WYCHAVON'S councillors and staff are to get together at a special meeting to thrash out ways in which to improve their overall performance levels.

The overview and scrutiny committee is to meet on Tuesday to discuss a performance report compiled by officers.

It shows most departments on course for achieving government performance targets by the end of the financial year, but six out of 23 targeted areas are still not on track.

A report on the first quarter from April to June this year reveals that the council is good at investing its funds of around £2.3m.

Staff are quick at processing changes in circumstances for housing and tax benefit, and they deal with planning applications well - determining them quicker than expected by the government.

What they are still lagging behind in is processing new benefit claims.

They are also slow at dealing with homelessness applications, and still leave families and bed and breakfast for too long.

The average length of stay in emergency accommodation in the first quarter was 94 days, compared with a set target of 60 days. They are also slow in answering telephone calls from the public.

Switchboard staff should answer calls within 15 seconds, but only achieve this target 82 per cent of the time.

Wychavon's performance officer. Alan Smith said: "The purpose of the meeting is to get together to make sure we have the correct measures in place in order to improve.

"It is a way of monitoring ourselves, and we also do this by comparing ourselves with other authorities."

He added that the targets were set by government, and councils were bound to attain them.