Performance

Hart, along with other local authorities, is designated as a Best Value Authority and has a statutory duty to put arrangements in place to secure continuous improvement in the provision of its functions and services to the public.

• The inspection regime for local authorities in England and Wales is changing from 2008/09. Rather than focus on the performance of individual public bodies, the government will assess the ability of all public bodies in an area to work together to deliver quality services to the public.
• This new assessment framework is called Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) and in our area will look at the work of local councils, the health services, fire and police authorities and voluntary organisations who provide services to the public through the Hampshire Local Area Agreement (LAA)
• As we are in transition from the old to the new assessment framework, Hart are not required to produce a Best Value Performance Plan this year. However we still have a duty to publish our statutory performance information for the year 2007/08, and a statement on Service Contracts involving the Transfer of Staff. These may be downloaded from the link in the "Downloads" panel to the right of your screen.
• The Best Value Performance Plan for 2007/08 is still available for download in Adobe Portable Document Format (pdf)from the link on the right.
  
• External Auditors carry out a range of audits which assess corporate governance issues, such as financial and performance management. These are reported in summary through the annual Audit and Inspection Letter received from the Audit Commission in March each year.

By measuring our performance against national standards, and by benchmarking our performance against similar local authorities, we seek to improve service delivery and value for money for our residents and businesses.