In addition to national performance frameworks, local authorities are encouraged to develop and use local performance indicators, as an important measure of their performance and responsiveness in meeting local needs. They enable authorities' performance management frameworks to reflect local priorities and circumstances, and to provide service managers with the necessary performance information to achieve improvement.
To support them in achieving improvement local authorities said they would like assistance in developing local indicators that allow comparison with others. The Library, developed jointly by the Audit Commission and the Improvement and Development Agency in 2001, was designed to help authorities to do that, and in doing so share good practice across local government.
Since then information to support comparison across different areas has become much more widely and freely available. A variety of comparison tools and services have now filled the gap that the library of local PIs was set up to address. The library of local PIs website has now been closed, however a record of some of the material produced is available here.
Electonic library of local PIs
Full contents of the PI electronic library (PDF, 912Kb) of 'ready made' performance indicators.
Examples of local PIs used in BVPPs
An early task of the Library of Local PIs involved drawing local PIs from authorities' best value performance plans (BVPPs) for 2000/01. In response to demand from local authorities a spreadsheet detailing these local PIs identified in BVPPs (Excel, 1.7Mb) was made available. The spreadsheet provides over 7,000 examples of local PIs developed and used by individual local authorities at that time. It provides just a brief description of each indicator, and should not be confused with the content of the Library of Local PIs.
Home Office Community Cohesion Indicators
The Home Office Community Cohesion Unit launched a set of for local authorities and their partners to use as appropriate to their needs in June 2003. A technical note (PDF, 104Kb) was also provided.
Performance indicators for CCTV
Over a period of nine months, the Public CCTV Managers Association (PCMA) formed a working group of 12 authorities, to examine the role of CCTV and develop a set of appropriate performance indicators (PDF, 393Kb) for this area of work.
Economic regeneration indicators
Concern about the impact of economic decline in parts of Britain and the desire to stimulate regeneration has long been a focus of government activity at both national and local levels. A common thread to the criticisms has been the lack of clear objectives and of mechanisms to assess both progress and the ultimate impact of such initiatives, and that performance management of regeneration programmes was weak and that there were few robust indicators to provide the evidence base for such activity.
Authorities seemed to lack good information to provide a context for their work and also lacked measures to assess progress and achievement against their aims and objectives. The Commission joined with other national and local stakeholders to research and promote the development of key performance indicators.
An introductory paper outlining the project and a draft set of indicators (PDF, 342Kb) was published in March 2003, and more detailed indicator guidance Economic regeneration: Performance indicators (PDF, 387Kb) was published in November 2005.
Equality and diversity indicators
A study, Equality & Diversity, published by the Audit Commission in May 2002, provided evidence that councils have a long way to go if they are to meet best value principles and their statutory duties on equal opportunities. Subsequently, the IDeA and the Audit Commission agreed to work with the equality commissions and other bodies to develop a set of local performance indicators on equality and diversity (PDF, 339Kb) for inclusion in the Library.
Procurement performance indicators now available
Further to the launch of the National Procurement Strategy for Local Government and the Gershon Efficiency Review report of October 2003 and July 2004 respectively, the IDeA and the Audit Commission published a set of 34 voluntary procurement performance indicators (PDF, 237Kb).