People living in the North East of England and in London get the best value for money from their councils, while those in the West Midlands suffer the worst services, the local government watchdog discloses today.

The Audit Commission’s annual town hall league tables show that nearly 80 per cent of councils are now in the top two star categories.

However, there are wide geographical differences. The North East region performs best overall with 90 per cent of its councils achieving three or four stars. Top performers with four stars were Stockton-on-Tees and South Tyneside.

London, the South East and the North West also perform strongly overall with 80 per cent of councils in the top two categories. But two out of the five councils with the lowest score, one star, are in the West Midlands: Stoke-on-Trent and Sandwell.

The Audit Commission said that there was no explanation for the regional variations, although it suspected that London councils were subject to peer pressure. Thirty of the 33 London councils are graded as “improving strongly” or “improving well”, compared to 6 out of 14 in the West Midlands.

Once again Tory councils dominate at the top, with Kensington and Chelsea, Wandsworth and Westminster all gaining four stars. Of those improving strongly, 42 per cent are Tory, 33 per cent Labour, 17 per cent NOC and none Lib Dem.

Tony Travers, a local government expert at the London School of Economics, said that regional differences showed the impact of the “freedom to be different”. But he said it was vital to understand why clusters of councils were performing well in some parts of the country but not in others. “The Audit Commission tables show the best are getting better while the worst are staying the same,” he said.

The league tables, which cover the 149 single tier and county councils, show that local authorities are improving overall, although seven have gone down a category and one in three councils are still providing only minimum value for money.

Last year 46 per cent of councils provided the minimum acceptable standards or below on value for money, but commission chiefs said this had improved significantly.

The value-for-money findings represent only a small percentage of marks in the performance table, which also covers social services, housing, the environment, child and adult services.

For the first time since ratings were introduced, none of the 149 English councils received zero status. North Lincolnshire, which had zero stars the previous year, jumped two places to two stars.

Michael O’Higgins, the commission chairman, said the majority of local authorities were in a strong position, but added: “Implicit in this news is a clear challenge to the small number of councils at the lower end of the scale that they really must pull out all the stops to emulate the achievements of their peers.”

The tables also showed variations in different services. While performance has improved in areas such as the environment, because of the increased use of recycling services, it has gone down in culture. This category, representing leisure facilities, sports centres, libraries and museums appears to have suffered at the expense of other priority services. Mr O’Higgins declined to comment on whether these facilities were bearing the brunt of local authorities’ cut-backs as they tried to keep their council tax down.

The gradings prompted an angry response from Hammersmith and Fulham council, which claims that it was marked down unfairly.

Mark Loveday, a councillor, said the CPA 2006 was a shambles because the system for assessing cultural services was “not fit for purpose” and “detached from reality”.

Commission officials conceded that the good performance marks for adult social services masked the fact that a majority of councils had changed the eligibility criteria for providing home help for the elderly and the disabled so that fewer people qualified.

Sandy Bruce-Lockhart, chairman of the Local Government Association, said: “Councils’ commitment to driving up standards is going from strength to strength and performance continues to improve, albeit with strained resources. But there is no hiding place for poor performance.”

Phil Woolas, the Local Government Minister said: “These results show that councils are continuing to respond to the high expectations of the public and Government and have not let up on the drive for continuous improvement across the range of services they provide to their communities.”

For the first time, the league tables include data from a national user satisfaction survey, carried out by the commission.

South Tyneside council, one of the top performers attributed its own success to listening to residents and wearing uniforms. It claimed that customer satisfaction in street cleaning soared to 72 per cent after the council adopted strong branding on livery and uniforms and residents realised that it was the council providing the service.

Preliminary results of fire and rescue services are also disclosed today, with nearly 40 per cent performing at only mininum requirements.

Good and bad

Improving councils

The best councils (improving strongly & 4 stars): Camden, City of London, Kensington & Chelsea, Kent, Shropshire, South Tyneside, Stockton-on-Tees, Tameside, Wandsworth and Westminster

The worst three

1 Stoke-on-Trent (not improving adequately & 1 star)
2= Rutland, Sandwell (both improving adequately & 1 star)

Value for money top

(those scoring 4 for both use of resources and value for money) East Riding of Yorkshire, Kent, Shropshire, Wandsworth, Westminster and Worcestershire

bottom

Stoke-on-Trent (scores 1 for value for money, 2 for use of resources)

Political make-up

12 councils are improving strongly, of which

5 are Conservative
4 Labour
2 NOC
1 Independent

90 are improving well, of which

32 are Conservative
28 NOC
24 Labour
6 Lib Dem

29 are improving adequately, of which

10 are Conservative
8 Labour
5 Lib Dem
5 NOC
1 Independent

Only one council, Stoke-on-Trent (NOC), is not improving adequately

No Liberal Democrat-controlled council is improving strongly

Culture
(covering leisure centres, libraries and sports facilities)

Two councils scored only 1 out of 4 for culture: Hammersmith & Fulham and Lambeth.

Of those councils improving strongly, only one scored less than 3 out of 4 for culture: Kensington & Chelsea (2)

Source: Audit Commission

Owing to a technical error, the council league tables that appeared in The Times newspaper on Thursday February 22 were garbled. The correct tables can be found here in full on the Audit Commission website

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