IF troubleshooter Tony Allen is asked to leave Swindon Council's employ by Christmas it means the authority is getting its act together.

That is the view of Mr Allen himself, the Government's Mr Fix-it brought in to help solve some of the difficulties facing the council after its damming Comprehensive Performance Assessment (CPA) in December last year.

Since then he has been helping the authority implement an 80-point improvement plan, which includes improving communication and modernising the authority's management structure.

Mr Allen, 63, who has been working at the Civic Offices in Euclid Street since August last year, said: "I expect to be working until Christmas, but part of the council's improvement should be to let me go. I'm still working one day a week trying to help them to help themselves.

"The council is making steady progress it's no secret that the CPA made it clear Swindon started at a low base in many services, but look around now and a lot of the problems of that time have been resolved. The capacity of the organisation to do things well is greatly improved.

"It's still early days, but there are signs of improvement everywhere and I hope that's what the Audit Commission will see when the next visit."

The council is bracing itself for a half-term inspection next month when government inspectors will call to see how far the authority has come in the 12 months since it was branded one of the 13 worst in the country. The next CPA report will be published next year.

Ultimately the council and its new management team want to haul itself up the league table from a 'poor' council to a 'fair' one. All 150 unitary, metropolitan and London councils in the country are currently ranked either poor, weak, fair, good and excellent.

Mr Allen's arrival staved off the threat of direct intervention by the Government and followed the resignation of former Swindon Council chief executive Paul Doherty. Since then Simon Birch, formerly the council's director of environmental services, has taken up the vacated post. Next week marks his six-month anniversary as chief executive.

Mr Allen, a former chief executive of Hammersmith and Fulham Council in West London and the now-defunct Berkshire County Council, said: "We have had to ensure the foundations are in place before we start to see the benefits."

There was a change of political control and that makes a difference as well.

"All political parties on the council are working together that started with the previous administration, but was very much not the case when the CPA report was written, so there has been a huge improvement. Hopefully the next 12 months will allow the public to see more of it."