Wokingham Borough Council has been ranked as one of the top five rural authorities in the United Kingdom.
The report by The Times was published this week using data published by a new government agency, the Office for Local Government (Oflog).
Oflog was established last year to provide “authoritative and accessible” performance data to support improvements in local government.
The data, which was published before this week’s local elections, examined figures from England’s local authorities in 27 categories in five main areas: waste management, corporate and finance, adult social care, planning and roads.
The idea is to make it easy to see how councils are performing.
The Times chose to examine only those categories where a council’s performance could be considered a factor in the outcome being measured, such as the number of planning applications completed on time, rather than categories the council cannot control, such as the number of requests per population for social care.
Nottingham city council was revealed to be the worst local authority in England, while Torridge district council in Devon was the best.
The statistics also exposed huge variations in public sector efficiency across the country.
Wokingham Borough Council declined to provide a comment ahead of the local council elections.