Council Plan Connect 2022-27: Quarter 4 Progress Report 2024-25

The council’s performance management reporting system IMPROVe uses a traffic light format with the following definitions to give a status report on each action or performance measure:

The overall summary of Connect progress to date is as follows:

Data as at 12 June 2025 v2

Key achievements to date against each of the six Connect Outcomes are summarised below:

Connect Outcome - Communities and Environment

• In 2024-2025, South Lanarkshire University Health and Social Care Partnership received a total of 685 stories from service users, patients, their families and carers via Care Opinion. Care Opinion is enhancing our understanding of people’s experiences with health and care and has been crucial in helping us build on our strengths while also identifying areas for improvement, allowing us to make targeted refinements wherever appropriate.
• The Community Wish List has continued to thrive, with 36 Community Wishes received from a range of community groups across South Lanarkshire. 23 Wishes have been answered, with a range of financial donations, goods and materials, and reallocation of furniture items from South Lanarkshire Leisure and Culture (SLLC) property (totalling £27,918). To date this financial year, the project has totalled over £83,000
• The percentage of household waste sent to landfill in the period January to December 2024 was 1.32%, well within the target of below 5%.
• The percentage of properties with Full Fibre Connection has increased to 58.8% in 2024-2025, exceeding the annual target to reach 43% coverage.
• A programme of bridge and other structure projects has been implemented, including the £9.4million replacement of the Clyde Bridge.

Connect Outcome - Education and Learning

• SQA examination results for the 2024 exam diet were published by SQA on 6 August 2024. SLC pupils were presented for over 80,000 qualifications at National 5, Higher and Advanced Higher levels. When compared with National pass rates (based on entries in other Local Authorities) attainment levels in SLC are above the National Pattern.
• An increasing percentage of our primary schools are now offering play-based learning at each stage between Primary 1-3. There is also one establishment implementing this approach across a P1-4 class.
  Primary 1: Approximately 79.4%
  Primary 2: Approximately 53.7%
  Primary 3: Approximately 24.1%
• 29 of our schools have now achieved the highest gold level in the Scottish Book Trust Reading Schools framework. A further 22 have silver status and 35 have accredited status. This respected framework is linked to How Good is Our School 4 (HGIOS4) and aims to build an inclusive reading culture in schools. Our levels of award are comparatively very high and are reflected in the continuing improvement in our literacy attainment levels.
• Another successful Conference of Schools (CoS3) event took place this year. Designed and delivered by our young people for our young people, the event provided a valuable platform to educate, inspire and engage on these matters. The event was again well attended and received significant praise from Education Scotland’s Chief Executive, who visited on the day.
• The Instrumental Music Service (IMS) featured 12 diverse performances from mainstream and ASN schools in the 12 Days of Christmas event. Throughout December, the IMS supported over 100 school concerts, community events and services.

Connect Outcome - Health and Wellbeing

• Of the 50 new homes completed to date in 2024-2025, all have been built to ‘Housing for Varying Needs’ standards and are easily adaptable to accommodate tenants’ changing needs over time.
  8 of the 50 (16%) were accessible for wheelchairs, exceeding the target of 10% established in the Local Housing Strategy 2022-27. The homes are located close to existing services, amenities and transport links, allowing tenants to easily connect with the existing community within Brackenhill Farm.
  The council’s affordable housing supply programme continues to increase the supply of council homes across South Lanarkshire, with a focus on ensuring that the new homes provide for changes in people's needs over the course of time.
• Equal Say, the adult Advocacy commissioned service, completed its first year of operation in October 2024. Quarterly reports show increased activity in referrals of over 150 per quarter, and prominent advocacy issues associated with Mental Health Legislation, Adults with Incapacity, and Adult Support and Protection.
• Lanarkshire Advocacy Planning Working Group is refreshing the Lanarkshire Advocacy Plan 2020-25, ensuring that Advocacy supports the voice of service users and carers and the importance of those Advocacy services to the most vulnerable groups within our communities.
• Lanarkshire Carers continues to develop and evolve its “CarerSpace” online portal to start or continue a conversation. It is a toolkit developed by carers for carers that helps explore various aspects of a carer’s life, focusing on what matters to them. Once submitted staff from Lanarkshire Carers can pick up the conversation with the carer.
• Take Control, the commissioned service for independent advice and information on Self Directed Support, has worked with 400 South Lanarkshire residents to exercise choice and control over their care and support arrangements.
• See Hear Strategic Working Group hosted an information event in Hamilton on 29 May 2024. Twenty-two organisations contributed to the event focused on sensory services for hearing and sight. The Director attended the event, thanking all the services for their continued support to South Lanarkshire Residence.
• Care at Home teams, including Home Assessment, have been subject to inspection by the Care Inspectorate during 2024-2025. The feedback has been positive throughout, with almost all areas of inspection graded as ‘very good’ or ‘good’ and inspectors highlighting significant strengths in relation to the delivery of care; positive outcomes for people; strong leadership; and a highly trained workforce. The gradings and positive feedback are testament to the substantial programme of redesign and modernisation over the last five years in response to the serious concerns identified by the Care Inspectorate in 2019.
• Work on the Cost of the School Day was presented at the national Facing Up to Poverty in Schools Network and highlighted as an example of good practice.
• The £13m Transition Fund is helping to modernise the leisure and culture assets. Phase 1 (£8.5m) spend underway. Phase 2 projects were approved at the Executive Committee on 13 November 2024 and are now being progressed.
• Works on the six play areas identified for investment, as part of the multi-year Play Area Investment Programme, are now complete.
• Consultation on play areas has been undertaken with local members and communities in the Hamilton area

