Introduction
Our Performance Improvement Plan 2025-2026 sets out the council’s key priorities for improvement over the next 12-month period to ensure that we fulfil our ‘Duty to improve’.
Duty to improve
Under the Local Government Act (NI) 2014, we have a statutory duty to:
- agree improvement objectives
- publish an annual Improvement Plan
- ensure appropriate arrangements are in place to achieve them.
Defining improvement
In accordance with the act and accompanying guidance, for us ‘improvement’ is about enhancing the sustainable quality of life and environment for ratepayers and communities rather than limited to gains in service or output or efficiencies.
The development of this year’s Performance Improvement Plan has coincided with the production of the council’s new Corporate Plan 2025-2028. As a result, the council has been able to clearly define key priorities and areas for improvement this year, ensuring alignment between both plans and our overarching community plan, The Belfast Agenda.
Our Performance Improvement Plan has also been developed against the backdrop of the council’s new, emerging Planning and Performance Management Framework to embed a consistent, streamlined approach to planning and performance management throughout the organisation. It will also help to build an effective culture of performance management to ensure all members, staff and stakeholders work to achieve the best possible outcomes and value for money for the residents and communities in Belfast. The framework will also be a crucial tool to support informed decision-making, more effective use of resources and drive improvement across the organisation.
Our medium and longer-term arrangements to ensure continuous improvement are outlined in figure 1 that is shown in Our arrangements to ensure continuous improvement. This plan sets out our performance improvement objectives for 2025-2026 which are compliant with the requirement for them to be:
- legitimate - making a demonstrable contribution to at least one (or, probably, more than one) of the aspects of improvement listed in the Local Government Act.
- clear - setting out the visible improvement that citizens can expect.
- robust - with defined terms of success (whether quantitative or qualitative).
- deliverable - with established links to individual service programmes and budgets.
- demonstrable - capable of being supported by objective (but not necessarily measured or quantitative) evidence.
