Agenda item

Members considered the Progress and Delivery report for quarter 2 (July to September) 2020/2021.

The format of the report was new, as were the types of measures being reported.  Discussion of the report was broken down into sections of the organisation, the first of which was the new layout:

·         There needed to be assurance given within the commentary in the report about what service areas needed to do in the next quarter, particularly those service areas that were underperforming. It may be that some service areas had valid reasons for their underperformance, but this wasn’t clear from the commentary at present.

The Senior Performance Officer reminded Members that this was the first iteration of this report and there would be more detail on points raised during the next report cycle;

·         It may be useful to have a code to link key performance indicators (kpis) to commentary elsewhere in the report;

·         Overall, 54% of kpis were above target, 19% were meeting their target, and 27% were below target.  Of those measures exceeding their target, 75% had been above target for two quarters or more.  Of those below target, 25% had been below target for two quarters or more.  Where performance was below target, it was overwhelmingly because of Covid 19 – some underperformance was likely to continue due to new national restrictions;

·         The measures below target included the West Lindsey Leisure Centre, markets, car parking income, disabled facility grants, and those around food standards safety inspections, and empty properties.

The next section of the report discussed was Corporate Health:

·         During the last two quarters staff sickness absence had increased on previous reports; however WLDC was benchmarked against other similar-sized Councils and was currently out-performing them in this category;

·         One Member felt that lowering the target for percentage of complaints where the Council was deemed to be at fault could improve the service.  Officers agreed to take this point back to the Customer Service Manager.  In addition, a light touch review on Progress and Delivery was about to be embarked upon.

Members then commented on, and asked questions of Homes and Communities Performance.  The following information was provided:

·         The target for ‘number of nights spent in Bed and Breakfast (B and B) accommodation was a statutory target set by government at 0.  This meant it was unlikely to ever be met.  However, the target remained at 0 rather than be changed as the authority did not want to place people into B and B.  WLDC had recently been informed of some grant funding that would be put towards 6 units of accommodation;

·         The wording of the target ‘number of households prevented from becoming homeless would be looked at during the light touch review.

The next topic was the Operational and Commercial Performance Summary:

·         The target for missed bins was collection within 5 days, although in most cases it would be 24 hours;

·         Fly tipping target times did depend on the land type; in the town centre it would be 24 hours, whereas in more rural areas it would be up to 14 days.  However, this target time was usually beaten;

·         The ‘Together 24’ programme would review how effectively services were being used.  Where there was over achievement on targets, there could be some room to achieve savings in some areas;

Note:   Councillor David Cotton declared a personal interest in the paper before speaking on the crematorium as he was often called to officiate there.

·         The staff at the crematorium were fantastic and had coped very well with the constant changing of rules and guidance around ceremonies;

·         The intention for the Progress and Delivery paper would be to have targets for next year using this year’s data.  The income and expenditure levels were where they were expected to be; the target income for the crematorium was £173,124, and the actual income had been approximately £2,000 higher;

·         One area of the crematorium grounds had not yet been developed, but a stage 2 consultation was underway to determine who would be contracted to maintain this section.  A report would come to this committee in early 2021;

·         The figure for ‘number of outreach users’ related to the leisure centre did include medical referrals.

The Chairman thanked the Senior Performance Officer for the report and also thanked members for the points raised during discussion of the paper.  The paper was then duly noted.