Public performance reports

Assessment and review

The Council Plan Connect outlines our outcomes for 2022-27. Connect Outcomes should not be seen in isolation, they interact with each other and as we achieve success in one, we move closer to success in others. In delivering our vision to ‘improve the lives and prospects of everyone in South Lanarkshire’ our outcomes show how our work links with our partners including our Community Planning Partners.

For daily updates, stories, and what’s going on in your area, visit our information and news website South Lanarkshire View.

Each year we produce Annual Performance Spotlights which summarise how we have performed in achieving our Connect Outcomes. To complement these we have created a suite of individual Public Performance Reports that focus on key areas of council business. This report outlines the performance in relation to assessment and review and how this links to the outcomes of our Value to be Ambitious, self-aware and improving.

Assessment and review

The following performance information relates to our self-assessment and service review activity, and how we have responded to this.

The Council Plan Connect 2022-27 is the strategic document that explains how we will use our influence and deliver services, acting on the issues that matter to our residents and communities. From this, each Resource produces an annual Resource Plan to support the delivery and achievement of the council plan. IMPROVe is the council’s performance management system which enables the progress of the actions detailed in the Council Plan and the Resource Plans to be tracked. Resource Plan performance is monitored, reported, and scrutinised by Resource Management Teams on a quarterly basis and by Committees throughout the year. The Council Plan performance is monitored, reported, and scrutinised by the Corporate Management Team and the Performance and Review scrutiny Forum at the end of Quarter 2 and Quarter 4.

The performance management reporting system uses a traffic light format with the following definitions to give a status report on each measure:

Status	Definition
Blue	Project complete
Green	The timescale or target has been met as per expectations
Amber	There has been minor slippage against the timescale or a minor shortfall against the target
Red	There has been major slippage against the timescale or a major shortfall against the target
Report later	The information is not yet available to allow us to say whether the target has been reached or not. This will be reported when available
Contextual	Included for ‘information only’, to set performance information in context

In the monitoring reports, measures classified as ‘red’ are considered in detail, and key achievements for the reporting period are listed.

Self-assessment and the improvements arising from self-assessment are key elements of Best Value. In 2016, the council adopted a new approach to the council-wide self-assessment and improvement programme, developed to better target improvement activity through a proportionate and risk-based methodology. The cornerstone of the approach is an annual horizon-scanning exercise carried out by each Resource, which looks to identify service areas or activities which may benefit from further examination and self-assessment and to build up a picture of the council's self-assessment profile, providing assurances of our continuous improvement and Best Value commitments.

We review our procedures regularly and seek to expand and improve the information gathered in the horizon-scanning exercise to ensure it is as comprehensive as possible. For example, in consultation with all Resources, we recently added the following sources of self-assessment/improvement activity to the scope of the exercise:

Consultations/surveys: the findings often result in changes/improvements to services or policies
Complaints: we listen and act on complaints. This is evidenced in the ‘you said, we did’ examples published annually on the council’s website: Complaints performance

Our current and ever-evolving horizon-scanning exercise is evidence that this risk-based continuous improvement and self-assessment activity is embedded in the culture and activities across South Lanarkshire Council Resources and services, and that updates are reported appropriately. It should also be noted that where applicable, the Public Service Improvement Framework (PSIF) approach (checklist, consensus, and improvement sessions) will continue to be considered for self-assessment on services/functions identified for improvement – it is an efficient, effective, and inclusive model, resulting in clear measures of success and actions to deliver meaningful change, is tried and tested within South Lanarkshire Council and throughout many Scottish Local Authorities and the Police, Fire, and Integrated Joint Board communities.

Finance and Corporate Resources: The Transformational Review Programme focuses on driving continuous improvement and delivering efficiencies to benefit customers, communities and organisations, as well as addressing and minimising the Budget Gap.

