Renfrewshire Council: the Audit of Best Value and ... - Audit Scotland

176. As part of the department of planning and transport, the service has developed a range of
performance indicators. These include the SPIs for roads and local indicators such as the percentage
of road network subject to maintenance work, and the expenditure per kilometre on winter
maintenance.
177. The roads service has a high percentage of roads that should be considered for maintenance
treatment compared with other councils (51.8 per cent of roads compared to a Scottish average of
41.9 per cent). The reported figure is a slight improvement on the previous year and meets the
council’s target for 2004/05. The council has a major challenge in meeting the Scottish Executive’s ten
year target which is 13.5 per cent for Scotland as a whole.
178. The introduction of a roads asset management system is an important part of the council’s strategy to
meet the Scottish Executive target. This will enable roads maintenance to be prioritised to ensure the
worst roads are treated first. The council has an additional £8 million programme to improve road
condition and is in the process of tendering this work.
179. There is a relatively small in-house roads maintenance team of around 60 operatives undertaking
repairs work to the value of around £4 million and capital work of around £300,000. Where work is
considered to be beyond the capacity of the in-house team, it is contracted externally. There is
significant use of contractors, with £3.8 million out of £8.4 million of the annual revenue spending
contracted out; and around £2.5 million out of £3 million of next year’s capital spend will be contracted
out. The council has also recognised the need to improve benchmarking information on the cost of its
services and has developed a system to assess its in-house prices against the rates for winning
contracts in other councils. The council acknowledges that this approach is not as robust as market
testing or contracting, but it provides a useful basis for comparison and goes some way to
demonstrating the competitiveness of the services provided.
Customer care
The council places a high priority on customer care in its plans. Its high-quality ‘Customers Matter’
toolkit has been used to train around 1,700 employees and the council has made good progress
against its customer strategy targets.
180. Delivering good customer care is an explicit priority for the council. ’Improving access to information
and services’ features as part of the Modernising Government priority in the community plan and
’treating our customers well’ is an aim explicitly set out in the corporate statement.
181. The council’s vision for customer service is set out in its ’Customers Matter’ service strategy. The
vision is ’to enable all citizens, businesses and organisations to reach information and services
quicker and more easily, where and when they want, and by whatever means they prefer’.
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