New agency the Office for Local Government (Oflog), has revealed which are the best and worst performing local authorities in England.

The Government set up Oflog last summer to provide "authoritative and accessible" performance data to support improvements within local authorities and The Times has used the data to rank councils across the country.

The agency's figures, published recently, has been reviewed by The Times and ranked according to each authorities performance in finance, waste, roads, social care and planning.

Ealing Council - 219th Rank

• Finance: 293rd
• Waste: 80th
• Roads: 77th
• Social care: 310th
• Planning: 15th
• Overall: 219th

The Office for Local Government (Oflog) publishes data from England's local authorities in 27 categories in five main areas: waste management, corporate and finance, adult social care, planning and roads.

This is to make it simpler for councils, the public, academics and journalists to see how different councils are performing and to support improved performance.

The Times chose to examine only categories where each council's performance could be considered a factor in the outcome measured, such as the number of planning applications completed on time, rather than categories the council cannot control, such as the number of requests per population for social care.

The paper used Oflog's data across 21 of the 27 categories.

In each of these chosen categories, it ranked each council in order from best to worst and gave them a score based on their position, so the worst performer would be given one point and the best performer a top score based on the number of councils performing that function.

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Each category was given the same weighting, so a council would score no higher for doing well on planning than it would for doing well on recycling, for example.

Where a council did not perform a function, such as district councils with social care, or where there was no data from a council in a specific category, The Times awarded the authority the average score for that category.

The Times then added up the scores to give a ranking in each of the five main areas and an overall ranking to judge broader performance.

Ealing Council is in the top 15 in the country for performance on planning, according to data from the government (credit: Cesar Medina).

An Ealing Council spokesperson has told Nub News: “In recent years, residents’ satisfaction with the borough as a great place to live, and with the council has increased.

"This is the performance indicator which we place most importance on.

“We continue to work closely with Oflog on how best to improve outcomes for residents and we are fully committed to transparency and being held to account for our decisions and actions.”

Data was downloaded between January and March this year, using the most up-to-date figures provided by Oflog at that time, which means the data in some categories may have been superseded by newer figures says The Times.

Neighbouring councils such as Richmond ranked 50th and Hounslow ranked 152nd, scoring higher than Ealing.

To read the full article from The Times, click here.