The Vale of Glamorgan Council has been ranked as the top performing local authority in Wales for the fifth year in a row.

Data Cymru publishes local authority performance information on a range of services each year.

The performance of the 22 Welsh local authorities can then be compared across these services.

For 2018/19 this data shows that, once again, the Vale of Glamorgan Council is the top performing in Wales.

Cllr Neil Moore, Leader of the Council, said: "For the Council to be consistently rated as the highest performing in Wales, despite having made savings of £55m over the past ten years, speaks volumes about we approach our role in delivering vital public services.

"The services that are measured in these performance tables are ones that have a very real impact on people's lives. This is something that is not lost on us when we plan services and take decisions.

"This is a Council that strives to be the best and to deliver the best possible services for the residents of the Vale. I am delighted that this has been reflected in the national performance data once again."

The rankings are based on data for 19 national performance indicators. Among these the Council is ranked first in Wales for five areas of its work:

• Highest year 11 pupil performance (calculated using the Welsh Government 'Capped 9' measure).
• Lowest number of year 11 leavers not in education, training or employment.
• The number of households threatened with homelessness being successfully prevented from becoming homeless
• The number of empty private sector properties brought back into use
• Lowest amount of rent lost due to lettable council homes being empty.

For almost half of all areas measured the Vale ranks in the top 25% of performance, another increase from last year.

There has also been an improvement in performance in nine areas. This represents the greatest improvement for the Council since Data Cymru began publishing performance measures in this way.

An impressive feat when so many areas are already performing so highly.

The Council's performance is compared with the other 21 local authorities in Wales by analysing the proportion of measures across all local authorities in terms of the measures in the top, upper middle, lower middle and bottom quartiles for their performance.

Up until recently this was an analysis that was undertaken by Data Cymru (formerly Local Government Data Unit).

Although this analysis is no longer undertaken, for the purpose of the Council's Annual Report, we undertook our own analysis using the same methodology.

Using this methodology, the Council scored a total of 63 points, followed by Isle of Anglesey which was ranked 2nd with 59 points, and Swansea which was ranked 3rd with 53 points.