St Helens Council ranked on 'leaderboard' across five main services

Launched last summer, the Office for Local Government (Oflog) has released data on how every local authority across England has performed in five main services; the adult social care system, waste management, corporate and finance, planning, and roads.

Published ahead of this month's local elections, the data is intended to provide "authoritative and accessible" data on how each council is performing and to encourage improvement across local government.

Following the publication, The Times analysed the data and ranked each council following the scores received in each category.

However, this approach has been criticised for missing the nuances of the data and the vast amount of other services that councils provide, as well as the difficulties in comparing different local authorities of different sizes.

Outgoing leader of St Helens Council, Cllr David Baines, also described the Times' analysis as "politically motivated" as it was released days before local elections.

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St Helens data

Waste management was one of the main services council's have been ranked on (Image: St Helens Council)
Planning

In the government's Oflog statistics, St Helens Council's highest-rated service was the planning department, which was ranked 10th in the country, according to the Times' performance table.

With the data analysed between 2020 and 2022, St Helens Council had 100 percent of its major planning applications decided on time, much higher than the English median of 89.8 percent.

The council also had 99.7 percent of non-major planning applications decided on time in the same period, again much higher than the English media of 88.2 percent.

In terms of appeals, no major planning applications were overturned on appeal and 0.5 percent of the non-major applications were overturned during the two year period.

Adult social care

With an aging population, adult social care has been one of the most difficult and costly services for councils to manage in recent years.

The Times' 'leaderboard' places St Helens Council as 71st in this category, with 3,660 per 100,00 people being granted a social care service following a request between 2021 and 2022.

This is much higher than the English median of 1,708 requests per 100k people, although the workforce turnover rate in St Helens (32.6%) was higher than the national median (29%) in this period.

The government data shows that 63.1% of people (and 60.2% of carers) who used adult social care services in St Helens found it easy to find information, which was higher than the national median of 65.2% (and 57.3% for carers).

The quality of life for carers was given a score of 7.1 out of 12, which was just lower than the English median on 7.2.

The quality of life of people using adult social care services was given as a score of 0.425 (between -0.8 and 1.0), which was slightly higher than the national median of 0.409.

Waste management

Ranked 118th in the Times' council leaderboard, St Helens Council was able to recycle 36.8% of all household waste between 2021 and 2022, slightly lower than the national median of 41.9%.

The recycling contamination rate in this period was recorded as 0.7% in St Helens, and 5.5% across the national median.

More recently, an updated recycling system involving separate bags and boxes was rolled out in St Helens to reduce the amount of waste and cross-contaminated recycling.

A refocus of the borough's waste services has resulted in a decrease of hundreds of tonnes of rejected recycling between 2020-21 to 2022-23.

Corporate and finance

Ranked 236th in the Times leaderboard, the percentage of non-ringfenced reserves as a percentage of net revenue was recorded as 46.% in St Helens, between 2021 and 2022, lower than the national median of 54.9%.

However, the council's total debt as a percentage of its core spending power was recorded as 108.6%, much lower than the national median of 226.7%.

Between 2021 and 2022, the amount of council tax generated per dwelling in St Helens was £1,205.72, lower than the national median of £1,293.42.

However, the total core spending power per dwelling in St Helens was slightly higher than the national median, at £1,891.45 compared to £1,885.14.

The number of upheld complaints was also slightly higher in St Helens when compared with the national median, at 6 complaints per 100,000 population as opposed to 4.6 per 100k people.

It is also recorded that St Helens Council's social care spend as a percentage of core spending power was 71.6%, higher than the national median of 66.4%.

Roads

As reported by the Star, many residents have complained about the number of potholes and road defects on roads across St Helens, and the Times ranks the borough as the 302nd best performing council in this category.

Government data shows that between 2022 and 2023, the percentage of motorways and A roads that should be considered for maintenance was 5% in St Helens, higher than the national median of 3%.

The percentage of B and C roads that should be considered for maintenance was recorded as 9%, higher than the national median of 4%.

The council has since announced £1.8m plans to improve and repair roads across St Helens.

'Flawed' data - 'politically motivated'

Cllr David Baines has criticised the data (Image: David Baines MP)
Following the release of the Oflog data and Times analysis, there has been criticism that the statistics miss the nuances of the services that councils provide and the vast majority of services that councils deliver to residents.

There have also been concerns about comparing councils of different sizes and that the data is recorded across various years.

