Appendix 2

Aim 1 - Maximising life opportunities

Promoting participation in learning

The Council set itself extremely stretching targets in its first Local Public Service Agreement (LPSA) with Government to improve overall educational attainment and related activities. Although the LPSA targets have not been met in full, the results generally show an improving trend particularly against the national picture, which is borne out by good results against the national education performance indicators in 2004/05. LPSA2 is now focused on improving performance across a range of indicators for groups of low performing schools. We have made progress in reducing the high number of secondary exclusions.

Key performance results for pupils show that:

· Primary schools have maintained high standards at Key Stage (KS) 1 and have improved KS2 English and Maths to the best ever results.

· Secondary results at KS3 for English, Maths and Science compare well nationally and with statistical neighbours

· GCSE results show an increase of over 2 percentage points to 60.7% across the county in pupils attaining 5 A* - C grades

· Nationally levels of attendance on both primary and secondary schools declined in 2004/5. This happened less sharply in Hampshire so that the county is in the top quartile for counties for both secondary and primary levels of attendance.

· We are taking a national lead in the assessment of progress of children with special educational needs (SEN) and in seeking the views of children about their attitudes to school.

· Exclusions from secondary schools were reduced from 222 in 2003/04 to 154 in 2004/05 or by nearly 30%.

· There were 13.2% surplus places in primary schools. This will reduce from September 2006 to 12.1% following the implementation of planned amalgamation.

Children Looked After (CLA)

The achievement of these children in our schools generally exceeds that of similar children in other south eastern authorities and is on a par with those counties most like us. Their achievement however, is far below that of the general population at all key stages of education. There was a decline in performance of those attaining A*- C grades in 2004/05. Work to support these children is now much better co-ordinated and their needs have a high profile across the children's services community.

· In 2004/05 61.6% of CLA achieved one or more A*-G at GCSE, an improvement of more than 3 percentage points on 2003/04. This performance put Hampshire in the top quartile of counties.

Youth Service

The Youth Service met its targets for the numbers of 13-19 year olds reached through youth work, which is in line with the national averages. In 2005/06 information became available about the number of young people gaining recorded or accredited outcomes through youth work. The target for recorded outcomes was exceeded but further work needs to be done to reach the targets for accredited outcomes.

Adult Education

The focus of County Council funding of adult education has been to continue to target the Learning and Skills Council's priorities: areas with the highest level of adults at pre level two and areas with low literacy and numeracy skills.

Cultural Services

In 2005/06 the steady increase in use and broadening of the user base across the range of cultural services has continued. Visits to libraries, museums, Hampshire Record Office, Arts Centres, Outdoor Centres and Country Parks all show increases over last year.

Halting and reversing the long term decline in the use of public libraries is a key objective but after a further fall in library visits in 2004/05 it is very gratifying to report a 1.5% increase in 2005/06. This change is not universal. New and refurbished libraries have performed well. Extending the refurbishment and modernisation programme to other libraries is vital to continuing improvement. Initiatives with the County Council's Museums and Libraries services are enabling vulnerable people to access these universal services. Projects include training 20 museum staff to support people with learning disabilities.

The opening of Gosport Discovery Centre in March 2005 marked a key milestone in the library transformation programme. Visits to and usage of the centre have surpassed expectations.

· One year on, visitor numbers have increased by 49% and book borrowers by 15%. The dramatic increase in the use of the Centre by young people is particularly satisfying. The national significance of the Discovery Centre programme is recognised in the award of Cultural Pathfinder status.

Cultural services are adding value to:

· curriculum based learning in schools

· providing less formal learning and development opportunities for children and young people such as the outdoor programmes developed for CLA.

· making high quality cultural and recreational activities available to many people who would not previously have been able to benefit from them for example, Arts and Museums work in residential homes for older people.

Protecting, caring for and empowering vulnerable people

Children Looked After

For the vast majority of Children Looked After in Hampshire long term placement stability is at an acceptable level and comparable to other local authorities. A key element in our approach has been the successful promotion of our Kinship Care Policy, together with Family and Friends arrangements.

· The number of children placed in Kinship Care has increased from 36 in March 2005 to 66 in March 2006.

· The level of adoptions fell in 2005/06 but the results for 2004/05 showed we were in the second quartile of County Councils.

· We were also in the second quartile in 2004/05 for the proportion of care leavers in education, training and employment.

· 21 (6.5%) of care leavers who are 18+ are now in higher education.