During 2024-25, the following council-wide reviews were reported on and progressed through the Council’s Corporate Management Team Efficiencies group. A number of these reviews remain ongoing to identify efficiencies in future years:

Charging
Procurement
Overtime
Management Structure
Digital Transformation / Customer Contact
Property

Audit Scotland commented in their Annual Audit Report 2025, that ‘The council has significant budget savings to make over the next three years and beyond and is aware that it must explore further options for transformation to help bridge its funding gap and improve outcomes for the people of South Lanarkshire.’

The Council continues to progress a long-term schedule of transformational reviews which run in parallel with the Budget process, in order to maximise the impact on the Budget Gap. Progress on each cross-cutting review are presented to the Performance and Review Scrutiny Forum (PRSF). In addition, service departments are progressing their own reviews to inform savings for the coming year. As these service reviews progress, proposals will be presented to Members for approval as part of the Budget setting process.

Social Work Resources: Transformation and Service Improvement Programme has progressed during 2024-25 in relation to the following services:

Maintaining the council’s commitment to the Promise has transformed the approach taken in the delivery of services and support to children and families. A contract has been awarded to Action for Children to deliver a three-year Intensive Family Support service commencing April 2025. The primary aim of this initiative is to enable children in high-cost residential settings to return either to their family home or to alternative, cost-effective options within the community, thereby supporting improved outcomes and ensuring financial sustainability across the service. Social Work Resources Committee 26 March 2025

Working in partnership with Barnardo’s, an intensive wrap-around support service will be provided to young people moving from continuing care placements. This initiative is designed to assist their transition towards semi-independent accommodation, providing them with the necessary support to thrive in their new environment and ensuring positive outcomes during this critical stage. Social Work Resources Committee 29 January 2025

In response to an increase of 57% in the volume of MAPPA Level 1 cases in Lanarkshire between 2014 and 2022, a decision was reached in May 2024 to establish a dedicated Justice Multi-Agency Public Protection Arrangements (MAPPA) service. The team will develop a sound knowledge base of all aspects of sex offending behaviour, interventions, and risk management. Social Work Resource Committee 30 October 2024

Education Resources Committee:

Self-evaluation is a fundamental, long-standing and valuable element of the Scottish education system. It sits at the heart of improvement within Education Resources, with South Lanarkshire Council providing schools, nurseries and services with a clear framework to reflect on their performance, identify priorities and implement meaningful change. By supporting all our establishments in this way, we strengthen empowerment and accountability, enable more tailored interventions, and build positive, collaborative relationships. This culture of continuous improvement ultimately leads to better outcomes for all learners.

Our central quality improvement team of professional advisers undertakes regular visits to every school and nursery throughout the year. These visits provide constructive support and challenge in line with national frameworks such as How Good Is Our School?, How Good Is Our Early Learning and Childcare? and the Scottish Attainment Challenge.

Alongside our direct work with establishments, Education Resources contributes actively to the Council’s wider Transformational Review programme. This includes exploring opportunities to modernise and strengthen how we support schools and communities across areas such as central support structures, workforce development, school transport, the school estate and enhanced provision for those learners with additional support needs. This work is grounded in improving service quality, enhancing the experience for children and families and ensuring that resources are used in the most effective way to support learning.

We continue to report regularly to committee on key areas of review and improvement, including our annual Standards and Quality Report, which provides an overview of our performance and progress across Education Resources.

Housing and Technical Resources: During 2024-25, the following service reviews were undertaken by Housing and Technical Resources:

Property Services Review – ongoing service review: Efficiencies and Income Generation: This review is focussed on identifying areas of efficiencies and income opportunities across Assets and Estates, Consultancy Services and Building Services
Factoring Review – ongoing service review: Revised timescale now approved and review on track with ongoing consultation with key stakeholders.

