By using the data collected in the PSS Ex1 return a large amount of comparisons can be made quickly and at no additional burden to club members. The 2008 exercise is based on the 2007 exercise, however has been streamlined to reduce burden on club members.

Members are sent a suite of reports based on PSS Ex1 data; these include a separate report for each of the four major client groups, a Home Care report and a summary report showing the key unit costs and measures. We also developing a report that we hope will be of use to members who are interested in what income has been reported in the PSS Ex1. The exercise has two stages:

Members submit a copy of their PSS Ex1 data file, by e-mail, in July. They will then receive a set of draft reports, comparing their figures with all members, in mid August, in good time to inform members' budgeting process and also to allow time for any anomalies to be investigated and any corrections to the data to be submitted. At this stage we will have PSS Ex1 data available from the members of our Adult’s clubs and our Children Looked After club, in 2007 we had data from 90 out of the 149 English authorities with responsibility for Social Care. At this stage however the data is treated as strictly confidential and comparisons are made against the group without any named data released.

Once the full dataset is made available in the public domain we will then resend the reports using this final dataset. Members can then choose any comparison group that they are interested in from the full set of English authorities and interactive versions of the reports are sent to enable members to examine the data in further detail.