Bradford Council's Benefit Service gets a poor showing in a statistical report today.

The Audit Commission figures show only 42 per cent of renewal claims were processed in time.

And a third of the unsuccessful claimants said forms and leaflets were not clear enough.

The chart also showed only 46 per cent of people were satisfied with cleanliness in the district, and just 37 per cent said recycling facilities were satisfactory.

Despite tough Government directives to recycle waste, only 7.6 per cent of household rubbish was recycled.

The chart shows only 16 per cent of Council house tenants were satisfied by their input into decision-making. And overall, only 29 per cent of people making complaints to the Council were satisfied with the way they were dealt with.

But today the performance indicators were described as a "costly piece of democracy" by leader of the Liberal Democrat group Councillor Jeanette Sunderland.

She said the figures related to "a point in time", with no information about what happened before or afterwards.

She added the benefits section was working in a bureaucratic government framework and stressed the district must do better with recycling.

The statistics for the year ending last March gave high marks to a large number of services, however.

The Council collected 94 per cent of the district's Council Tax within the year it was due, and 94 per cent of the district's roads had a high or acceptable level of cleanliness.

But only 16 per cent of Bradford's equipped play areas conformed with national standards and only 32 per cent of pupils at Council-maintained schools passed five or more GCSEs at A to C grades.

Council leader Councillor Margaret Eaton said: "We have worked towards putting more resources into front line services and less into back room bureaucracy."

She said the Council had upgraded its complaints service and was working to tackle recycling.

Leader of the Labour group Councillor Ian Greenwood said he was worried about the problems with benefit processing and concerned about the way the authority was dealing with complaints.

"Cleanliness of the district is now a major issue and we have got to get it right."