CHESHIRE West and Chester Council has been accused of altering targets to mask its failures ahead of an annual performance review in November.

The Conservative opposition group claims the authority’s Labour-led administration is deliberately “moving the goal posts” - like a school pupil re-marking their own homework.

The criticism comes less than a week after CWaC was named Council of the Year at the Association of Public Service Excellence Awards 2018.

A report to the cabinet on September 12 shows that out of 165 performance indicators, 41 (24.8 per cent) have been missed and flagged as ‘red’ on a traffic lights-style grading system.

These include targets such as lowering unemployment, reducing the number of children on child protection plans, providing accommodation for homeless people, and air quality management. (The full list has been reproduced at the end of this article).

However, at a pre-meeting of the council’s People Overview and Scrutiny Committee – held on the same day as the cabinet meeting – it was announced that 22 per cent of the targets would be changed.

This would be ahead of the publication of the full annual performance review in November.

Cllr Lynn Riley, opposition leader, said the situation shows that Labour are “letting residents down, while making the rules up as they go along”.

She added: “This feels like Labour is moving the goal posts and re-marking its own homework.”

Cllr Riley told The Standard that she would not apologise for asking difficult questions of the council’s administration and officers. She also said the missed targets showed that council leader Samantha Dixon was “not asking the difficult questions of the officers”.

“It’s an uncomfortable truth but we shouldn’t be adjusting targets just because they’re difficult,” she said. “We [the Conservative group] are doing a very good job of asking the difficult questions when literally every pound matters and people’s lives are affected.”

The specific targets that have been adjusted have not yet been made public, but Cllr Riley said many are to “service areas that impact on people’s lives”.

Approached for a response to the Conservative group’s comments, Cllr Dixon said they were “living in an alternative reality”.

She stressed that just last week Cheshire West and Chester Council was named Council of the Year by the Association for Public Service Excellence (APSE).

She also said the authority had a “clean sheet” from external auditors for the third year running and had been “recognised for our prudent management of this council's finances”.

“The Conservative Group in Cheshire West and Chester are living in an alternative reality,” Cllr Dixon said.

“They have misrepresented information to undermine the good work of this council and in doing so they have demonstrated both poor judgement and a worrying lack of understanding of simple facts.”

A spokesman for the council explained that it is “standard practice” to make any “appropriate revisions” to targets before the full performance report for the year is considered in November.

“This may involve indicators which are no longer possible to measure, indicators that have changed as a result of changes in circumstances or indicators where we are performing better than our comparator councils but have set our local target too high,” she said.

“For example, we were outperforming similar authorities on a range of children’s social care indicators but were missing our local target as it may have been set too high. Also some indicators such as unemployment are measured in a different way by central government so alternative measures have been proposed.”

The spokesman said 78 per cent of indicators and targets had not changed following these revisions. She also stressed that members of the council’s three scrutiny committees had been fully and openly briefed about the changes.

Cllr Dixon said Labour had introduced the performance management framework to help the public better understand decisions made by the council in an “open and transparent way”.

“The previous Tory administration had no such framework,” she said. “The rationale for every change to the Performance Management Framework has been explained to the Conservative leadership as well as the councillors who serve on the committees that scrutinise the council's work in meetings.”

She added: “The information on the council's performance is in the public domain and readily available for people to see, I would invite all residents to take a look and decide for themselves how well we are doing.”

* The 41 targets currently flagged as ‘red’ are:

1. Reduce the proportion of primary school age children with Special Education Need & Disability who have an Education, Health & Care Plan who are not taught in mainstream provision.

2. Reduce the proportion of secondary school age children with Special Education Need and Disability who have an Educational Health and Care Plan who are not taught in mainstream provision.

3. Reduce the proportion of children who become subject of a Child Protection Plan for a second or subsequent time.

4. Reduce the proportion of referrals to children’s social care that are within 12 months of a previous referral.

5. Increase the proportion of front door decisions that are made within 24 hours .

6. Increase the proportion of single assessments that are completed within 45 days.

7. Reduce the rate of Looked After Children (children in care) per 10,000 population 0-17 years old.

8. Reduce the proportion of Looked After Children who are placed out of the borough and 20+ miles from home.

9. Increase the proportion of Care Leavers who are in Education, Employment or Training (EET).

10. Increase the number of carers who are given information and advice and/or signposted to other universal services at the completion of an assessment.

11. Increase the proportion of adults in contact with secondary mental health services who live independently with or without support.

12. Increase the number of people engaging with smoking cessation services in CWaC who successfully quit smoking, measured at 4 weeks.

13. Increase physical activity levels, reported via numbers of visitors to Brio Leisure.

14. Improve mental health outcomes through the use of green spaces for health improvement activities (measured via the Natural Health Service).

15. Improved timeliness of provision of high-level IT project estimates, proportion responded to within 5 working days.

16. Proportion of IT projects delivered to the agreed milestones.

17. Delivery of savings proposals.

18. Delivery of approved capital programme.

19. Number of households in temporary accommodation per quarter (snapshot).

20. Number of households in Bed & Breakfast accommodation per quarter (snapshot).

21. Rough sleeping estimate (annual snapshot of the number of individuals sleeping rough on a given night).

22. Decrease long term unemployment among CWaC residents (number of claimants who have been on Job Seekers Allowance for more than 6 months).

23. Increase the number of apprenticeship starts in employers in the borough (9 month time lag on data publication).

24. Increase the use of Park and Ride in Chester, measured by the number of P&R passengers per annum.

25. Increase the availability of services through Digital Technology.

26. Key Stage 2, proportion of pupils achieving the Expected Standard, Reading and Writing and Maths - Reduce the gap between Disadvantaged and Non Disadvantaged Children.

27. Key Stage 4, Progress 8 Score - Reduce the gap between Disadvantaged and Non Disadvantaged Children.

28. Key Stage 4, Progress 8 Score - Reduce the gap between Children In Care and All Pupils.

29. Key Stage 4, Progress 8 Score - Result for All Pupils.

30. Reduce the proportion of the working age population who are on main out of work benefits (DWP data, 6 month time lag on publication).

31. Increase the number of people receiving telecare.

32. Reduce the number of Delayed Transfers of Care (DTOC) from hospital for residents of CWaC (total number of days delayed, 6 week time lag on data).

33. Admission episodes for alcohol related conditions per 100,000 population (PHOF narrow definition).

34. Reduce the life expectancy gap between the most deprived and most affluent areas of the borough (Women).

35. Reduce the overall number of Transactional Service Centre (TSC) helpdesk queries.

36. Number of homeless preventions (data collection changed during 2016/17).

37. Number of homeless acceptances.

38. Increase the proportion of residents who are satisfied with highways overall (NHT Survey).

39. Increase the proportion of residents who are satisfied with highways condition (NHT Survey).

40. Increase the proportion of residents who are satisfied with highways maintenance (NHT Survey).

41. Air Quality Management Areas (AQMAs) - achieve the 2019/20 AQMA target for Chester.