Councilservicesreview
THE average waiting time for a vacant house to be put back into use in Louth was almost sixteen and a half weeks, according to the latest Local Authority Performance Indicator Report 2018 ,published in the last week.
An assessment of how Louth County Council performed in key service areas was detailed in the comprehensive report from The National Oversight and Audit Commission (NOAC).
The performance is packed with statistics on the performance of 31 local authorities under 37 different performance indicators.
NOAC’s chairman Michael McCarthy said: ‘ This the fifth annual report on performance indicators individual local authorities have a very useful mechanism to view, track and improve on their own performance relative to that of other similar local authorities.
‘Ultimately this will help improve their service to the public,’ he said.
Data for the report was collected by the Local Government Management Agency on NOAC’s behalf.
Key findings in the report for Louth County Council included the council owning 3,812 social housing dwellings at end of 2018 with 2.7% vacant.
The average time for rehousing in vacant properties was 16.42 weeks.
The report also looked at the environment in Louth, and found 99.46% of drinking water in private schemes were in compliance with statutory requirements.
Two per cent of the County was listed as ‘unpolluted or litter-free’, with 64% classified as slightly polluted, 24% moderately polluted, 6% significantly polluted and 4% grossly polluted. At the end of 2018, 52.17% of schools in the county held a Green Flag, The national average is 51.4%. Local authorities provide environmental education and support to schools which participate in this programme.
In the analysis of Louth’s fire service, the report revealed that it took an average of 1:18 minutes for the full-time stations to mobilise fire brigades for calls to fires and 4:24 for the part-time stations. The equivalent times for non-fire emergency incidents were 1:30 and 2:24,
In the public libraries category there were an average of 2.01 visits per head of population and 365,684 items issued to library borrowers in 2018.
The report looked at staff totals , and found whole-time equivalent staff employed by Louth County Council at the end of 2018 was 625.15. The average medically certified paid sick leave rate was 4.35%. The national average was 3.78%. The average self-certified paid sick leave was 0.55%, the national average is 0.35%
In the review of technology and social media, the total page views of the LCC website in 2018 was 1,239,736.
Total followers of LCC social media channels at end 2018 were 38,664.
The percentage of motor tax transactions dealt with online, was 67.84%.