Community and Enterprise Resources:

During 2024-25, the following service reviews were undertaken:

Review of Household Waste and Recycling Centres (HWRCs) completed with the following outcomes:

Review of existing HWRC coverage which noted that SLC provides excellent coverage (85% of residents living within a 10 min drive time of a site, 96% of residents living within 20 min drive time)
Review of site usage, recycling performance and opportunities for improvements
Award of a new contract for the management and operation of 5 of the council's 6 sites which included an improved performance framework, more visibility of pricing and increased flexibility.
The extension of a booking system (which had been piloted in Carluke) to all South Lanarkshire sites.

Review of Kerbside Collection Services:

The Flat Project (which aimed to standardise recycling collections across the Council) was completed by March 2025
The completion of the waste compositional analysis project (which revealed that almost two thirds of waste in the residual bin could have been recycled)
Communal Bin Pilot (supported with funding from the Scottish Government Recycling Improvement Fund) was delivering promising results
Large scale changes to kerbside collection services for households was paused pending the publication of the Scottish Government new mandatory Code of Practice on Household Recycling. This was originally expected in March 2026 but is now expected in Quarter 4 of 2026-27.
The review also recommended the introduction of a charge for the collection of garden waste. The charge was approved by Committee in Summer of 2024 and implemented on 1 April 2025

Collection, Modelling and Routing:

First two phases of the in-cab project successfully rolled out
Garden Waste Permitting phase completed end January 2025 (to allow the new permitting scheme to commence)

Depots and Infrastructure:

Initial high level review completed with recommendations for future workstreams provided.

During 2022-23, Community and Enterprise Resources, in conjunction with North Lanarkshire Council, commissioned a service review of Business Gateway, carried out by an external provider. Working in partnership with North Lanarkshire Council, the delivery of the Business Gateway Service is now being delivered ‘in-house’ providing a more customer focused service, leading to better outcomes for businesses and the economy.

The Planning Service is undertaking significant project work to review and improve on its service provision, including staff skill development, digital technology improvements, enhanced customer engagement and supporting the delivery of quality places. The South Lanarkshire Improvement Action Progress Update for Year 2 provides updates on our ongoing journey to enhance the quality and effectiveness of our planning service.

Our external auditors, Audit Scotland, report annually on how well we are complying with BV responsibilities, namely, 'to make arrangements to secure continuous improvement in the performance of their functions’: Annual Auditors Report (AAR).

The key conclusions from the Best Value work for 2024-25 included:

Our Workforce Plan 2022-25 is supported by detailed service level plans, however there is an opportunity for this to have a more strategic focus.
We are using digital technology to support new ways of working but has not yet set out how it plans to use digital technology to shape its future workforce.
Audit Scotland’s follow up work of Best Value improvement recommendations from 2022-23 concluded that the council has now addressed these recommendations

Previously, Audit Scotland highlighted an area of good practice: ‘South Lanarkshire Council has worked collaboratively with the Local Government Improvement Service to achieve the most value from the Local Government Benchmarking Framework, by developing a subset of indicators which align with the Outcomes detailed in the new Council Plan, in a way that helps drive improvement, based on its strategic priorities.’

There are a number of external regulatory, scrutiny, or inspection organisations for local government, including:

Note: The Care Inspectorate (CI) reports are published in partnership with the local authority. The CI is responsible for follow-up action.

Examples of activities, per Resource, during 2024-25 include:

Social Work Resources

The Care Inspectorate is the independent scrutiny and improvement organisation responsible for regulating and inspecting care and support services for adults, children and criminal justice social work services. During the period 2023-24, the Care Inspectorate conducted inspections within two South Lanarkshire residential services, Meldrum Gardens care home for older people and Station Road children’s house. Grades are reported nationally on the Care Inspectorate website for public information.

