A Connected Highland - Council Agrees 22 strategic improvement priorities

7th March 2019

Council has agreed 22 strategic improvement priorities and a Highland Improving Performance Programme for the Council which aims to make the connections across services and communities and drive the improvement.

The proposed strategic improvement priorities are identified from the Council's knowledge of where performance needs to improve and where the Council has already set ambition for improvement. Feedback from staff, communities and members, performance data, and learning from major change and redesign projects has helped to identify where change and improvement is needed.

The improvement priorities align with the Council's Programme and partnership outcomes. A set of improvement targets will be developed for Council in May 2019 and thereafter monitored through new governance processes.

Chief Executive Donna Manson said: "To deliver the Council's ambition, the Council will need to be far more connected and create new corporate ways of working together, being open to challenge and finding more imaginative solutions for local services.

"We need to adopt a systematic and structured approach to self-evaluation that enables critical reflection and is supported by performance evidence from a range of sources. We will aim to build reliable data on which we can draw, covering quality, cost and efficiency and provided in a way that is timely and enables meaningful comparisons across local areas, with other local authorities and with national/international standards.

"We also need to be able to draw on feedback from service users, professional opinion and peer review in order to shape sustainable, efficient and high-performing services."

She added: “Leadership and management development is fundamental, but all staff and members have a role to play in performance improvement."

Leader of the Council Margaret Davidson welcomed the report. She said: “Striving for an ambitious and high-performing Council will impact positively on Highland communities. Our Programme aims to make the Highlands a stronger, healthier and more resilient region in which people choose to live, work, do business and visit. Investing in improvement across the Council will help us achieve and maintain our ambitions for Highland."

The report can be found here https://www.highland.gov.uk/meetings/meeting/4093/highland_council