Council's Cleaning Team Receive National Excellence Award
13th February 2012
The Highland Council's Education, Culture and Sport Cleaning Service have received a Performance Network Award for the Most Improved Performer in the Association of Public Services 2011 Excellence Awards.
The ECS cleaning service, which employs 850 people, provides a daily building cleaning service to 367 of the Council's establishments including nurseries, schools, offices, libraries, community centres and museums.
Each year the Service takes part in a benchmark exercise with other local authority services across the rest of the UK and Ireland to examine how frontline government services are getting delivered.
The 2011 assessment highlighted that the Highland team performed particularly strongly in productivity, reducing staff absences, quality assurance, staff consultation and people management.
Chairman of the ECS Committee praised the staff for all their hard work. He said: "There are many challenges for service delivery within the Highlands and our cleaning service is continually looking at ways improvements can be made within the available resources. A big importance is placed on ensuring staff receive the right training and support. We have also introduced Service Level Agreements for all the establishments and have effective measures set up to monitor performance. To receive the national award for the most improved performance is a huge credit to the hard work of everyone involved and highlights our commitment to providing a top class service."
This award follows on from The Highland Council's recent success at the 2011 Loo of the Year Awards when the authority won 8 National Category Awards, 3 National Awards, 2 National Attendance Awards, 2 UK Trophy Awards and 1 Stand of Excellence Award.
PHOTO
Cllr Bill Fernie (far right) is pictured presenting the national certificate and trophy to (front row L to R) Catering & Cleaning Manager Norma Murray; Cleaning Officer (Ross-shire) Kaye Low and Cleaning Manager Evelyn Miller. (back row L to R) Cleaning Officers; Catriona McAllister (Lochaber), Wendy Cameron (Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross); Gary Moffat and Susan Carter (Inverness, Nairn, Badenoch & Strathspey)
Related Businesses
Related Articles
As intimated in Highland Council's budget plan, a new senior management structure is to be implemented following approval by Council 14th March. It reconfigures the senior management team into two layers, rather than three and brings Highland Council into line with other benchmarked authorities.
Today, Morrison Construction introduced some of their local apprentices who are working on the UK Governments' Levelling Up Funded refurbishment project at the Northern Meeting Park in Inverness. All these apprentices have been recruited from the Highland area.
The by-election to elect a councillor to represent Ward 19 - Inverness South on The Highland Council has been won by Duncan Cameron McDonald - Independent who was one of the eight candidates who contested the vacancy. Voters in the ward went to the poll yesterday (Thursday 11 April) and the by-election count was held this morning in The Highland Council Headquarters in Inverness.
The Technology Placement Programme offers funding to businesses in the Highland Council area to cover up to 70% of the cost of employing a student or graduate. The Technology Placement Programme offers funding to businesses in the Highland Council area to cover up to 70% of the cost of employing a student or graduate.
Following the success of its Business Digital Grant scheme launched last year, The Highland Council is delighted to announce further funding. This is to help Highland companies access digital support alongside other business growth support.
The Highland Council is delighted to confirm a highly successful second year for Public Service Obligation (PSO) flights between Wick and Aberdeen. The period from April 2023 to March 2024 has seen a substantial increase in passenger numbers, with several months seeing over 1,000 passengers using the service, and overall the service has seen year on year growth of 25%.
Members of Highland Council, who met on Thursday 14 March 2024, approved a corporate Digital Ambition, which has been designed to deliver significant organisational change across Council services, recognising the current priorities within the organisation. The Strategy, which is embedded within the wider Council Delivery Plan, has been developed to focus attention and resources on areas of change which will deliver the greatest benefit to the Council.
The Council remains committed to supporting mentoring in our schools, including the support that is currently delivered through the MCR Pathways programme. Highland Council is currently undertaking a review of Employability Support provided by a number of different council services and how these relate to the work carried out by external partners and in our schools.
Highland Council members have considered and agreed a revised draft Highland Outcome Improvement Plan. The partnership plan has been reviewed and updated by the Community Planning Partnership.
Members at today's (14 March 2024) meeting of The Highland Council agreed the local authority's new draft Community Wealth Building Strategy. They were also asked to note that a period of public engagement on the draft will now begin, with a final strategy returning to full Council for consideration in September.