Connect Outcome - Children and Young People

• 100% of young people leaving care were provided with a housing options discussion, which resulted in the development of an individual housing plan. 100% were supported to move onto suitable accommodation.
• A new partnership project, led by Social Work and Housing in cooperation with Barnardo’s and supported by the National Lottery Community Fund, has been helping young people transition from care into their own accommodation. The project was developed with the assistance of the members of the South Lanarkshire Champions Board, a group of care-experienced young people who advocate for the needs of their peers and shape services within the South Lanarkshire area.
• The Futures project provides wrap-around support to young people leaving care and moving to independent living for the first time. This is done by providing four furnished training flats together with intensive support to assist the young people in developing skills for setting up their home, maintaining a successful independent tenancy and building local community connections and networks before moving to fully independent living.

Connect Outcome - Housing and Land

• We continue to increase the supply of affordable housing with the delivery of 180 homes during 2024-2025. This includes 50 new builds and 130 properties acquired through the market purchase scheme.
• 91.9% of tenancies were sustained for more than a year.
• Average days to relet a property decreased from 22.15 days in 2023-24 to 19.31 days in 2024-2025.
• 99% of reactive repairs were completed right first time.

Connect Outcome - Our Economy

• Support for businesses in South Lanarkshire has exceeded the set targets against the following measures:
  - the number of business support interventions per annum by Economic Development was 1,014 (target 800)
  - the number of jobs created or sustained as a direct result of Economic Development intervention was 1,071 (target 500)
  - increased value of sales generated by businesses as a direct result of Economic Development intervention was £8.532m (target £5m)
• A range of business programmes, services and events have been delivered, including:
  - Food and Drink: the council financially and practically supported the Lanarkshire Larder.
  - Tourism: the council has delivered a range of projects to support tourism in the area, such as a travel trade programme to help businesses that operate primarily in the tourism sector to become ready to work with the travel trade.
  - Construction: Build Lanarkshire Programme was successfully delivered by the council in conjunction with North Lanarkshire and Hub South West.
  - Young Enterprise: the council successfully delivered the inaugural Shark Reef initiative aimed at promoting entrepreneurship to S3 pupils.
  - Meet the Real Buyer event: Co-delivered, successfully enabling local businesses to speak to public and private sector buyers.
• 3,059 participants have been supported on council-operated employability programmes; over double the 1,500 target.

In addition to working towards the six Connect Outcomes, the council will continually aim to improve and ensure effective and efficient use of resources, and that business will be conducted with integrity and transparency and will operate to the highest standards. In order to monitor and report progress against these values, Resource outcomes have also been identified, under the heading Delivering the Plan and achieving Best Value. Related achievements to date are summarised below:

Delivering the Plan and achieving Best Value

• Against an extremely challenging set of socio-economic circumstances, positive performance, against the previous year, was achieved in relation to:
  - the percentage of rent collected which increased from 99.5% Quarter 4 (2023-24) to 100.2% in Quarter 4 (2024-2025).
  - the percentage of gross rent arrears reduced over the same period from 8% Quarter 4 (2023-24) to 7.1% in Quarter 4 (2024-2025)
• As part of the Glasgow City Region Smart and Connected Social Places (SCSP) 5G Innovation Fund, South Lanarkshire University Health and Social Care Partnership has engaged with Care Messenger Holdings Ltd to deliver an innovative project that provides commercial LG Smart TV products to residents living within David Walker Gardens care home for older people. Residents who wish to participate in the project can communicate directly via text message or video call with care home staff, their families, befrienders or other professionals, via their TV. Initially 20 TVs were installed within residents' rooms, and this has since been offered to all 50 residents across the whole care home. Early evaluation indicates a positive impact on social isolation and loneliness.
• The audited Accounts for 2023-24 were produced and received a clean audit certificate. These were approved for signature by the Risk and Audit Scrutiny Committee before the submission date of 30 September 2024.
• With assistance from the Improvement Service, the council developed an SLC-focused Local Government Benchmarking Framework (LGBF) dashboard reflecting the council's strategic priorities as set out in the Council Plan, Connect. Following presentation at the PRSF on 28 May 2024, the dashboard was made available to the public via a link on the performance pages of the council's website.
• Year two of the three-year Frontline First Fund (totalling £3.5million) is fully implemented. Major improvements include refurbishment of Carluke marketplace, Blantyre miner’s monument, ongoing repair of Lanark Loch walkways, shrub bed removal Westwoodhill, East Kilbride.

Progress to date against the full suite of measures is contained in the Connect Quarter 4 Performance Report, presented to the Performance and Review Scrutiny Forum (PRSF)

A further analysis introduced to aid scrutiny of performance is to highlight and explain all measures that have changed status from Quarter 2 to Quarter 4. On analysis of these, five measures improved, and five measures showed a decline in performance - details of which are below. The remaining measures under scrutiny showed an improvement in status between Quarter 2 and Quarter 4, for example, changed from Green or Report later to Blue (complete) and need no further action.

Performance has improved from Q2 to Q4

Performance has declined from Q2 to Q4