The Local Government Benchmarking Framework (LGBF) brings together a wide range of information about how all Scottish councils perform in delivering services to local communities.

Benchmarking is an improvement process that helps organisations understand how they perform in comparison to other, similar organisations. In order to work well it needs to be a systematic and rigorous process designed to help organisations learn together. As such, all Scottish local authorities have worked together to report standard information on the services they provide which can be compared across councils and year-on-year. This information takes the form of specific ‘indicators’ that measure aspects of performance, for example, how much a service costs per user or how satisfied local people are with a service. The indicators cover seven service areas which together account for over 60% of local government spending. These service areas are: children, corporate, adult social care, culture and leisure, environmental, housing and economic development.

The purposes of the Local Government Benchmarking Framework are:

• to help councils and their services better understand why they achieve their current performance levels
• to build our understanding of where council performance varies
• to build our understanding of why council performance varies
• to help identify and share good practice across councils

The current Framework contains data from 2010-2015. Details outlining trends across Scotland and the factors affecting those trends are available from the link below.

​Go to the Local Government Benchmarking Framework