Care Inspectorate Datastore. During the period 2024-25, South Lanarkshire participated in various approaches to audit services and standards, including service specific inspections, thematic inspections, reviews, and self-evaluations:

The Care Inspectorate conducted 12 inspections within social work services, including care homes for older people, children’s houses and care at home services. All services were graded good or better.
Justice Social Work services volunteered to be part of the Care Inspectorate’s self-evaluation process, trialling a new self-evaluation template in relation to performance management, quality assurance and governance for community-based sentences.
The Appropriate Adult service engaged with the Care Inspectorate in the development of a quality improvement framework to support the self-evaluation of appropriate adult services across Scotland.
A national thematic review of social work governance and assurance arrangements was conducted across all local authorities and health and social care partnerships in Scotland from July to December 2024. Findings were published in March 2025 Review of social work governance and assurance across Scotland 2025

Education Resources

External scrutiny is a significant and long-standing feature of the education sector in Scotland, and our schools and early learning centres are subject to robust evaluation by national inspection bodies throughout the year. Within Education Resources, this continuous external assessment is fully embedded in our improvement approach and is viewed as an essential element in assuring high-quality practice across all our establishments.

Education Scotland and the Care Inspectorate undertake regular inspections of our settings, assessing the quality of learning, teaching, leadership, care and wellbeing. These inspections consider a broad range of evidence, including the views and experiences of children, young people and their families. This ensures that local perspectives are reflected in their findings and that the lived experiences of our learners inform both national and local evaluation.

Inspection outcomes are published openly and contribute to a transparent picture of performance across South Lanarkshire. Establishments use these findings to develop clear action and improvement plans, with Education Resources providing professional support and challenge to ensure progress is sustained over time. This cycle of external assessment, public reporting and focused improvement reinforces accountability, strengthens our culture of continuous improvement and helps secure the best possible experiences and outcomes for our learners.

Detailed inspection reports for our schools, nurseries and wider service provision, including the key outcomes and themes emerging from these evaluations, can be found on the Education Scotland website.

Housing and Technical Resources

The Scottish Housing Regulator (SHR) is an independent regulator of Registered Social Landlords (RSL) and local authority housing services in Scotland.

The SHR monitor, assess, report and intervene (as appropriate) on Landlords performance of housing activities. This means how they deliver services to:

tenants;
people who are homeless;
Gypsy/Travellers who use official sites provided by these landlords; and
factored owners.

All social landlords must provide the SHR with information on their performance in achieving the outcomes and standards in the Charter by completing an Annual Return on the Charter (ARC). The SHR uses the landlords' ARC to report on progress in achieving the Charter outcomes and standards and uses this information to inform their regulatory assessments.

Each year, landlords must also assess their performance and provide an update to the SHR by submitting an Annual Assurance Statement, giving assurance against the following: -

The regulatory requirements
All relevant standards and outcomes
All relevant legislative duties

The Care Inspectorate carried out inspections in relation to:

- Housing Support Service for homelessness

- Sheltered Housing Services

South Lanarkshire Council continues to engage with the Care Inspectorate on a regular basis in relation to a range of Registered housing support services, submitting regular updates as required, attending information sessions in relation to the relatively new assessment framework, and seeking advice as we complete the self-assessment process against the framework.

As part of our statutory duty, we are required to provide the Scottish Government with performance information to ensure accountability and transparency and this performance information is published across a broad range of services and include performance comparison and benchmarking.

Community and Enterprise Resources

Food Standards Scotland (FSS) carried out an audit in February 2023 and provided South Lanarkshire Council with the audit report in August 2023. The report advised FSS was reasonably assured that the council‘s food law controls were adequate and highlighted areas where procedures could be improved. Environmental Services completed the audit action plan during 2023-24 and FSS was happy with the actions taken and closed the audit off in May 2024.

In addition to the agencies already quoted, our waste management facilities (Household Waste and Recycling Centres (HWRCs), Waste Transfer Stations etc) are inspected by SEPA and our depots and waste management facilities are inspected by HSE.

We are required to provide quarterly waste data information to SEPA for all the waste we collect. This information is audited by SEPA and information on household waste is published on SEPA website.

APSE and Keep Scotland Beautiful (KSB) undertake scrutiny on street cleansing in regard to LEAMS. APSE will scrutinise performance management on waste, grounds and streets.