· There has also been a marked improvement in the percentage of child protection cases that are reviewed on time. Although at 99.4% this exceeds our target, CSCI recognises that 100% is unrealistic.

ENHANCE Programme

The ENHANCE programme continues to increase the nursing care provision for older people living in Hampshire to 500 beds by 2007. It was established in response to the shortage of nursing care beds across the county to meet the future care needs of an ageing population and to ensure older people are cared for in the best way in the community and have choices around that care.

The 500 new beds will add to the 3, 600 beds currently in privately-run nursing homes and 850 residential beds in 24 county council run homes across Hampshire.

· 89 older people per 10,000 were supported in residential or nursing homes.

· 2.5 younger adults per 10,000 were supported in residential or nursing homes

· 88% of clients were allocated a single room in a residential or nursing home, in line with our target of 90%

Other vulnerable adults were also supported

· 55.6 adults with learning disabilities per 1,000 population aged 18-64 yrs were supported with short term breaks as part of their care plan, exceeding our target of 48.

· 2.35 adults with learning disabilities per 1,000 population aged 18- 64 yrs were helped to live at home, meeting our target of 2.3

· 6.6 adults with physical disabilities per 1,000 population aged 18- 64 yrs were helped to live at home, exceeding our target of 6.0

· 8.6 adults with mental health problems per 1,000 population aged 18- 64 yrs were helped to live at home, below our target of 11. This is due to developments to integrate services with Health, making it harder to count Adult Services clients separately.

Hampshire Direct Payments Scheme.

Direct Payments is a Social Services scheme which puts people in control of their own lifestyle. It does this by giving people the finance to enable them to employ the people or services they choose or to provide the assistance that they decide they need. The scheme has enabled disabled people to live independently since 1981.

· There are currently 128 clients per 100,000 population using Direct Payments to purchase and manage their own care, exceeding our target of 120.

Occupational Therapists - OT Direct

Callers to OT Direct talk to advisers trained in helping supply simple pieces of equipment, and if they need more than advice and standard equipment, arrangements are made to see an occupational therapist for an assessment at home or at a clinic.

Since OT Direct began at the start of last year more than 16,000 calls have been taken, and waiting lists for access to occupational therapy services have fallen by a third. Occupational therapists have also had their time freed up to concentrate on the more complex aspects of their work.

· 84% of all items of equipment and adaptations were delivered within 7 working days, exceeding our target of 75%

Aim 2 - Stewardship of the environment

Shaping our surroundings

We maintained our campaign to raise awareness of the potential impact of the South East Plan and to lobby for additional infrastructure and funding to support development above existing growth rates. In the meantime, although the figures are yet to be finally audited by SEERA we have continued to meet our regional housing target.

We continued to improve our performance in processing major planning applications within the government target of 13 weeks.

The collection of information to support land and environmental management schemes was maintained.

During the year there was no net loss of habitats and species arising from the Council's own development and planning policies.

Travel and transport

The Department for Transport's (DfT) continuing assessment of how we are delivering our first Local Transport Plan (LTP) rose from 76% to 84%. The draft LTP2 was submitted to the DfT in July 2005 and was assessed as above average. Judgement of the final plan submitted in March 06 is awaited.

Our LPSA in relation to road maintenance has been a catalyst in halting and reversing long term deterioration in road conditions. Additional local investment in road maintenance continued during 2005/6. This helped raise public satisfaction in road maintenance from 43 to 45% and see the proportion of non-principal roads in need of repair fall from 10.5% to 4.89%.

Having finally managed to access the necessary machinery the condition of principal roads was surveyed during 2005/06. The results are expected at any time. Unfortunately the changing requirements from government means that the results will not be directly comparable with previous surveys.

Our continuing investment in Quality Bus Partnerships (QBP) saw passenger levels rise between 2.5% to 35% on the targeted routes. Seven of these routes now operate a service with a 10 minute frequency. The Blackwater Valley QBP was given the Successful Partnership Award in the UK Bus Awards 2005 having experienced a 17% growth in passenger numbers.

Natural resources

We are now seeing the full benefits of the decisions made some years ago to invest in a new recycling and recovery infrastructure.

· The amount of waste that went to landfill was more than halved to 19% with the amounts recycled and going to energy recovery increasing to 32% and 49% respectively.

Work to further increase participation in recycling continued with a range of initiatives under the `Recycle for Hampshire' community awareness programme.

