North Lanarkshire Council’s recent overall financial performance has been described as “strong” despite ongoing pressures including the impact of the cost of living crisis.
An internal report presented to councillors shows that demand for services such as the Scottish Welfare Fund and other benefits continues to increase.
However, collection for non domestic rates has risen for the third consecutive year after falling significantly due to the economic effects of the pandemic, and more residents are now paying their council tax via direct debit which increases collection and also reduced administration costs.
Processing of invoices within 30 days remains below target levels but changes to services have increased performance from 76 per cent in 2022-2023 to 92 per cent in 2023-2024.
Dips in performance with regard to management of benefit and Scottish Welfare Fund applications are being addressed with efforts to build additional resilience in the teams and increase automation of some processes to ensure the volume and complexity of applications can be handled with the amount of resources currently available.
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