The Planning (Scotland) Act 2019 introduced the new statutory requirement for planning authorities to annually report on their performance and prepare an improvement action plan known as the National Planning Improvement Framework.

South Lanarkshire Council was involved in Cohort 3 of the National Planning Improvement Framework 2023-24 process. This involved preparing a self-assessed report of how the planning service performed against 12 attributes of a high quality planning service, based upon 5 themes of people, culture, tools, engagement, and place; and a supporting improvement action plan. This report replaced the previously submitted Planning Performance Framework, (last submitted for the year 2022-23). This was subject to Peer Review and was shared with the Minister for Public Finance, who has responsibility for planning within the Sottish Government. Both documents can be found here: SLC NPIF Performance Assessment May 2025 and South Lanarkshire Council NPIF Improvement Action Plan May 2025

An annual review is carried out by Good Governance lead officers across the council in line with the national framework resulting in a Statement of Assurance which is approved and reported to the Corporate Management Team, Risk and Audit Scrutiny Committee, and Executive Committee. Improvement actions/measures are included in Resource Plans, as appropriate.

Following their review as part of the 2025 audit, Audit Scotland concluded that ‘the council has sound governance arrangements in place for how it conducts business’.

In South Lanarkshire, we try to make sure all of our policies and services meet people's needs. To help us achieve this, we need to know the views of people who use or might use our services, and so we use Consultations.

Education Resources:

Our consultation activity is governed primarily by the Schools (Consultation) (Scotland) Act 2010, which sets out clear requirements for ensuring that engagement on proposals affecting education provision is robust, transparent and fair. These duties shape how Education Resources approaches consultation and ensure that communities are fully informed and able to participate meaningfully in decision‑making processes.

A central principle in all consultation work is the inclusion of the voice of the child. Listening to and actively considering the views of children and young people is fundamental to our practice and aligns with the principles of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC). Ensuring that their experiences and perspectives inform our decisions helps create more inclusive, relevant and effective outcomes for learners.

Alongside this, we continue to engage widely with parents and carers at both service and school level. Education Resources carries out routine consultations with parents on wider strategic matters, such as proposed school holiday dates, while individual schools undertake targeted engagement with their own parent communities on issues directly affecting day‑to‑day school life.

During 2025/26, this has included consultation on mobile phone and personal device use in schools, helping ensure that local decision-making is shaped by the needs, preferences and experiences of families.

All findings from consultations contribute to informed decision-making and support the development of improvement plans across our services and establishments.

Housing and Technical Resources:

Annual rent consultation
To meet the requirements of the Scottish Social Housing Charter, Housing and Technical Resources are required, on a 3-yearly cycle, to carry out tenant satisfaction surveys:
As part of the customer satisfaction programme, a series of one-off, quarterly, monthly and annual service improvement surveys are undertaken with all survey results analysed and if required, improvement actions identified and progressed
Customer Involvement Strategy (2024-29) – public and stakeholder consultation undertaken and new strategy approved by Housing and Technical Resources Committee in February 2024.
Anti-Social Behaviour (ASB) Strategy (2024-29) – public and stakeholder consultation undertaken and new strategy approved by Executive Committee in March 2024.
Local Heat and Energy Efficiency Strategy – public and stakeholder consultation undertaken in Feb/Mar 2024, and new strategy approved by Executive Committee in June 2024.
Repairs Policy – public and stakeholder consultation undertaken and revised policy presented and approved at Housing and Technical Resource Committee February 2025 with implementation date 5 May 2025.
Strategic Housing Investment Plan (SHIP) - Annual refresh of plan to be reported to the Scottish Government in October 2025 and submitted to Housing and Technical Resources Committee in December 2025 for approval.

