Benchmarking
Benchmarking is a process where you measure your success, performance and so on, against similar organisations to identify areas for improvement.
We take part in a range of comparison and benchmarking activities with other councils and organisations, see our Improvement and how we compare page for details.
The Local Government Benchmarking Framework (LGBF) is a high-level benchmarking tool designed to support senior management teams and elected members to ask questions about key council services.
The framework provides high-level ‘can openers’ which are designed to focus questions on why variations in cost and performance are occurring between similar councils. They do not supply the answers. That happens as councils engage with each other to ‘drill down’ and explore why these variations are happening.
The LGBF helps councils compare their performance against a suite of efficiency, output and outcome indicators that cover all areas of local government activity.
The LGBF is not an end in itself - it is how it is used within local planning, improvement, change management, scrutiny and reporting activities that matters.
Information within the LGBF should be interpreted against the strategic priorities being pursued by each council. Scottish councils are democratically elected bodies which represent very diverse communities in terms of geography, population, deprivation levels and community needs. Councils across Scotland do not have common service structures. Each council has the structure and service arrangements that it believes are the most appropriate and cost effective to support its local community. Each council is therefore unlikely to place the same priority on every area covered by the LGBF.
The LGBF is just one tool in councils’ local intelligence ‘toolbox’, adding value through the comparative element it provides.
The LGBF is used alongside other appropriate local data to provide balanced Public Performance Reporting against the council’s strategic priorities/outcomes. Local context in relation to how councils structure and deliver their services will be helpful to support meaningful interpretation.
At the core of the framework is an agreed suite of performance indicators. South Lanarkshire Council reports the results for these indicators, over time, on the website. Additionally, you can compare our LGBF results with other councils' using the Local Government Improvement Service Dashboard explore the data tool. The council's own dashboard of strategic benchmarking indicator was developed in partnership with the Local Government Improvement Service to better reflect the council’s priorities and support scrutiny of progress of the Outcomes in council’s plan Connect.