Methodology

Principles

• Transparent. Every score links to its data source and the date measured.
• Independent. KLN funds and produces the scorecard. No council, regulator, or sponsor edits it.
• Reproducible. Anyone with the same data could produce the same score.
• Disaggregated. We publish six metrics separately. We do NOT roll them into a single "best/worst" ranking — that would mislead.
• Refreshed quarterly. The fast-moving metrics (FOI response, refuse complaints) get fresh numbers every quarter; the slower ones (financial health) annually.
• Right of reply. Councils receive their preliminary scores in advance of publication and a 7-day window to flag factual errors or missing context.

Banding scale

Each metric is scored 0-100 and banded:

Tier applicability

Not every metric applies to every council. The two-tier structure in Kent divides remit between Kent County Council (which handles education, social care, transport, minerals/waste planning) and the 12 districts/boroughs (which handle refuse collection, planning, housing, local council tax). Medway is a unitary — it does the lot. Per-council pages show "N/A — not this tier's remit" for metrics that don't apply.

* KCC handles only minerals and waste planning, which is too narrow to score on its own; the bulk of planning sits with districts.
** School-system health is shown only on the county (KCC) and unitary (Medway) pages because that's the boundary at which the data aggregates cleanly. Districts have no school-system view of their own — schools in a district fall under the parent LA.

Metric 1 — Refuse collection district + unitary

What it measures: reliability and quality of household waste collection services.

Components (proposed):

• Missed-bin reports per 100,000 collections (40%)
• Recycling rate vs national average (30%)
• Complaint resolution time (20%)
• Service consistency (missed-collection variance week to week) (10%)

Data sources: DEFRA WasteDataFlow returns (published quarterly), council customer-service KPI publications, KLN FOI requests where data is not publicly available.

Metric 2 — Complaints handling

What it measures: how well the council handles complaints from residents.

Components (proposed):

• LGSCO (Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman) upheld findings per 100,000 population (40%)
• Average council response time to formal complaints (30%)
• Formal-complaint volume trend (20%)
• Complaints policy publication compliance (10%)

Data sources: LGSCO annual decisions and council reports; council annual complaints reports; KLN FOI requests.

Metric 3 — FOI response

What it measures: compliance with the Freedom of Information Act 2000, which mandates a 20-working-day response.

Components (proposed):

• Average response time vs 20-day statutory deadline (50%)
• Refusal/exemption rate (lower is better, subject to legitimacy) (30%)
• ICO decision-notice findings (20%)

Data sources: Council FOI disclosure logs where published; KLN's own FOI tracking; whatdotheyknow.com public archive; ICO published decisions.

Metric 4 — Financial health & budget discipline

What it measures: how well the council manages public money — day-to-day revenue spending against budget, major capital project delivery, reserves resilience, the external auditor's value-for-money judgment, and how its council tax positioning compares to peer councils.

Components (proposed):

• Revenue budget variance (25%) — net revenue spend vs approved budget in most recent completed FY. Penalises both overspend AND large underspend (poor forecasting).
• Capital programme delivery (20%) — aggregate cost variance plus timeline slippage across the council's published capital programme (regeneration schemes, new builds, major IT projects, leisure investments).
• Reserves & Section 114 risk (20%) — usable reserves as % of net revenue expenditure, combined with LGA financial resilience index banding.
• External auditor VfM judgment (15%) — annual external auditor's value-for-money opinion: significant weaknesses identified, qualified opinion, statutory recommendations.
• Council tax positioning (10%) — Band D council tax level for this tier vs national average for the same tier (county / unitary / district averaged separately).
• Council tax trajectory (10%) — compound annual growth rate of Band D council tax over 5 years vs national CAGR for the same tier.

What this picks up: SEND and adult social care overspend cycles; capital programme slippage (regeneration delays, leisure-centre rebuilds, IT transformation projects); council tax rises above national average without matching service delivery; external auditors flagging weaknesses.

What this deliberately does NOT pick up: major national infrastructure projects (Lower Thames Crossing, HS2, etc.) — those are National Highways / DfT / Network Rail, not council schemes. Where a council's engagement with such projects is worth measuring (statutory consultation responses, mitigation negotiations, planning objections), that sits in Planning + Transparency. Pension fund performance is also excluded; the Kent Local Government Pension Scheme is held by KCC for itself and the districts and is complex enough to need its own treatment.

Data sources: council Statements of Accounts (audited, published annually), external auditor annual reports, MHCLG council tax statistics, CIPFA financial resilience analysis, LGA Financial Resilience Index, council annual capital outturn reports.

Metric 5 — Transparency

What it measures: how openly the council publishes data about itself.