We introduced a new recycling service for schools in April 2005 and this has been taken up by 75% of local schools. We are also trying to make new developments more sustainable, including further progress in using recycled materials in our highway activities.

Our pioneering work to promote the use of waste as a resource was reflected in a Government consultation on the review of the national waste strategy, which incorporated many of the concepts developed in Hampshire.

Aim 3 - Achieving economic prosperity

Promoting economic well-being

We are working at all levels to reduce the impact of congestion on the county's economic performance:

· A revised proposal for the South Hampshire Rapid Transit (SHRT) with lower costs was submitted to the Department for Transport but, unfortunately, it failed to secure approval by the Government. Alternative options to address transport issues in the Fareham - Gosport Corridor are being explored.

· We maintained our efforts to encourage companies to prepare and adopt travel plans that help to reduce dependence on car commuting and promote wider travel choices.

Supporting businesses in Hampshire

By promoting Hampshire as a location for investment and tourism and focussing on sectors which can benefit from assistance including knowledge based creative/cultural industries and rural economy, 31.6m new investment was brought into Hampshire in 2005/06.

e.VOLve was launched in October 05 which is a new database and website which provides a complete picture of voluntary and community organisations across Hampshire and the Isle of Wight. The e.VOLve database will also provide more detailed information, which can be used to highlight emerging trends and monitor whether the services on offer match the needs of the communities they serve enabling the mapping of the economic impact of these sectors.

On Hampshire County Council's website a Business and Economy Portal has been created and many Hampshire Broadband schemes have supported the promotion and take-up of broadband technology.

· The current take up of Broadband in Hampshire has just exceeded our target of 30% and we are still working on 100% availability.

· Broad band advice was delivered to 270 companies

· Hampshire Broadband provided take-up grants to 430 companies

Hampshire County Council tries to stimulate growth and entrepreneurship and encourage innovation and this has been achieved by sponsoring ten business excellence awards around Hampshire. We believe these schemes increase the opportunities for new businesses to showcase and share their achievements and promote their product or service to the wider business community.

The Hampshire Business Directory, which is a comprehensive database information for all listed companies is available in print and on CD-ROM and during 05/06 was supplied to 550 businesses.

Access to skills and employment

Childcare and nursery provision in Hampshire is amongst the best in the country, both in quantity and quality.

· The number of registered childcare places increased in 2005/06 to 45,600: the highest for any local authority in England.

The County Council has encouraged schools to expand the range of work related learning available to KS4 students using the Dedicated Schools Grant.

The Increased Flexibility Programme has been used to enable more students access to vocational courses at local colleges whilst at school. This is supported and developed through the joint HCC/LSC 14-19 strategy.

35 apprentices began working with the Council in 2004/05 with a variety of service managers taking up the initiative to provide potential posts and in 2005/06 the overall target of 46 apprenticeships was achieved.

Aim 4 - Building strong and safe communities

Working together with Hampshire communities

The Local Public Service Agreement - LPSA 1 agreement ended in March 2005.

· Eight of the 13 targets were achieved at 60% or above

· £10.5m reward grant was claimed to be paid over two years

Development and negotiation of the second round LPSA was a partnership initiative involving district councils, police, fire, ambulance, Voluntary Community Services and NHS bodies. The LPSA2 was signed in February 06 and the targets are incorporated within the Local Area Agreement (LAA) - managed by Hampshire County Council and developed through a complex, high level partnership and governance structure was signed by Government ministers in March.

Inter-faith forum

Hampshire County Council's launched its Inter-faith Forum in January 2006 to provide a place where people from different faith backgrounds and diverse communities can meet and exchange views and ideas and help foster better understanding. £30,000 has been allocated over the next three years to help fund the project work of the Faith and Communities Network and the Youth Inter-faith Forum as part of its commitment to stronger, safer communities.

Promoting Citizenship

Hampshire County Council Youth Services supported initiatives with young people by promoting citizenship through attendance at the `Future Europeans' conference in Brussels, a European summer school in Bosnia and Herzegovina, and taking part in the UK Youth Parliament elections. Nearly nine thousand young people from across Hampshire's schools and youth centres cast their vote in November 2005, making this one of the most popular youth parliament elections to date.

The Council's Futures Group introduced the `Futures' competition to encourage young people to be more involved with their local community and improve their understanding of local government and the services it provides. All secondary schools across Hampshire were invited to take part in a competition and pupils from six schools are working with County Councillors to discuss ways to make their visions for the future a reality.

