Delivering our priorities
Recent council achievements in our key priorities:
Children and young people
- For the first time ever, more than six out of 10 pupils sitting GCSEs in South Tyneside passed five or more exams at A*-C. The borough average is now a 60.78% pass rate - an improvement of more than 5% on last year.
- Among the country's 20 best performing authorities for truancy levels and the second best in the North East.
Independent and healthy lives
- Working in partnership with the Primary Care Trust, we opened a one-stop multi-disciplinary health centre in South Shields town centre, completed a centre in Hebburn town centre and a further centre is at the design stage in Cleadon Park.
- Made good progress in reducing falls among people in the borough. Since the launch of our Assistive Technology scheme in 2007 there has been an increase in the take up of falls detectors.
Environment, housing and transport
- Improved maintenance of streets and open spaces, linked to local community involvement, led to 13 awards being presented by Northumbria in Bloom judges.
- Our recycling village won a national award for civic amenity site of the year.
- South Tyneside Homes was judged as 'One Star' with 'Promising prospects for improvement' when inspected in February 2007 and is working towards a 'Two Star' inspection rating in this year which will release £167m of additional investment.
Jobs and enterprise
- Three Business Matters outlets have now opened in our town centres, fully staffed by a team of advisors.
- Over the past four years we have provided support to create 173 new businesses, 1,425 new jobs, assisted 245 existing businesses and safeguarded 1,039 existing jobs.
Safer and stronger communities
More people feel safer:
- 28% of people in the borough believe there is a high level of anti-social behaviour, this compares to 49% in 2004. This reduction is the largest in Tyne & Wear.
- Last year (January 2007 – January 2008) overall crime fell by 9.4%
Wellbeing and culture
- Hebburn Pool successfully retained its QUEST accreditation for the running and management of the service. Temple Park received an outstanding result for its first assessment.
- Our satisfaction rate with libraries is the highest of all single tier and county councils.
- 6,000 young people took part in the Get involved programme of summer activities organised with a number of other agencies.
Regeneration
- The transformation of the Cleadon Park Estate continues with 94 social rented properties now in occupation and over 55 reservations taken for owner occupation.
- In Hebburn, Fountain Park has been transformed into a user friendly recreational space.
- Great progress made in plans to regenerate the riverside and South Shields foreshore with Garlands creating a 1,000 seat contact centre and Tavistock Leisure appointed as preferred developer for a £15 million luxury hotel and conference venue, which will be the largest facility of its kind in the region.
Resources
- We set our lowest council tax increase in 13 years.
- The Benefit Fraud Inspectorate awarded our benefit service an overall performance score of four out of four for our Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) 2007.
- We are delivering better value for money.