Components (proposed):

• Compliance with Local Government Transparency Code 2015 mandatory publications (40%)
• Councillor expenses and allowances publication detail (15%)
• Contract register publication detail (15%)
• Committee paper publication completeness and timeliness (15%)
• Open-data portal presence and update frequency (15%)

Data sources: direct inspection of each council's website on a fixed audit date each quarter; data.gov.uk index; KLN audit script.

Metric 6 — Planning district + unitary

What it measures: the planning service's performance against statutory targets.

Components (proposed):

• Major applications determined within 13 weeks vs national average (30%)
• Minor applications determined within 8 weeks vs national average (30%)
• Planning Inspectorate appeal-overturn rate (25%)
• Planning enforcement caseload trend (15%)

Data sources: MHCLG quarterly Planning Statistics, Planning Inspectorate appeal decisions, council enforcement returns.

Metric 7 — Education & children's services county + unitary

What it measures: the local authority's performance on the education and children's services it actually controls — not school-level outcomes (which are an Ofsted / DfE matter at the school or trust level, not the LA's). Applies to KCC and Medway only; districts/boroughs do not have this remit.

Components (proposed):

• SEND/EHCP statutory processing within 20 weeks vs national average (35%)
• SEND tribunal LA-loss rate — parent-won appeals against the LA's SEND decisions (25%)
• Children's services Ofsted ILACS framework rating (25%)
• School transport delivery reliability (KCC: KSL contract performance; Medway: contracted operators) (15%)

Note: LADO and multi-agency safeguarding sit in Metric 8 — Safeguarding below. They're treated as their own metric so they don't get drowned in education numbers; the public-interest weight on safeguarding warrants standalone visibility.

What this metric deliberately does NOT include: school-level outcomes (GCSE/A-level results, Ofsted school inspection ratings, absence rates) — those sit with the school or the academy trust, not the LA. The LA's role is to plan, fund (for maintained schools), and arbitrate. We measure the LA on that, not on aggregate school performance.

Data sources: DfE annual SEND statistics, HM Courts & Tribunals SEND tribunal data, Ofsted ILACS published inspection reports, KCC/Medway children's services annual reports and audited financial statements, KLN FOI requests where data is not published.

Metric 8 — Safeguarding & LADO county + unitary

What it measures: the LA's statutory child safeguarding function — the Local Authority Designated Officer (LADO) pathway, multi-agency safeguarding hub (MASH) operations, and Section 47 child-protection enquiries. Applies to KCC and Medway only.

Components (proposed):

• LADO referral acknowledgement and investigation timeline vs Working Together 2018 statutory windows (35%)
• Multi-agency MASH timeliness — initial decision within 1 working day of referral (25%)
• Section 47 enquiry completion within 15 working days (20%)
• Independent safeguarding audit / Kent Safeguarding Children Multi-Agency Partnership (KSCMP) annual report findings (10%)
• Looked-after children (LAC) placement stability — % LAC with 3+ placements in year (lower better) (10%)

Why standalone: child safeguarding is the highest public-interest area of LA work; bundling it into "education" dilutes accountability. Reports and inspections of LADO operations and MASH are published separately; we score them separately.

Data sources: KSCMP annual reports, KCC and Medway children's services public reports, Ofsted ILACS reports (with LADO sections extracted), DfE LAC official statistics, KLN FOI requests.

School-system health separate area — county + unitary

What it measures: aggregate school-level performance across the LA's geographic area. Not a council score — schools are accountable through Ofsted and academy trusts, not the local authority. Provided because residents reasonably want to know how schools in their area are doing.

Shown on the KCC and Medway scorecard pages as a separate panel beneath the main metrics, clearly labelled and explained as measuring the school system rather than the council.

Components (proposed):

• Distribution of Ofsted ratings across LA-area schools — % Outstanding, Good, Requires Improvement, Inadequate
• GCSE Attainment 8 average vs national
• Overall pupil absence rate (authorised + unauthorised) vs national
• Post-16 progression — % of Year 11 leavers in sustained education/employment/training at 12 months

Data sources: DfE Performance Tables, Ofsted published inspection outcomes, DfE absence statistics, DfE "destinations of school leavers" statistics, all freely available.

District-level school-system data is not shown separately because school admission boundaries are LA-level (KCC), not district-level; aggregating only the schools physically inside a district would give a misleading view of "schools serving that district".

Metric 9 — Manifesto delivery (Trust score) all councils

What it measures: what the controlling party (or coalition) promised at the most recent election against what was actually delivered while in office. A public-accountability score designed to make explicit what residents otherwise have to track themselves.

