The City of London continues to compare well against other municipalities, according to the 2020 Municipal Benchmarking Network of Canada (MBNCanada) annual report.
MBNCanada is a partnership among 15 Canadian municipalities who use measurement to inspire continuous improvement in the delivery of services to their communities. Partner municipalities identify and collect consistent and comparable data on their municipal service areas, report the findings annually and analyze those results to see how they measure up.
The annual report, now in its 15th year, examines 174 measures across 36 services common to municipalities such as libraries, parks, police, fire, roads, water and wastewater systems, and solid waste management. It provides results for a three-year period to allow City staff, Council, and residents to compare performance levels to previous years.
“Participating in this annual process provides an opportunity for City staff to share knowledge and learn more about what other municipalities are doing,” says Lynne Livingstone, City Manager. “The 2020 data collected continues to remain relevant and reliable in light of the overall impacts of COVID-19. The report provides valuable data that helps us measure how efficiently and effectively we deliver programs and services to Londoners. It also helps us assess trends in the City’s performance over time and identify areas where we perform well and areas we can continue to improve on.”
Some notable service achievements for the City of London in 2020 include:
- Highest number of new residential units created per 100,000 population
- Year over year, London has the lowest operating cost of parks per person, and one of the lowest operating costs per hectare of maintained and natural parkland
- One of the lowest total costs for winter maintenance of roads per lane kilometre maintained
- One the lowest social assistance response time to client eligibility (average number of business days from the day that the application was submitted to the day the application was processed)
- One of the lowest total costs for solid waste diversion per tonne (all property classes)
- Consistently one of the lowest costs per paid parking space managed, and well below the median