Overstrand Municipality Winner At Western Cape Government Service Excellence Awards!

Overstrand Municipality has officially been rated as the best municipality in the Western Cape followed by Swartland and Drakenstein Municipalities jointly in second place, and a shared third place by the West Coast District and Cape Agulhas Municipalities.

The Service Excellence Awards Ceremony was hosted by the Premier of the Western Cape and took place on Friday, 12 May 2023, in Cape Town.

The Best Municipality Category recognises municipalities who demonstrate commitment to service delivery, good government principles and citizen-centricity (meaning transparent, accessible and responsive).

“This is the first year that the Service Excellence Awards have been extended to include municipalities. “As a municipality, we are very excited about our most recent award and the recognition that we have received from the Western Cape Government, said Overstrand Executive Mayor, Dr Annelie Rabie. “We will continue to strive to become an #Overstrand4all”.

The Municipal Manager, Dean O’Neill, said the award shows the high quality and excellence of the work that is done and added that it has certainly been a team effort. He thanked the Overstrand Municipal Council, his directors and municipal staff for all their hard work.

Highlights of the report include:

The requirement for this category was three years of Clean Audit Reports. Overstrand Municipality exceeded this standard and achieved nine consecutive clean audit reports. 

The Municipality has adopted a zero-tolerance approach to good governance. Control measures were implemented with the goal of achieving effective corporate governance through accountability. The objective of these controls is to ensure that the Overstrand Municipality maintains, and progressively improves, its control environment to ensure that the strategic objectives assigned, in terms of Section 217 of The Constitution, 1996, are achieved with the view of maintaining a clean administration and further enhancing service delivery through implementing the principles of Batho Pele and making a positive contribution to ensuring that the National Strategic Objectives are achieved.

This places Overstrand Municipality amongst the top 5% of local municipalities in South Africa to have received three or more consecutive clean audits. 

The Overstrand Municipality maintained an average performance regarding Capital Expenditure in excess of 82% of the budget over the past three financial years. 

The aforementioned was achieved regardless of the impact of COVID-19 on the administration, and more particularly, in terms of no contractors being able to be on site except for essential services over an extended period during a hard lockdown for a number of months during 2020. 

The most recent financial period concluded (30 June 2022), was once again impacted negatively with the delayed outcome of an application by the Minister of Finance to the Constitutional Court, in seeking clarity concerning the exemption period, following the Constitutional Court’s judgment of 16 February 2022 on the matter between the Minister of Finance and Agribusiness NPC (now known as Sakeliga NPC) about the validity of the 2017 Preferential Procurement Regulations, 2017 (the 2017 Regulations). 

The afore-mentioned effectively halted advertisement of tenders for more than three months from mid-February 2022. These challenges were overcome, to a large extent, through a dedicated administration and management team, resulting in a co-ordinated effort across directorates to ensure a visible and positive outcome for the municipality. 

The average performance for the top management team (TMT) (municipal manager and six directors) for the 2020/21 financial year was 69%. Despite the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, basic municipal service delivery continued uninterrupted during 2020/21. It should be noted that this performance score reflects the reality and was not influenced by bias and non-sensical KPI’s. It was also audited by the Auditor-General.

Overall, Overstrand Municipality met 42 (86%) of a total number of 49 top layer key performance indicators (KPIs) for the period 1 July 2020 - 30 June 2021. With an overall municipal performance of 86%, the municipality successfully executed its service delivery mandate to its residents. 

Notable was the provision of wafer, sanitation and refuse services to households in informal areas. The national standard of 1 toilet to 5 households was exceeded with a target of 930 vs actual of 934 toilet structures. 

Similarly, the national standard of 1 water point to 25 informal households was also exceeded with a target of 300 vs actual of 341 taps installed. Providing dignified living conditions to all households remain a priority in the Overstrand. The Municipality endeavours to, as far as possible, make it easy for clients to do business with it. Limiting red tape is also a catalyst for promoting investment and development within the Municipal Area.

In addition, several online surveys were also conducted, which were well received by the communities. This will be expanded in future to ensure effective participation from the community as our partners.