About us
Background
The Government's programme to modernise local government places a duty on local authorities to seek continuous improvement in the way that they exercise their functions. At the heart of modernisation is a statutory performance management framework, which aims to reflect the national interest in the capacity and performance of local authorities.
In addition to the statutory framework, authorities are encouraged to develop and use local performance indicators, as an important measure of their performance and responsiveness in meeting local needs. They enable authorities' performance management frameworks to reflect local priorities and circumstances, and to provide service managers with the necessary performance information to achieve improvement.
To support them in achieving improvement local authorities said they would like assistance in developing local indicators that allow comparison with others. This Library, provided jointly by the Audit Commission and the Improvement and Development Agency, is designed to help authorities to do that, and in doing so share good practice across local government.
In addition to the statutory framework, authorities are encouraged to develop and use local performance indicators, as an important measure of their performance and responsiveness in meeting local needs. They enable authorities' performance management frameworks to reflect local priorities and circumstances, and to provide service managers with the necessary performance information to achieve improvement.
To support them in achieving improvement local authorities said they would like assistance in developing local indicators that allow comparison with others. This Library, provided jointly by the Audit Commission and the Improvement and Development Agency, is designed to help authorities to do that, and in doing so share good practice across local government.
How does the library help local authorities?
The Library provides ready-made performance indicators (PIs) that:
- help prevent authorities reinventing the wheel
- fill the gaps in the national PIs
- facilitates consistency of definitions to enable comparisons of performance between authorities and over time
- are meaningful to local people
