Issue - meetings

Members discussed the newly refreshed approach to how it both monitors and reports on corporate performance with new performance indicators. This approach aims to provide the public with clear and easy to access information on how key services are performing and supports residents’ feedback that they would like the council to be efficient, transparent and responsive.

As part of this approach, recognition would be given to the feedback the council would be receiving each year from local residents, as part of its annual residents’ survey. Residents have been consistently indicating to the council that feeling safe, having clean streets and thriving towns were the things that mattered most to them and they wanted the council to be efficient, trusted, transparent and responsive. The proposed approach would address those views.

Councillor Whitehead proposed, Councillor Yates seconded and Cabinet agreed to note the proposed new approach.

Tim Willis, Deputy Chief Executive and S151 Officer introduced the item and said that the aim was to monitor performance on areas that mattered most to residents, businesses and councillors. Past performance monitoring had always been retrospective and reported quarterly. However in future the plan was to produce as much information as was possible in real time and make such information always available on the council’s website. This would increase transparency and accountability of the council and hopefully help reduce the burden of responding to freedom of information requests. These proposed changes would also improve the scrutiny of the council’s performance.

Hannah Thorpe, Director of Communications then introduced the main issues of the report and made the following points:

• The new performance reporting format would produce as much information as is possible in real time and this would be shared with residents on the council website;
• The objective of the new approach was to improve the way the council managed the corporate performance as well as improving information sharing with residents;
• The approach would follow a set of principles that included the following:

§  Transparent;

§  More engaging;

§  Focus on things that matter;

§  Move away from (just a focus on) numbers;

§  Demonstrate that the council was effective (in delivering services to residents);

§  Demonstrate that council’s activities were having an impact on the lives of local residents.

·  The proposed changes included the follows:

§  Reduce the number of measures;

§  Align measures to corporate objectives (environment, communities and growth);

§  Include measures which demonstrate efficiency;

§  Publish live data on the website – shift the focus of the reports and enhance the role of Scrutiny;

§  Create interactive data;

§  Remove targets – move to acceptable/good baseline;

§  Put more emphasis on customer satisfaction;

§  Reduce the frequency of reporting.

• The number of measures of performance would be reduced and they would be aligned to corporate objectives;
• Performance Targets would be removed. Good baseline information would be established to inform the performance monitoring;
• The measures would include those that demonstrated efficiency;
• Live performance data would be published on the website;
• More emphasis would be put on customer satisfaction;
• Members would be able to call on Service Directors to attend Panel meetings to respond to service specific performance issues arising from the performance reports;
• Panel members were invited to take part in a dry run of the proposed web page before it went live;
• The new reporting framework would be in place in April 2021-2024.

The detail of the proposed performance reporting framework is in the slides presentation attached as an annex to this minute item.

Members asked questions and made comments as follows:

• The timescales for the houses being empty was reflected in the annex as six months. How was this solution arrived at?
• Publishing live data on the council website was a good idea;
• Would enforcement action and fines be published on the website as part of that live data as well?
• How often would the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 295