Outgoing leader of St Helens Council, Cllr David Baines, who is stepping down to run for the St Helens North seat in parliament, also raised these concerns and suggested that it was a political move to release the analysis in the days leading up to the local elections.

Cllr Baines said: "Since Oflog was launched just last year, myself and other council leaders of all parties have tried to work with them constructively and in good faith with the aim of doing everything possible to improve services for communities.

"Last year I was appointed as Labour's national lead member on the Improvement and Innovation Board, so I have worked closely with colleagues from all parties and government sources to welcome and work with Oflog. 

"Throughout, we have been given reassurances that Oflog is independent and will exist only to support local authorities and residents.

"It was therefore extremely disappointing and concerning to see this week's story in the Times which took data and used it in questionable ways, to say the least."

The council leader questioned the publication of the data just before local elections, suggesting it was politically-motivated.

He added: "St Helens Borough Council ranked in the top 50% of councils in the table compiled by the Times but no council should take credit or blame whatever their position - this data is flawed, without merit, and the Tories are simply manipulating a supposed independent body in the hope of helping their own electoral chances."

St Helens Council delivers 700 services to 180,000 residents

St Helens Council pointed to the vast number of services it provides (Image: St Helens Council)
A St Helens Borough Council spokesperson said: "As a local authority that provides more than 700 services to 180,000 residents every day, we strive to offer value for money as part of a key priority to be a responsible council, with this data placing us in the top 50 percent of best performing councils in the country and number one for the Liverpool City Region.

“Many councils like St Helens are facing huge financial challenges but must set a balanced budget as a legal requirement.

"It remains the view of the council’s section 151 officer that the council budget for 2024/25 is robust, and will follow recommendations by external auditors to set our finances on a sustainable trajectory moving forward.

“With the vast majority of our overall budget going to support the most vulnerable in our communities, we continue to deliver a comparatively strong performance in Adult Social Care for more than 7,000 active service users - compared to the England average - while our planning department is impressively tenth best in the whole country, having decided 100 per cent of all major and non major applications on time from 2020-22 to encourage inclusive growth within the borough.

“Having rolled out our new recycling strategy at the back end of last year, we have one of the lowest contamination rates in the country, coming out at less than 1 percent – proof that our separated system works.

"We will continue to improve this essential service to increase recycling rates across the borough in a bid to make waste a thing of the past.

“There are significant discrepancies in reporting methodologies and figures in terms of road maintenance, which the council is responsible for more than 780km of carriageway and 891km of footways and committed to ensuring they are kept in the best possible condition using the limited budget available to us from central government. 

"This year we will invest £3.7m into our road and footway network, including a £1.86m programme of road resurfacing works, and £760k for reactive works to repair potholes and other defects along some of the borough’s key routes. 

"However, this funding is still not enough and Full Council recently agreed a motion highlighting the impact that a lack of long-term investment is having on the infrastructure of our borough.”

Councils facing 'unprecedented cost and demand pressures'

The data has drawn criticism for comparing council's of different sizes (Image: St Helens Council)
Responding to analysis by the Times on council performance, Cllr Abi Brown, Chairman of the Local Government Association’s Improvement and Innovation Board, said:

“Councils continue to face huge financial challenges, with individual local authorities facing competing demands on budgets that are often unique to their local area and specific circumstances.

"Differences in spending between councils are natural responses to these differing needs while we also know that variation in spending on certain services is often driven by factors outside the control of councils, such as deprivation and demographics.

“While councils continue to transform services, it is unsustainable to expect them to keep doing more for less in the face of unprecedented cost and demand pressures.

“However, as part of our role to support and improve local government, the LGA is committed to helping councils to be as efficient and effective as possible.

“Our publicly available and accessible LG Inform benchmarking system includes the latest published data to compare each council with other similar authorities and we run programmes in all regions to share best practice, help drive up performance and support councils to make efficiency savings against the challenging financial backdrop they face."

In a letter penned by Cllr Shaun Davies, chair of the LGA, to Levelling Up Secretary Michael Gove, added: “I do not want to be labelled as a Cassandra figure, but our warnings about the use of data and Oflog’s ability to advise and brief the media about what the data does and doesn’t show have now come to pass.

"The fact that this happened during the pre-election period when the ability for councils to adequately respond is curtailed has made this situation worse.

“While I appreciate that the league table was compiled by a media organisation, we are very concerned that neither Oflog, nor DLUHC, stepped in swiftly to correct inaccuracies and misleading content.”

The Department for Levelling Up and The Times have not responded to comment.