Calderdale Council’s strong commitment to making life in the borough better for everyone, is being highlighted as part of the annual corporate performance report.
At the Cabinet meeting on Monday 30 June 2025, Councillors will discuss the annual report which contains a summary of the Council’s performance between April 2024 to the end of March 2025.
The report highlights many positives, with areas of outstanding performance and progress helping to improve life for residents, businesses and visitors at a time of significant challenge.
Progress is monitored using available data and demonstrates how the Council is responding to the challenges it faces, whilst continuing to provide high quality support for residents and businesses in key priority areas. The report also identifies where Calderdale outperforms or ranks highly compared to similar Councils.
The Council is committed to delivering against its aims and objectives and the annual report demonstrates significant progress around the corporate priorities of becoming a more sustainable and effective council, creating thriving towns and places, reducing inequalities, and tackling climate change.
Calderdale Council’s Leader, Cllr Jane Scullion, said:
“Despite many local, national and international challenges, we continue our commitment to making Calderdale a better place for everyone. The annual corporate performance report highlights many reasons to be positive, with Calderdale ranking well against similar boroughs and top in many areas.
“I’m proud of how much has been achieved in the past year and we have many reasons to be optimistic about the future. The launch of our new Vision, as well as our key priorities, will give us clear direction for the future, supporting decision making in what remain to be challenging circumstances for ourselves and many local authorities.
“We’re also aware that there are many things that can be improved upon and as well as our successes, it’s also important to highlight areas which are facing particular challenges. We want to recognise where we can do better so we can improve performance and direct our limited resources to best support local people.”
Some of the main achievements in the last year include:
- Taking top spot as an active place. The percentage of adults in the borough who enjoy active and healthy lifestyles has increased to 67%, the highest of comparable local authorities.
- Being a place where business can grow and thrive. The latest data shows a further increase in the proportion of new enterprises that are still active after three years. This is above the regional average and ranks Calderdale top against comparable authority areas.
- Improving support to promote independence for older adults. This year, the Council has seen further improvement in its performance in supporting people to regain or retain their independence following a stay in hospital.
- Becoming an internationally recognised destination for culture, tourism and film. Latest data shows that visits to the borough have increased by nearly 5% from 2022, with 7.6 million visits to the borough in 2023. This is worth more than £600 million to the local economy. Future data on subsequent years will assess growth from the 2024/25 Year of Culture.
- Recognition for climate work and progress towards ambitious net zero targets. Latest data shows that CO2 emissions per person have significantly reduced. The Council’s innovative climate work with local communities also received national recognition at the MJ Local Government Achievement Awards, winning the ‘Leadership in responding to the climate emergency’ category.
Areas of performance which experienced challenges during 2024/25 and are benefitting from further support going forward include:
- Increasing levels of youth unemployment. Over the past few years, young people (18-24) have been impacted with increased levels of unemployment. Although this is a trend seen both locally and nationally, much work is taking place in Calderdale to promote employment opportunities to help address the issue.
- Challenges with a deteriorating road network. The Council continues to work to mitigate the deterioration in the condition of the borough’s road network, in a highly challenging budget context. Confirmed additional funding will support maintenance and work is being prioritised where it’s most needed.
The Council publishes all performance data on its open data platform, Calderdale Data Works: dataworks.calderdale.gov.uk(external link).
Calderdale Council’s Cabinet meeting is on Monday 30 June at Halifax Town Hall from 4pm. The meeting can also be viewed online at https://calderdale.public-i.tv/core/portal/home(external link) ENDS