Green fields highlighted by sunrays through heavy clouds from Curbar Edge

Performance assessment

Peak District millstones on hillside near Stanage

Performance assessment

In September 2005, the Authority had an external peer review assessment. The final report reflected the hard work put into preparing for assessment and the expertise and effort of the assessment team. .

The assessors believed that "the Authority is performing effectively in the local delivery of national park purposes and duties and has examples of excellence."

The report says that "the self awareness of the Authority demonstrated in the content of the self assessment produced for this performance assessment is very good. The views of the assessment team differed very little from those set out by the Authority."

The team's impression was of "an Authority that has a lot to be proud of and that is responding well to the pressures and complexities arising from its location. The Authority is making progress and the team are confident more will be made. The challenges are in how the Authority decides to move forward and how it will address this in the performance improvement plan."

Of the nine key lines of enquiry, it identified:

three strong areas
four areas where we had made strong progress but where minimal improvements were still needed
two areas where we had made a good start but had further to go
no weak areas.

The report made 21 recommendations.

Staff, managers and members are committed to acting on the recommendations, especially in those areas where our performance needs to accelerate to match our overall performance.

Key areas for improvement:

setting priorities
managing our performance
engaging staff better in the decisions made in the Authority.

Performance Improvement

The Peak District Performance Improvement Partnership was a two-year programme of improvement projects funded by the ODPM (now DCLG).

The project aimed to build the partners' capacity through a range of projects and make progress towards achieving the National Park Authority’s Performance Improvement Plan.

The project was led by Peak District National Park Authority and the partners were:

Derbyshire County Council (DCC)
Derbyshire Dales District Council (DDDC)
High Peak Borough Council (HPBC)
Staffordshire Moorlands District Council (SMDC)
Lake District National Park Authority (LDNPA).

The projects are summarised in the case studies document, and the overall conclusions and learning given in the evaluation report 'Building public sector capacity through partnership working'.

Performance Improvement Partnership (Phase 1) Case Studies (1MB)

Building public sector capacity through partnership working
(270KB)