Performance Improvement Self-Assessment Report

For each of our five improvement objectives within the Improvement Plan 2023-24, we identified improvement milestones which set out what we wanted to deliver in conjunction with key performance indicators, which would enable us to measure our success. This section provides an overall performance assessment and a summary of key achievements from our Performance Improvement Plan 2023-24. 

Performance Improvement Plan 2023-24 self-assessment

Our overall annual performance against achieving our improvement objectives 2023-24 is summarised below. We have outlined our progress against our 66 milestones and 28 performance indicators (8 statutory and 20 self-imposed).

66 Milestones

• 100 per cent of milestones were either achieved or partially achieved.
• 56 (85 per cent) milestones were achieved.
• 10 (15 per cent) milestones were partially achieved.

28 Performance Indicators (target)

• 21 (75 per cent) were on target or exceeded target (within 1 per cent or better) (5 statutory and 16 self-imposed performance indicators).
• 2 (7 per cent) were slightly adrift of target (between 1 per cent and 5 per cent) (1 statutory and 1 self-imposed).
• 5 (18 per cent) were adrift of target (5 per cent or more) (2 statutory and 3 self-imposed performance indicators).

28 Performance Indicators (trend)

• 16 (57 per cent) of performance indicators showed positive change (2 statutory and 14 self-imposed).
• 7 (25 per cent) of performance indicators showed no significant change (3 statutory and 4 self-imposed).
• 5 (18 per cent) of performance indicators showed a negative change (3 statutory and 2 self-imposed).

Milestones were considered to be partially achieved when work commenced or was progressed during 2023-24 but the project or activity spans more than one financial year. A rationale and detailed analysis has been provided in Section 5 where targets (both milestones and performance indicators) have not been achieved and this broadly includes regional issues and delays, council resource constraints as well as dependency on external factors including market forces and regulatory changes.

Summary of key achievements from our Performance Improvement Plan 2023-24

A snapshot of some of the key achievements and performance improvement across all five improvement objectives, is illustrated below.

• Customer contact service level (people answered within 120 secs) improved by 10 per cent.
• Over 3.1m people using our leisure centres, an increase of 10.6 per cent.
• Number of responses to consultation surveys increased by over 24 per cent.
• Awarded silver NI environmental benchmarking survey rating.
• 90.2 per cent of council fleet fuel consumed that is HVO.
• 572 participants or businesses supported through the ‘Go For It’ programme.
• 18 previously vacant city centre properties became occupied as a result of Vacant to Vibrant grants.
• 88.6 per cent planning enforcement cases processed within 39 weeks – exceeding the statutory 70 per cent target.
• 61 (SME) and companies directly engaged in the Smart District programme (over double the target figure).
• Achieved ‘A’ grade for Global Carbon Disclosure Project reporting.
• Invested £580k in our playgrounds.
• Retained 20 Green flags across our parks and open spaces.
• Planted 27,941 trees through community, corporate and school planting programme – a total of 110,254 since 2021.
• Worked with 23 stage 2 and 16 stage 3 neighbourhood regeneration funded projects.
• Delivered over £1m in Hardship Programme funding and supported 42k people in need.
• Supported 722 vulnerable households through the Belfast Warm and Well programme.
• Reduced the amount of biodegradable council collected waste that is landfilled from 28,444 tonnes in 2022-23 to 7,218 tonnes in 2023-24.
• Enabled 13,792 residents to access online cost-of-living support and advice and 2,161 residents to visit community centre warm and welcome spaces.
• Allocated over £150k to deliver the participatory budgeting process – nearly 10k votes received and 78 projects funded.
• Supported 21 social supermarkets.