Press release

That’s the key message from a report published this week by an independent council watchdog. The report also shows that the Council is making significant progress in key areas including the highest ‘environment’ score possible.

The Audit Commission Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) for all UK local authorities reveals that East Sussex is improving its performance with further progress expected.

Council Leader Peter Jones says that strong political and managerial leadership and the hard work and dedication of staff, have been the major factors in achieving this result. "We’ve turned this council round and made tremendous improvements on our key priorities in a relatively short space of time. Last year we saw the Council jump two categories in the league tables. We have not only retained our ‘good’ rating but our scores for individual services have continued to improve across the piece. It’s a remarkable achievement considering that the Government has handed us a succession of poor grant allocations over recent years after it changed the way it distributes local authority funding to favour councils in other parts of the country.”

The Audit Commission report shows that:

• the county’s ‘environment’ score is 4/4
• the performance of children of all ages in educational tests and examinations continues to improve better than the national average
• social services for children and older people are good and the prospects for further improvement is promising
• the quality of libraries has improved and more people are using them
• transport services are good
• important regeneration projects such as Hastings university are underway
• internal resources – both finance and people – are very well managed and there are continuous improvements to efficiency
• the council and its health partners still have challenges in dealing with delays in discharging patients from hospital.

The Council had also received positive comments earlier this week with the publication of the Audit Commission’s annual audit and inspection letter. The Commission said "the Council has maintained its focus on improving core services and sustaining or improving its performance in its priority areas”. They also gave the thumbs up to the Council’s financial management systems by concluding that "the Council successfully achieved a particularly demanding budget in 2003/04 and has strengthened the overall financial position further. The financial outlook continues to look as challenging as the Council anticipates. Nevertheless its robust financial planning processes mean that it is well placed to tackle this”.

Councillor Jones said that whilst national statistics and audit inspections are important it’s the views of local people that count. "It is extremely pleasing to get confirmation of our improving performance from the Audit Commission but the real acid test for us is what our residents think. We will not be complacent and our aim will always be to improve core services for local people whilst keeping council tax increases as low as possible”.

Find out more about the latest Audit Commission inspection reports.

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