressive. Effectively, it continues to provide a minimum level – which is what “adequate” means. It helps to explain the difficulties many residents have with the Council at many levels and frustration in dealing with it.
It is particularly unfortunate that the Council has failed to publish this report on its web site so far as we can tell (but then again we may simply have failed to be able to find it) as it is important for residents to be given what is an unbiased and non political opinion of a service that the Council generally reports as good. Residents will no doubt form their own views on this report, it can be downloaded from the Audit Commission web site and below:
1) Click Here for full report.
2) Click Here for report summary.