Finance and Corporate Resources:

Annual budget consultation: residents are invited to have their say on what we are doing about projected funding gaps to help us make the right choices
A mid-term review of the Council Plan 2022-27: was undertaken in 2024-2025. The review confirmed the strong foundations of the existing plan and emphasised the continuing relevance of the council’s vision, values and priorities. As a result of the review, the Council Plan priorities were sharpened to reflect a number of key themes relevant to all council services:
- the financial challenges facing local government;
- transformation and service redesign;
- tackling poverty and prevention as an overarching consideration in the work of the council: fairness and the need to support the most vulnerable

Community and Enterprise Resources:

Our town centres remain a council priority, and we are working across all our towns to manage change to allow our town centres to serve the evolving needs of communities in the future. Large multi-year transformational masterplans in East Kilbride and Hamilton have been formally adopted by the council. Public consultation undertaken on both the Hamilton and East Kilbride town centre masterplans will continue at key milestones throughout project delivery.

The Planning Service has started preparing the new South Lanarkshire Local Development Plan (LDP3). Once adopted, LDP3 will set out the planning policies and proposals for the use and development of land over the next 10 years to meet the needs of the area including where new homes, workplaces, healthcare, shops, and community facilities could be built, and the areas that will be protected.

As part of this, 978 people responded to our ‘Let’s Talk Place’ survey, and pro-active engagement saw over 2,000 groups and individuals contacted directly by email and over 200 face-to-face or online meetings were held with a variety of topic and geographic interest groups to enable them to have their say. Further engagement will take place going forward. The focus will be to build upon and nurture the network of collaborators, working relationships, and trust that has been achieved so far.

Further information Local Development Plan 3 (LDP3) - South Lanarkshire Council

The Waste Service issue a survey to all users of the HWRC booking system. In April 2025, we changed the questions so we could get opinions on a broader range of questions about the services we provide. Once we have a full year of data, our intention is to publish a summary of the information.

The Grounds Service undertake local consultations with neighbourhoods in relation to tree plantings, and undertake school consultations for play areas. They also liaise with the Schools Youth Forum with to regards to litter.

Social Work Resources:

Care at Home South Lanarkshire wide service user annual survey.
Care Opinion is now widely used across all South Lanarkshire University Health and Social Care Partnership and social work services, providing people with a platform to share honest and anonymous stories about their experiences of our services. In 2024-2025, 685 Care Opinion stories were received. South Lanarkshire’s Justice Social Work service has gained national recognition as the first justice social work service on the Care Opinion platform. The service has engaged positively with Care Opinion from the outset, establishing a network of Care Opinion champions who play a pivotal role in encouraging and supporting staff to engage service users in reflective discussions about their experiences. This personalised support has helped contribute to building trust and fostering an environment where service users feel confident and valued.

The council’s Annual Report and Accounts contain very detailed financial information but also a summary of highlights of the year from the Leader of the Council and the Chief Executive Officer. This is audited by our external auditors Audit Scotland and we obtained a ‘clean’ audit certificate. This audit opinion and other judgments on the council’s financial sustainability and management, governance, transparency, and Best Value are included in the Annual Auditor's Report (AAR).

South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture Annual Report outlines the work and highlights the financial information for the Leisure Trust which delivers all leisure and cultural activities on behalf of the council.

Resource Plans are prepared each year by all council Resources to reflect the outcomes detailed in the Council Plan. They also provide an overview of the Resource's main areas of activity, the key areas of focus for the year ahead and the measures and actions planned for maintaining and improving services in the year ahead.

As part of the performance reporting arrangements, progress reports on the Resource Plans are provided to Committee at the mid-year point (Quarter 2) and at the end of the financial year (Quarter 4). These progress reports are now summarised as web content:

More information on our outcomes can be found in the Council Plan Connect and also the Annual Performance Spotlights.

Local Government Benchmarking Framework (LGBF) allows councils to work together, to use performance information in a way which will help understand variations, share knowledge, expertise and good practice, with a view to making improvements. For more information and links relating to this framework go to the 'Benchmarking' paragraph on the Improvement and how we compare page on our website.

The information contained within this report reflects the position based on the data available at the time of publication (March 2026)