Ranks council productivity and examines performance through eight lenses
IMPOWER has designed the Top-Level Index to support Chief Executives and Strategic Directors approach the challenges, shape, and focus the conversation, and direct inclusive ambition across their complex systems.
The Top-Level Index ranks council productivity, examining performance through eight lenses:
- High Needs
- Children’s Social Care
- Working Age Adults
- Older Adults
- Health and Integrated Care Systems
- Housing
- Homelessness
- Waste and Recycling
Each lens has between six and twelve measures, drawn from publicly available datasets which IMPOWER has selected to represent a series of outcomes that reflect both controllable and influenceable activity.
The Top Level Index helps explore questions which which senior council teams will need to answer to provide confidence that the right investment decisions and focus is being provided to move from either unsustainable or expensive systems to optimised systems that balance cost and outcomes. Some questions that the Index helps prompt for each system teams operate within include:
- Is the current financial position affordable & sustainable?
- Do management teams have an understanding about why certain metrics are underperforming compared to the others?
- What is the scale of avoidable demand? How do management teams know?
- Is this level of outcome sustainable? Where are local authorities building up future cost or paying for outcomes that do not reflect priorities?
- Is this a shared understanding of productivity across the leadership team?
- Is there a profile of the cohort of people experiencing lower outcomes?
- What are leading performers doing in each specific area?
- How has our performance compared to peers over time?
- What would it mean to be performing as well as leading performers in our peer group?