Dartford Borough Council

Scored on the two DEFRA-published components — recycling rate and residual household waste, FY 2024-25 final data (England averages: 42.0% / 513.3kg per household) — with the remaining components (missed-bin reports, complaint resolution time, service consistency) pending data ingest. Dartford recycled 23.7% of household waste in 2024-25 — the lowest rate in Kent, little more than half the England average of 42.0% and among the lowest in England — with residual waste of 603.5kg per household, the highest in Kent (England: 513.3kg). Attribution: Conservative administration (Jeremy Kite), in control throughout the period.

as of 2026-07-02 · source

Small-numbers caveat: district-tier LGSCO investigation counts are tiny (0–4 a year) and a single case can swing the uphold percentage from 0% to 100%, so this score rests on process indicators — upheld volume per 100,000 residents vs the 1.0 district average, remedies offered before the Ombudsman, and compliance with recommendations — across 2025-26 and 2024-25, never on the raw uphold percentage alone. 2025-26 figures precede the LGSCO annual letters (due ~July 2026) and may be revised. 2025-26: 3 investigations, 3 upheld — 2.4 upheld per 100,000 residents, the highest district rate in Kent this year vs the 1.0 average — with no pre-Ombudsman remedy on any, though compliance was met on time; 2024-25: 1 upheld of 3, with the remedy already provided before the Ombudsman. Attribution: Conservative administration (Jeremy Kite) throughout both years.

as of 2026-07-02 · source

Weighted across the six published components: revenue budget variance 25%, capital programme delivery 20%, reserves & Section 114 risk 20%, external auditor VfM judgement 15%, council tax positioning 10%, council tax trajectory 10%. The strongest district finances in Kent on most components: earmarked revenue reserves of £77.8m (roughly 3.7× the ~£21m net service budget) plus a £3.5m General Fund balance, a clean auditor value-for-money report (no significant weaknesses on any criterion) with an unmodified opinion, and a frozen 2026-27 council tax — Band D £188.64 is the lowest of the 12 Kent districts, with a 5-yr CAGR of 0.79% vs 2.64% for districts nationally. Scored down on forecasting: the 2024/25 revenue outturn came in roughly £4.4m–£4.9m under budget, a materially large underspend the methodology penalises (driven by £5m unbudgeted investment income against a £2.1m temporary-accommodation overspend), with 70% of the capital programme delivered. The 2025/26 outturn was not yet published at collection (expected July 2026); 2024/25 used. Attribution: Conservative administration (Jeremy Kite), in control throughout.

as of 2026-07-03 · source

Fixed-date website audit (2026-07-03) against the Transparency Code checklist: spending-data currency and format, contracts register, councillor allowances, interests, committee papers, senior pay, open data, FOI disclosure log. Items not individually verified this quarter are scored neutrally and flagged. The data largely exists but the site architecture hides it: spending files (£500 threshold) are current to April 2026, yet the main navigation still headlines financial-year pages whose newest file is March 2024 and mislabels 2023-24 content as "2024-25" — the current series is only findable via a sub-page. No councillor-allowances page was locatable during the audit, no open-data presence beyond a data.gov.uk reference, and no FOI performance statistics alongside the disclosure log. Senior pay and organisational information are published and committee papers are live. Attribution: audit conducted under the Conservative administration (Jeremy Kite).

as of 2026-07-03 · source

Scored against the England averages (majors in time 91.0%, non-majors 90.8%, major appeal overturns 3.1%) over the 24 months to March 2026 (speed) and June 2025 (appeal quality), from MHCLG designation-regime tables; the enforcement-trend component (15%) is pending and the three measured components are re-weighted pro rata. The national "in time" measure includes agreed extensions of time. 100% of major applications (43 decisions) and 92.0% of non-majors decided in time — both above the England averages — with 4.2% of major decisions overturned at appeal vs 3.1% nationally (small denominators are volatile). Attribution: Conservative administration (Jeremy Kite) throughout the April 2024 – March 2026 window.

as of 2026-07-02 · source

Trust score: 1 judged pledges + 3 categorised public issues, averaged.

as of 2026-09-29

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