THE leader of Barrhead's local authority used a meeting of the full council to thank staff.

This was after an annual performance report for East Renfrewshire Council (ERC) returned "excellent" results.

Highlights included record breaking achievements from the schools in terms of results and a 43 per cent reduction in the number of older people hospitalised.

And council leader, Labour councillor Jim Fletcher, is thanking employees across the organisation for going the extra mile and putting residents at the heart of services to deliver on its key commitments.

Councillor Fletcher said: “I want to thank all staff across the council for their hard work and dedication in ensuring our residents have access to high quality services.

“Everything we have achieved over the past year is thanks to our staff.

“Our council services are designed with the customer at the heart of everything we do. We are committed to supporting our residents’ journey from early years through to learning and work, taking in health and wellbeing on the way to older years."

Excellent performance results include educational attainment, dealing efficiently with customer requests, completing housing repairs and meeting housing quality standards.

The council also performed consistently in responding to community alarm calls, noise and anti-social behaviour complaints and dealing promptly with planning applications.

The report outlined areas for further improvement such as encouraging more children to be active library members and reducing staff absence rates further which the council is committed to addressing.

Prevention work with the older population has resulted in a 43 per cent reduction in the number of days people spent in hospital in the last year.

And a call blocker scheme to stop nuisance and scam phones calls has also blocked more than 100,000 of these unwanted calls to residents.

To benefit families and younger members of the community 100 additional nursery places have been created, and 74 per cent of children have reached their expected milestones by P1.

East Ren’s affordable housing stock has been increased in the last year with 62 new homes, and 97 per cent of council housing now meets quality standards.

96 percent of library users surveyed say they are happy with their local library, and physical library visits have increased by 20 per cent since last year.

In total there have been more than one million actual library visits and virtual visitors using the council’s online library services in the last year.

The report highlights the pace and scale of ERC’s ambitious programme of change which reaches into every corner of the council’s operations.

A significant range of new initiatives are delivering real improvements as part of this programme, including a focus on digital and online services.

The introduction of a new live chat service for example is already receiving very positive feedback from customers.

The council says the live chat services is part its ambitions to provide online customers with a fast, responsive service through its increasingly sophisticated web site.

Councillor Fletcher added: "Our performance gains in all these areas shows the real difference we are making to the lives of local people right across the area.

"We will continue to strive to make sure this not only continues, but that these services, and the resultant benefits for local people, improve even further.”