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Best Value Performance Plan 2001

Progress against key priorities Priority 1: Community Involvement and Community Services.

During 2000/01 we:

• Acted as the "Voice of Worcestershire" by representing the views of the public to central government and other agencies following public consultation on the impact of flooding.  
• Improved the provision of information to local communities by broadcasting a meeting from County Hall on the World Wide Web.  
• Improved awareness of who provides local government services by publishing, in partnership with the City Council, a revised A -Z covering the Worcester area.  
• Achieved Level 1 of the Commission for Racial Equality's standard to demonstrate our commitment to equal opportunities.  
• Undertook two major surveys of public opinion to help guide our policies and practices.  
• Appointed staff to support elected members perform their role in representing the local community.  
• Developed a consultation strategy to make our consultation results more effective.  
• Published "Parish Headlines" our newsletter to keep Parish and Town Councils aware of what's happening at County Hall.  
• Supported local forum meetings in Malvern Hills, Wychavon and in Redditch as part of our commitment to listen to the views of local communities.  
• Developed a County youth forum as part of our commitment to enable young people to influence the services that affect them.  
• Organised the election of three youth MPs as a way of involving young people in the democratic process.  
• Extended the provision of legal services to Parish and Town Councils within the County.  
• Published two issues of the council's own newspaper "Worcestershire Beacon" to keep you aware of developments within the county council.
• Promoted a major open exhibition for arts for disabled persons.

Progress against key priorities
Priority 2: Lifetime Learning.
During 2000/01 we:

• Raised the number of 16 year-olds reaching a level 2 qualification (five GCSE's at A-C or the GNVQ equivalent) from 44% in 1998 to 46% in 1999 and to 49% in 2000.
• Increased the percentage of children achieving level 4 and above at key stage 2 in maths from 56% in 1998 to 67% in 1999 and to 68% in 2000.  
• Increased the percentage of children achieving level 4 and above at key stage 2 in science from 69% in 1998 to 79% in 1999 and 83% in 2000.  
• Increased the percentage of 11 year-olds reaching the standards expected of their age in English from 64% in 1998, to 66% in 1999 and to 74% in 2000.  
• Worked with partners to provide an additional 2,400 child care places.
• Opened, in partnership with local Further Education Colleges, four "learndirect" on-line learning centres in libraries.  
• Secured an additional £15.3m for educational purposes in the County.  
• Achieved a national Partners in Excellence award in the category "Talking and listening to parents and children."  
• Supported schools to improve performance by publishing detailed performance, value added and resource benchmarking information.  
• Achieved specialist college status at three high schools.  
• Established the "Youth Comm initiative" which provides multi-media information, guidance and support services to the young people of the County.

Progress against key priorities
Priority 3: Improving economic and social well being.  
During 2000/01 we:

• Worked as a member of the Rover Task Force to attract substantial additional funding into the County to support automotive companies and also to establish a 'technology corridor' between Birmingham and Worcestershire.  
• Worked with partners to establish the Worcestershire and Herefordshire Youth Offending Team, whose target is to reduce the number of offences, committed by persistent young offenders and to reduce overall recorded crime by young people.  
• Established new joint planning structures with the Health Authority to improve service delivery of social services.  
• Met 100% targets for the inspection of both children and adults residential establishments.  
• Inspired changes to the national approach to the regulation of independent boarding schools.
• Received an external independent assessment that concluded that our social care services for children are well managed.  
• Successfully transferred out of council management nine Homes for Older People as a way of reducing costs.  
• Successfully opened Yates Court Extra Care Scheme in Evesham to improve support services for elderly persons in the community.  
• Achieved Rural Regeneration Zone status and secured additional funds to regenerate rural areas in the county.  
• Organised three events to promote Worcestershire for inward investment including taking a delegation of ambassadors to the House of Commons.  
• Developed a strategy in partnership with the industry to direct tourism within Worcestershire.  
• Secured funding of over £104,000 as part of the "vital villages" scheme to retain and promote village shops in Worcestershire.

