Performance Improvement Plan 2024 - 2025

To ensure that we continuously improve and meet the needs and outcomes of our city and residents, we have established governance arrangements in relation to corporate performance management, summarised and set out in figure 5 below.

Governance arrangements

Monitoring and regular reporting of performance is essential to ensure that priorities are being achieved, and that the information that was collected informed decision making and plans.

Progress is monitored and reported regularly to the Corporate Management Team (CMT), on a quarterly basis to the Audit Assurance Board and the Audit and Risk Panel, and regularly to relevant working groups, relevant committees, and the full council meeting.

Corporate, committee and departmental business plans and strategies containing statutory or self-imposed performance indicators, are monitored, and reported both internally to departmental and the Corporate Management Team and formally to the relevant committee.

In addition, action plans and programme plans relating to council’s key priority projects are monitored and reported through cross-departmental groups, management teams and boards, and regularly to the relevant committee.  

Figure 5 summarises the high-level governance arrangements and the responsibilities for implementing these.

Each year, we publish a self-assessment report, setting out details of how we have performed as a council and benchmarked against other local authorities where possible.  The council is a member of the Association of Public Sector Excellence (APSE), which is a public sector benchmarking organisation.  This enables us to compare and improve our performance across a range of services and activities, with other comparable councils.

The council’s internal audit team regularly review the improvement framework, and this is reported to the Audit and Risk Panel.  Annually the NIAO reviews the processes and arrangements as part of the annual performance improvement audit and publicly publishes this. 

A new planning and performance management framework is currently being developed which will refresh the current arrangements, provide a co-ordinated focus and a robust framework to enhance our continuous improvement journey. This new framework will enable us to deliver our collective responsibility with community planning partners, as well as supporting us to carry out our statutory duty to improve, deliver best value and achieve the best possible impact for the people of Belfast. 

Figure 5: High-level governance arrangements

*Please note these arrangements are subject to review as part of the development of the corporate planning and performance framework.

Annual timeline

Every year, we review and update our performance improvement objectives and plan to ensure we are delivering continuous improvement.  Our annual process to develop, monitor, report and review the council’s progress to deliver performance improvement is set out in table 1 below.