This covers dozens of items on topics including children’s services, social work, housing, development services, roads and lighting, cultural and community services, waste management, protective services, corporate management and benefits administration.

The report was colour-coded, with a number of items getting “red” warnings where performance had worsened by at least 5% compared to the previous year. This included an increase in the number of primary schools whose rolls were under 40% of capacity and a drop in the number of home care clients receiving personal care services.

Councillor Shimi said, “There are always areas for improvement, and we are highlighting indicators where our performance has declined so we can focus on these for next year.

“This underlines our commitment to continuous improvement as well as transparency in our public reporting on performance.

“For example, levels of occupancy rates in our primary schools will be reviewed to take account of the co-location of other services in schools, the introduction of smaller class sizes and the planned investment in school buildings through the PPP scheme.

“We will also be looking to increase resources for home care clients receiving personal care.”

The time taken to process some planning applications and the number of successful appeals against the refusal of planning permission also worsened, as did the record on carrying out some food hygiene inspections and dealing with trading standards complaints.

The costs of rubbish collection and disposal also went up.

The council maintained or improved its record in 63% of the indicators compared to 2004/05, its best result for five years and in several categories performance earned a “green” coding by improving by 5% or more.

Councillor Shimi said, “We are always trying to improve performance and the results of the performance indicators show we have largely been successful in achieving this over the last year.

“I am particularly pleased that our performance in previously weak areas such as council tax collection and sickness absence levels has seen a marked improvement.”