Progress against key priorities
Priority 4: Making Worcestershire a better place in which to live.  
During 2000/01 we:

• Improved road safety by limiting speed to 30mph in villages and communities throughout the County.  
• Produced our own green County Hall transport plan and encouraged Worcester Royal Infirmary to prepare a plan as part of our initiative to encourage alternatives to car use.  
• Provided the first phase of a park and ride scheme to ease congestion and traffic impact in Worcester.  
• Developed at least five safer routes to schools schemes in the County to encourage more children to use alternatives to the car as a way of getting to school.  
• Promoted the development of a Worcester Parkway railway station and carried out an initial feasibility study and engineering study.  
• In partnership with the Worcestershire Health Authority improved public transport to hospitals in the County.  
• Presented the draft deposit structure plan to an examination in public. When approved the new structure plan will guide planning decisions throughout the County. The examining panel said that they felt no need to recommend major changes and commended the draft for its "robustness."  
• Completed fifteen local distinctiveness projects in the County to encourage community pride and heritage.  
• Allocated and invested an additional £1.25m in highway maintenance and drainage in the County.  
• Finalised the planting of 85,000 trees in the County as part of the millennium trees initiative.  
• Allocated and spent an additional £50k on maintenance impact schemes in countryside sites.
• Secured additional funding which will result in the building of Wyre Piddle bypass and greater investment in safer routes to schools, public transport, bridge strengthening, road safety schemes and the maintenance of local roads.

Progress against key priorities
Priority 5: Building an efficient and effective organisation.
During 2000/01 we:

• Demonstrated our commitment to being a good employer by:  
• implementing an internal communications strategy.
• putting in place a staff review and development scheme with a quarter of our staff.
• achieving Investors In People accreditation in the Environmental Services and Educational Services directorates covering 40% of our staff.  
• Piloted a new political management structure, which separates the "executive" (decision-making) role from the "scrutiny" role.  
• Continued to build a comprehensive performance management framework in the Council to allow elected members, managers and the public to understand how the Council is performing in comparison with other local authorities.  
• Continued to develop our commitment to equal opportunities by auditing our achievements against the Disabled Person's Equality Standard and the Gender Equality checklist and produced action plans to achieve Level 2 of the Racial Equality Standard.
• Demonstrated our competitiveness in the market place by:  
• providing financial services and advice to West Midlands Regional Museums Council, West Mercia Supplies and Hereford and Worcester Magistrates' Courts Committee.  
• securing a new contract to provide payroll services to Hereford and Worcester Probation Service.  
• 270 out of 271 schools in the county buying back our payroll services.  
• Achieved full buy-back of revenue services by all existing school customers.
• Improved performance in paying creditor invoices within target time.  
• Pioneered the first agreement in the country to allow staff transferring to a private company to remain in the Local Government Pension scheme.
• Accepted the role of negotiator and financial administrator for a national service agreement between public sector bodies and the Ordnance Survey.

Progress against key priorities  
Priority 6: Sustainability.  
During 2000/01 we:

• Ran a successful programme of in-service training for teachers to raise awareness of sustainability amongst teaching staff and pupils.  
• Became the first local authority in the country to appoint an Education for Sustainability Officer as an Education/Environment joint initiative.  
• Provided sustainability education to 15,000 pupils at Bishopswood Environmental Centre.  
• Distributed citizenship packs, which include practice exercises on sustainability, to all schools in Worcestershire.  
• Established a ten-acre site to develop a quick-growing energy crop on our smallholdings estate.  
• As examples of good sustainable farming practice we have  entered 70 acres of traditional pasture land into a ten year countryside stewardship agreement  set up a demonstration of a short-rotation coppicing crop on one of our smallholdings.  established two-energy crop planting schemes to encourage biodiversity.  
• Refurbished five Household waste sites and a transfer station to promote good waste management and recycling in the County.  
• In partnership with District Councils and Severn Waste put in place a strategy to encourage you to minimise your waste.  
• In preparation for implementation in 2001 worked to encourage the separation of waste in the household throughout the County.