Pledge categorisation: each manifesto commitment we track is placed in one of five buckets:

• KEPT — substantively delivered. Council can point to verifiable evidence the commitment is in place.
• PARTIAL — some progress but falls short of the original promise. Half-counts in the score.
• BROKEN — clear failure, abandoned without justifiable cause, or replaced with something contradictory.
• PENDING — in progress, not yet judgeable. Excluded from the denominator.
• OUT_OF_SCOPE — circumstances changed beyond the council's control (LGR dissolves authority, central-government funding withdrawn, etc.). Excluded from the denominator.

Score formula — two components averaged:

PledgeRatio = (KEPT × 1.0 + PARTIAL × 0.5) / (KEPT + PARTIAL + BROKEN)
IssueRatio  = (ALIGNED × 1.0 + MIXED × 0.5) / (ALIGNED + MIXED + COUNTERACTING)

TrustScore  = ((PledgeRatio + IssueRatio) / 2) × 100

The Trust score combines TWO accountability lenses:

• Pledge delivery — did the council do what it said it would do (from the manifesto)? Tracked in the per-council pledge tracker.
• Public-issues alignment — is the council taking actions that work in residents' direction on the top issues residents actually care about? Tracked in the per-council public-issues panel.

Both lenses matter. A council can deliver every pledge while counteracting residents on the issues they actually care about most; a council can also be broadly aligned with residents on big issues while failing on specific commitments. Combining the two prevents either side from gaming the score.

Banding follows the same A-F scale as other metrics. PENDING and OUT_OF_SCOPE pledges are excluded from the pledge ratio denominator; SILENT issues are excluded from the issue ratio denominator. If only one of pledges or issues is scoreable at a given refresh, the Trust score reflects that side alone with a transparency note.

What counts as a "pledge":

• Specific, verifiable commitments from the controlling party's manifesto at the most recent council election
• Pledges with a discrete deliverable (build X, open Y, freeze Z) — not vague aspirations ("improve services")
• Commitments within the council's actual statutory remit — not central-government policy
• For minority administrations or coalitions: each coalition partner's published manifesto counts, with overlap resolved editorially

Editorial process:

1. KLN editorial team curates each council's pledge list from the manifesto + election material
2. Each pledge gets a permalink page documenting source, date, KLN's judgment, and supporting evidence
3. Council leadership receives the preliminary pledge tracker 14 days before publication for factual correction (longer than the 7 days for data metrics because pledge-by-pledge judgment may need substantive reply)
4. Council's response is published verbatim alongside each pledge where they choose to provide one
5. Pledges are re-evaluated quarterly; status changes are logged

Why this metric is hard: "PARTIAL" vs "BROKEN" involves editorial judgment; coalitions mean reconciling multiple manifestos; LGR may make KCC's 2023 manifesto moot. The mitigation is transparency — every judgment is sourced, dated, and the council has right of reply on each.

Data sources: party manifestos (archived at publication), council press releases, council meeting minutes, official statistics, FOI responses, news reporting (KLN's own + cross-checked from credible sources).

Top public issues separate area — all councils + Kent-wide

What it shows: the top public issues residents actually face — Kent-wide and per council. Editorial assessment, not a metric score. We do not aggregate this into a number because the underlying judgement is qualitative; pretending otherwise would mislead.

Key principle: we judge on actions, not statements. A council that publicly opposes a policy while taking actions that enable it is not ALIGNED with residents on that issue — it is COUNTERACTING or MIXED, depending on the evidence. Pushback rhetoric without operational follow-through fails the alignment test. Conversely, a council can be ALIGNED on an issue it says little about, if its actions consistently track resident interest.

Each issue carries one of four alignment tags:

• 🟢 ALIGNED — council is taking actions that work in residents' direction. Statements may or may not match; what matters is the action record.
• 🟡 MIXED — some council action, falls short or sends mixed signals. Includes "statements oppose but actions go along."
• 🔴 COUNTERACTING — council actions take the opposite direction from residents, regardless of stated position.
• ⚫ SILENT — issue widely felt but neither statements nor actions reveal a clear council position.

We are explicit about COUNTERACTING because the existing "performance dashboard" genre implicitly assumes councils always want to respond to residents. In real Kent council politics, sometimes they don't — even when their rhetoric says otherwise. KLN names that.

How issues are selected:

• KLN editorial judgement based on: council complaints data + LGSCO findings + recurring KLN reader interest + public petitions + consultation response volumes + ongoing KLN investigation series.
• For Kent-wide: the top 5 issues that affect residents across multiple Kent councils.
• For each council: the top 3 issues specific to that council's residents.
• Issues are reviewed quarterly; lineup may change as new issues emerge or existing ones resolve.

Right of reply: councils may flag factual errors or provide their position on any listed issue. Position statements published verbatim. Same 14-day window as pledge tracker.

