Local Environmental Quality (LEQ) has been identified as one of the main concerns of local communities today. The Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR), published in October 2010, highlights a number of key changes to Local Authority performance measures. These include the replacement of the National Indicator Set with a proposed single, comprehensive list of data to be provided by local authorities to central government (details of which are not yet known).
DEFRA introduced the common standard BVPI 199 (Best Value Performance Indicator) for reporting on the cleanliness of streets and the local environment, as a member of the public would perceive it in 2003. Late in 2007, Communities Secretary Hazel Blears unveiled the new set of National Indicator. This standard was deemed to be too important to be lost in the 90% culling of local authority performance indicators. BVPI 199 continued under the new National Indicator Framework: NI 195 Improved Street and Environmental Cleanliness.
Keep Britain Tidy are still advocating the use of NI 195 by local authorities. NI 195 has provided excellent operational and performance management information about local environmental quality for a number of years now. With a predefined and well understood set of guidelines, NI 195 has proved itself a valuable tool in helping to improve efficiency and the level of service delivery throughout local authorities in England. The wide understanding of the indicator lends itself well to being established as a regular local monitoring measure enabling even deeper understanding of service delivery.
iBase have been providing software to support these standards since 2005. We firmly believe that the use of NI 195 at a local level, whether it is submitted to central government or not, will assist organisations in improving levels of transparency, efficiency and accountability.
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