Sports development

Our sports development unit has extended its work with partners, local sports clubs and schools to increase the number of qualified coaches, to support volunteer coaches, provide more opportunities for competitive sport through schools and to raise levels of participation in physical activity by all ages. 2006 will see the first Hampshire Games for the 50 plus age group in addition to the youth, mini and parallel games.

Working with others to build strong, safe and sustainable communities

As part of the LAA twelve primary schools have been identified where innovative work will be undertaken to join up services to improve links with their communities in order to raise levels of pupil attainment.

Door stoppers - Protecting Older People

The Protecting Older People team is dedicated to raise awareness among older people of rogue traders, distraction burglaries and to reduce their vulnerability by providing advice and promoting what help is available when dealing with cold callers and when employing a tradesman. The team also works with victims to ensure they are not targeted again by providing advice and, in some cases, Senior-link alarms. The project was expanded in 05/06 to cover more areas of the County.

Hampshire County Council's Quick Response Team dealt with an increase in complaints about doorstep traders who target the elderly and vulnerable.

· The team conducted 33 interventions in 05/06, saving Hampshire residents over £60,000 in dealings with rogue traders.

Protecting Vulnerable People

In 2005/05 Hampshire County Council trained over 560 of its Adult Services staff to identify and assess risks to vulnerable people at risk of abuse.

Promoting health and well-being

There was an excellent reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured on Hampshire's roads, showing a 23% drop in all people killed or seriously injured since 04/05. It is unrealistic to make comparisons year-on-year given the volatile nature of this measure and therefore encouraging to note the longer term downward trend of -37% since the 1994-1998 average figure. This now puts the County Council ahead of its linear target to achieve a 40% reduction in the more serious road casualties by the end of this decade.

Healthy Schools Award

The Healthy Schools scheme is based on health and education partnerships across the region. Its aim is to provide support for school improvement through establishing a Healthy School climate in which improved health and well-being is reflected in raised educational standards

· 483 (89%) of schools out of 541 have been involved in training for the Healthy Schools Award

· 260 have been validated to the original standard. Our target is for half the schools to reach the new enhanced standard by the end of 2006.

Schools Sports Partnerships

These are a major development to support young people's participation in sport and to improve the quantity and quality of PE and school sport for pupils, and make closer sporting links between schools and support the development of young leaders.

· By September 2006 all Hampshire County Council's schools will be part of one of 10 schools sports partnerships across the county.

Health of Children Looked After

Our Children's Services Department focussed on improving the health of Children Looked After (CLA).

· In 2005/06 87% of CLA received an annual health assessment and dental check.

· All CLA are registered with a doctor and dentist. The department is also on target for 100% of young people with substance misuse problems being treated by appropriate services by 2007.

Teenage Pregnancies

The number of teenage pregnancies reduced by 15.7% for under 18 conception rates, exceeding our 10% target.

Healthy Hampshire

The Hampshire County Council's stand at the New Forest show in July 2005 ran along the theme of `Healthy Hampshire' and featured activities promoting healthy food and school meals, sports and leisure pursuits, walking and cycling and articles were also promoted in the summer edition of Hampshire Now, the County Council magazine regarding healthy leisure pursuits, road safety and healthy summer eating.

Health Care in Hampshire

Health Scrutiny is a relatively new area of responsibility for Hampshire County Council and the Health Review Committee has contributed to specific benefits in the delivery of health care in Hampshire for example the Primary Care Trust withdrawing its proposal to close community hospitals in the New Forest.

Aim 5 - Improving services

Improving our performance

Hampshire County Council has been rated a Four Star authority in the Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) Tougher Test and had been noted for its `strong record of improvement in its priority areas and in improving services for residents'.  This is a great achievement and places us in a select group of top performing councils nationwide.

The Council has a strong track record and, for the last three years, has achieved `Excellent' - the highest of five - in the CPA rankings.  In 2005 the criteria was much harder and left some other authorities faring less well than in previous years.  However, Hampshire has managed to maintain its high standards and the auditors judged that the Council `achieves or strives for high performance and value for money in all its services'.

Starting from a base of 43% BVPIs in the top quartile in 2000/01 this dropped to 34% in 2002/03 but since has risen to 36% in 2003/04 and to 40% in 2004/05. This is a high percentage of BVPIs compared with other County Councils. This is against a backdrop of a changing set of indicators from year to year, achieving top quartile status for resident's satisfaction levels and maintaining the level of Council Tax in the lowest quartile for 2005/06.