Things we deliberately do NOT measure (yet)

• Adult social care — county/unitary remit; CQC inspects; complex enough to need its own scorecard.
• Housing — split across district housing authority + housing associations; not a fair council-level metric without significant adjustment.
• Single "overall" ranking — combining unrelated metrics produces misleading league tables. We don't.
• School-level outcomes as a council score — covered separately in the "School-system health" panel on the KCC and Medway pages, with explicit disclaimer that this is not a council performance score.

These may be added in future versions if a robust methodology can be defined.

Right of reply process

1. Preliminary scores compiled internally each quarter.
2. Each council receives its preliminary card 7 working days before publication, by email to the chief executive's office, with the underlying data references.
3. The council may flag factual errors or missing context; we publish their response verbatim alongside the score where they choose to provide one.
4. If a council disputes a methodological choice (rather than a fact), we publish their position and ours.
5. Scores are published with the right-of-reply window evidenced.

Change log

• 2026-05-18 — initial DRAFT published; methodology under editorial review.
• 2026-05-18 — added Metric 7 (Education & children's services, county/unitary only); added tier-applicability table; refined Refuse + Planning as district/unitary-only metrics.
• 2026-05-18 — split LADO + safeguarding out of Education into standalone Metric 8 (Safeguarding & LADO, county/unitary). Re-weighted Education to 35/25/25/15 across 4 components. Added separate "School-system health" panel (KCC + Medway only) for aggregate school-level data, explicitly framed as not a council score. Added Metric 9 (Manifesto delivery / Trust score, all councils).
• 2026-05-18 — Metric 4 (Financial health) rewritten as "Financial health & budget discipline". Added explicit components for revenue budget variance, capital programme delivery, and council tax positioning vs national average. Now 6 components; sources to council Statements of Accounts + external auditor reports + MHCLG council tax statistics.
• 2026-05-18 — Methodology PUBLISHED. Editorial sign-off complete; methodology lifted from DRAFT to operative. Data collection now in progress for first quarterly refresh.
• 2026-05-18 — Initial pledge set published for Metric 9. Detailed pledge tracking for KCC (Reform UK 2025), Medway (Labour 2023), and Tunbridge Wells (Lib Dem 2026) populated from publicly-available manifesto material + KLN's existing investigation series. Remaining 11 districts have empty pledge trackers pending subsequent curation passes. 14-day right-of-reply window opens for the populated councils; closes 2026-06-06.
• 2026-05-18 — Pledge tracking extended to all 14 Kent councils. Maidstone (Green/LD/Independent coalition May 2024), Canterbury (Lab/LD May 2023), Thanet (Lab May 2023), Ashford (Independents/Greens May 2023), Tonbridge & Malling (Cons May 2023), Sevenoaks (Cons NOC since 2023), Dartford (Cons), Dover (Lab May 2023), Folkestone & Hythe (Greens/LD May 2023), Gravesham (Lab May 2023), and Swale (Lab/Ind/Green rainbow coalition May 2023) all populated. Every council now has a curated pledge list. 14-day right-of-reply window applies to all populated trackers; closes 2026-06-06.
• 2026-05-18 — Top Public Issues area added (separate from the 9 metrics). Kent-wide top 5 panel on the scorecard hub. Per-council top 3 panels on each council page. Four alignment tags: ALIGNED / MIXED / COUNTERACTING / SILENT. Editorial assessment, not a metric score. 14-day right-of-reply window applies; closes 2026-06-06.
• 2026-05-18 — "Actions, not statements" principle codified + applied. Public-issues alignment is judged on actions taken, not statements made. Statements opposing a policy while actions enable it = COUNTERACTING (not ALIGNED). Initial pledge set re-reviewed and adjusted: LGR (Kent-wide + KCC) recategorised to COUNTERACTING on grounds councils have engaged with LGR process + restructured internally + (per KLN investigation) spent £113m+ during a period when statutory authority was absent — actions enable despite oppositional rhetoric. 15 other ALIGNED tags downgraded to MIXED where alignment was statement-based without verified action evidence. ALIGNED reserved for cases with concrete action: Maidstone Rights of Nature adoption, Ashford Carbon Plan adoption, Medway + Sevenoaks council-tax positions maintained, Gravesham leaseholder-reform campaign that contributed to Leasehold and Freehold Reform Act 2024, Gravesham homelessness partnership funding.
• 2026-05-18 — Trust score (Metric 9) combined formula. Metric 9 now averages the pledge-delivery ratio AND the public-issues alignment ratio. A council can no longer earn a high Trust score by delivering pledges while counteracting residents on the top public issues. Worked example: KCC scores 80 on pledges alone but ~33 on public-issues alignment (one COUNTERACTING on LGR, two MIXED), producing combined Trust score ~57 (Band C). Methodologically symmetric — both lenses weighted equally; SILENT/PENDING/OUT_OF_SCOPE items excluded from their respective denominators.