Every year we have to review of our performance across a number of areas where the council works – things like education, adult social care, the environment, highways, the economy and others.
The results of the reviews are published in our Council Plan Annual Performance Report.
This year’s report is now available here.
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What’s in the Annual Performance Report?
It measures our performance against our 6 Well-being Objectives and Improvement Priorities in our 2021-23 Council Plan and provides an overall assessment of each:
- Developing the economy
- Ensuring a modern and resilient council
- Ensuring everyone is safe
- Improving secondary education
- Improving the Environment
- Promoting good health and well-being (with a focus on improving children’s social care)
Not surprisingly this year’s report highlights the significant work undertaken to recover after the pandemic and how we’re emerging stronger including building a resilient recovery and becoming a greener, more inclusive county borough.
The report sets out an overall assessment of each priority and shows the key achievements
Developing the economy – We secured city status and was the only Welsh finalist in the City of Culture 2025 competition. Although the pandemic continued to impact Business Support Team they have continued to work with businesses and given advice and helped them access government finance. Looking to the future the Levelling up Funding awarded £13.3 million for the World Heritage Site and £220,000 Community Renewal Funding half of which will support town centre property repurposing.
Ensuring a modern and resilient council – We have been working hard to deliver our ‘Modern Ways of Working’ programme which is transforming our working practices by providing improved working environments, adopting new technology and digital solutions, making our work more sustainable in the long term and challenging the culture around the way the council work. There’s been a significant increase in the number of services available online and the number of customers who feel it is easy to access council services has remained above 90%. There’s also been a 42% increase in the number of consultation and engagement activities undertaken through Your Voice Wrexham and the age of respondents is more closely aligned to the general population than in the previous year.
Ensuring everyone is safe – By prioritising the vulnerable we’ve secured homes for people fleeing countries such as Syria, Afghanistan and Ukraine and used capital grants to bring more houses into use. We’ve achieved the Welsh Housing Quality Standard ahead of time. Thirteen new houses have been built in Plas Madoc with tenants moving in very shortly. The number of rough sleepers has reduced and we continue with outreach work to prioritise this group to keep the numbers at a minimum. Funding from the Police and Crime Commissioner and thirt sector organisations provided safe streets and a safer environment for women in particular by installing CCTV, pruning and removing overgrown areas in key public areas and opening Hafan y Dref on more occasions.
Improving the Environment – We’ve approved our Decarbonisation Plan which responds to new opportunities and challenges. We’ve secured grants of over £640,000 for several key projects including the Wrexham Industrial Estate Active Travel package and the Mold Road corridor. Our recycling and composting rates remain high and we comfortably exceed Welsh Government targets in this area.
Improving Secondary Education – We continue to work collaborately to support education improvement and those young people who are vulnerable in order to ensure they remain included within the school system. Transition between primary and secondary is being reviewed by three headteachers secondments and we continue to support schools in improving attendance. We have restructured our service to better support school improvement and to improve the outcomes for our children and young people.
Promoting health and wellbeing – We recognised that good health (both physical and mental) and well-being is one of the most important things a person can have and impacts on so many other areas of their life. We promised to focus on prevention and early intervention services. We prioritised improving children’s social care services as the most essential to ensure we maintain our improvement journey with the vision to provide the right level of care and support, where all children feel, and are, safe, and have the opportunity to reach their potential. We agreed the Prevention and Early Help Framework and established the Prevention and Early Help Partnership and look to being developing our Strategy. We’ve renewed our Gold Corporate Health Standard and received positive comments about our work and approach in supporting wellbeing through a variety of initiatives.
Cllr Mark Pritchard, Leader of the Council, said, “There’s no doubt that the year has been challenging as we emerged from the pandemic. But it has also been exciting with the award of City Status, being the only Welsh finalists in the City of Culture and Art Fund Museum of the Year awards.
“We remain positive that we have and will continue to improve and build a successful, resilient, inclusive and green county borough. There will be further challenges ahead but I am confident that with the help of our staff, partners and residents we will build a community to be proud of.”
During 2021/22 we’ve also published our plans for the final year of our Council Plan – we’ve revisited our priorities and the projects and activities that we have in place to deliver them.
Our Priorities for 2022-23
- Developing and Decarbonising our Environment
- Developing the Economy
- Ensuring Everyone is Safe
- Ensuring a Modern & Resilient Council
- Improving Secondary Education
- Promoting Good Health and Well-being (with a focus on improving Children’s Services)
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