Council publishes its Annual Report for 2020-21

Bridgend County Borough Council has published a report on the authority’s performance for the year 2020-21.

The Annual Report for 2020-21 outlines the council’s progress in meeting its commitments for delivering the well-being objectives laid out in its Corporate Plan and the Well-Being of Future Generations Act, and the 46 success measures used as part of this process.

The council agreed in September 2020 to remove targets from 14 of the success measures because of the impact of Covid-19 and the continuing need to redirect resources to deal with the pandemic.

By the end of the period, a decision by Welsh Government to postpone exams and use alternative arrangements for determining grades meant that data was also unavailable for a further seven success measures.

The report, which was presented to the October meeting of Council, reveals that the authority met 13 (40.6%) of its wellbeing commitments in full, while 19 (59.4%) achieved most of their milestone targets.

Out of the 46 success measures, 25 could be compared against their target. Of these, 12 (48%) fully met their target, 2 (8%) narrowly missed the target and 11 (44%) missed their target by more than 10%.

Council members heard that despite the serious difficulties and challenges posed by the pandemic, a number of significant successes were still delivered.

The council’s employability programme enjoyed another successful year after helping 401 people to find new work, doubling its target figure of 200, while the number of new business start-ups increased to 540 compared to 475 in the previous year.

The financial value of externally-funded town centre regeneration projects also reached £13.5m, exceeding the year’s target of £13m.

For households facing homelessness, the council aimed to prevent 52% of these from actually becoming homeless, but achieved 67.2% - more than the previous year’s figure of 66.2%. Targets for individuals receiving managed care were also exceeded, with 74.3% benefitting from supported care within local communities and 24.7% within managed care home settings.

Various biodiversity schemes and enhancement projects were completed across the county borough, and the council met 3 out of 4 commitments relating to environmental sustainability.

While no target was set for recycling rates because of the disruption experienced during the first phase of the pandemic, the percentage of waste reused, recycled or composted in the county borough was 69.15% - an increase on the 67.66% achieved during 2019-20.

Significant progress was also made in the disposal of surplus land and buildings, which exceeded the target of £600,000 to generate more that £3m in capital receipts for investment into projects such as the school modernisation initiative.

The unique challenges posed by the coronavirus pandemic meant that our focus was very much fixed upon supporting our most vulnerable residents.

While this impacted against the progress that we had originally planned to make on some of our commitments, we were still able to deliver a number of achievements, and I would like to once again thank staff for their commitment and efforts during extremely challenging circumstances.

We will now consider how these services can be improved further, will look at areas where further work is required, and will continue to seek to deliver effective, efficient services in partnership and collaboration for the benefit of the people of Bridgend County Borough.

Council Leader Huw David

• You can read the Annual Report for 2020-21 online at the council website.