Gravesham 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. Gravesham recycled 40.4% of household waste in 2024-25 — just below the England average of 42.0%, 8th of the 13 Kent waste-collection authorities — with residual waste of 443.7kg per household vs 513.3kg nationally. Attribution: Labour administration (John Burden), in office 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: 2 upheld of 3 investigations — 1.8 upheld per 100,000 residents vs the 1.0 district average — with no pre-Ombudsman remedy but 100% timely compliance; 2024-25: no investigations completed. Attribution: Labour administration (John Burden) 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%. 2024/25 outturn: £935k favourable against the £14.6m budget requirement, with less reserve drawdown than planned — but capital delivery slipped badly (General Fund spend £22.3m against an original ~£65m programme including the re-profiled Charter/Rosherville facility and Cascades leisure works; HRA capital 62% under its revised budget), and Grant Thornton's February 2026 report finds TWO significant weaknesses — financial sustainability (Red, carried forward, with planned reserve drawdowns continuing) and governance (Red, NEW, with key recommendation KR2 on finance-team capacity to produce financial statements) — while the 2025-26 draft accounts are formally delayed (notice published 30 June 2026) and the auditor flags a c.£1.9m funding gap by 2027/28. General Fund working balances are healthy at ~37% of net budget (£46.8m total usable including HRA and capital reserves). Council tax: Band D £245.07, 7th-highest of the 12 Kent districts; 5-yr CAGR 2.84% vs 2.64% nationally. Attribution: Labour administration (John Burden), in office since 2019.

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 freshest spending data in Kent — the June 2026 monthly file (£500 threshold) was already published at the 3 July audit date — plus councillor allowances and senior-pay/structure pages, with live committee papers. The contracts register was not verified, there is no FOI disclosure log or open-data portal, and the transparency directory URL still contains a leftover "test" slug. Attribution: audit conducted under the Labour administration (John Burden).

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. 91.3% of major applications and 95.2% of non-majors decided in time, with NO major decision overturned at appeal (0.0% vs 3.1% for England) — though on only 23 major decisions in 24 months, the smallest denominator in Kent, so percentages swing easily. Attribution: Labour administration (John Burden) 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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