Providing access to employment and services in a way that suits the community and our customers

Significant work has been carried out to improve Human Resources (HR) support for front-line services. This includes the restructuring of the HR department into Centres of Excellence, the establishment of a shared service centre at Eastleigh and the introduction of Business Partners in Recreation and Heritage, Adult Services, Children's Services and Chief Executive's/IT departments has started to bring about a positive improvement in terms of delivering core HR support to front line services. HR have now developed one way of working, having brought together departmental teams which had disparate practices and this has enabled HR to deliver its SAP savings target for 2005/2006 .

Managing our resources

The key achievements for 2005/06 are as follows:

· The implementation of SAP has produced savings of £800,000 in 2004/05 and an extra £250,000 in 2005/06 across finance, purchasing, IT and HR.

· We have ensured 78% of public buildings are accessible by disabled people - above the target of 75%.

· Of our services which can be provided electronically 98.9% are now available

· Performance management frameworks have been strengthened through the corporate service planning and performance reporting regime and backed up by departmental approaches to scrutinising and challenging plans for services.

· Most of the Recreation and Heritage cultural services now hold Charter Mark standard for excellence in customer service. This general quality standard is, in several instances, backed up by service specific quality accreditations including Towards an Excellent Service for Sport Hampshire & Isle of Wight and the Green Flag award for some of our country parks.

· A Director for Adult Services was appointed in August 2005, with corporate responsibility for promoting well-being for all Hampshire's residents.

· A Director of Children's Services and his Management Team has also been appointed to implement the key elements of the Children's Act.

MATISSE

MATISSE which stands for Mobile and Teleworking Initiative for a Smarter South East is a partnership project led by Hampshire County Council and funded by SEEDA (South East England Development Agency) that seeks to better understand the economic, social and environmental benefits of mobile and home working.

This project involves a six month pilot study that will test and quantify these benefits as well as the anticipated productivity benefits of increased home or mobile teleworking amongst 100 volunteers from Hampshire County Council and participating small and medium sized enterprises. The main findings and recommendations arising from the MATISSE pilot will be presented at a conference to be held in Winchester in November 2006.

Aim 6 - Developing councillors and staff

Supporting and developing our councillors and staff

As a result of the local elections in May 2005 new County Councillors were welcomed to the authority and given the opportunity to attend a series of introductory briefings and all County Councillors were set up with IT equipment enabling them to work from their office or home.

A programme of briefing sessions was arranged which was open to all members of the Council which gave an overview and an awareness of the County Council activities and an understanding of the services it provides. Post election media training was also arranged for members of the Cabinet.

Members have continued to represent Hampshire on the decision making bodies of the European networks to which we belong which gives us maximum opportunity to influence policy development and enhances our international profile.

Hampshire County Council aims to recruit a workforce that reflects the diverse community and following analysis of staff monitoring data is looking at initiatives to encourage more ethnic minority and disabled people to apply for jobs. As part of the equality strategy many staff have enjoyed sessions on cultural awareness and deaf awareness, which have stimulated some improvements to service provision.

The age and pensions agenda will come to the fore in 2006/2007 and the Council is well placed to attract and retain the older worker having carried out all the preparatory work in early 2006.

Individual Performance Plans

Individual Performance Plan training (IPP) is being delivered to line managers with the IPPs including a development section to complement performance management and the pay and benefits project. IPP targets are being set for 2006/2007 and these are being recorded on SAP so that we can measure our progress in this pilot year. This will support Hampshire County Council in retaining its accreditation as an Investors In People organisation.

Improving Attendance

`Improving Attendance' toolkit has been developed and it will be formally launched in the Autumn 2007 with new stream-lined processes allowing managers to access occupational health directly. New "business focused" Doctors have been appointed . In addition HR has been piloting a wellbeing initiative with Vielife which is a component to the wellbeing strategy.

Wellbeing Award

Early in 2006 Hampshire County Council won the Society of Personnel Officers in Local Government (SOCPO) Wellbeing Award which recognised that the County Council was committed to Wellbeing both internally for staff and also within the community and with partners across Hampshire.

Young Local Authority of the Year 2006 competition

Hampshire County Council's Futures Group forwarded two members to represent Hampshire County Council in the national inaugural `Young Local Authority of the Year' 2006 competition. The team submitted a research paper and took part in various exercises including presenting their paper and being put on the spot to answer questions from the audience and judges. The team came fifth out of 68 entrants.