Issue - meetings

This report presents: proposed amendments to the Council Plan in light of changes to some inspection regimes and in year budget reductions agreed by Council on 29 July 2010; targets for the measures of success in the Council Plan used to track delivery of the Council’s priorities; and quarter one performance updates against indicators and actions agreed in the Council Plan.

Discussion:

The Performance Manager gave an overview on progress made during quarter one (April – June 2010), advising that the report also showed proposed changes to the Council Plan.

The committee was informed that it was unusual to suggest in-year changes to the Council Plan but this was in order to keep the plan consistent with recent changes brought in by the coalition government. Officers had also taken the opportunity to re-visit the actions and indicators reported in the plan and those highlighted in yellow in Appendix 2 were proposed for removal from the Council Plan.

Members were advised that the Cabinet had recently agreed that certain actions and measures highlighted in yellow could remain in the Council Plan for the remainder of the financial year.

The committee asked if the council had been officially notified by the government about the withdrawal of funding from the Playbuilders scheme and was advised that a letter had been received which asked the council to put this scheme on hold. To date, nothing further had been received.

Members also asked for an explanation of the difference between the indicator on page 376 of the agenda (Carry out a programme of test purchases of age restricted products including knives, solvents and alcohol) and the indicator on page 377 of the agenda (Test purchase operations to be run to ensure alcohol is not sold to under 18s) and questioned why the first indicator was proposed to be removed rather than the second, as the first indicator on page 376 encompassed all products rather than a specific one. The Director of Regeneration, Community and Culture agreed that this should be amended.

Members expressed some concern that it had taken so long for the Quarter 1 performance monitoring information to be presented to the Committee. Officers were asked to consider how the reporting cycle for performance monitoring information could be changed in future to achieve more timely reporting of this information to Overview and Scrutiny Committees. 

Decision:

The committee agreed to:

(a)               note the two stage process outlined at section 3.6 of the report for reviewing the Council Plan to ensure it responded to the national abolition of CAA and accurately reflected the council’s priorities and targets whilst taking into account resources to deliver them;

(b)               note the targets for performance indicators included within appendix 2;

(c)               recommend to Council on 14 October 2010 the changes to the Council Plan actions and measures highlighted in Appendix 2, with the exception of the following actions which it recommended should be amended for the remainder of the reporting year, as follows:

Action – ‘Carry out a programme of test purchases of age restricted products including knives, solvents and alcohol’ should be retained for the remainder of the reporting year, and

Action – ‘Test purchase operations to be run to ensure alcohol is not sold to under 18s’ should be removed from the Council Plan.

This report presents Members with the proposed amendments to the Council Plan in light of changes to some inspection regimes and in year budget reductions agreed by Council on 29 July 2010. It also contains targets for the measures of success in the Council Plan used to track delivery of the council’s priorities and quarter one performance update against indicators and actions agreed in the Council Plan.

Discussion:

The Assistant Director of Communications, Performance and Partnerships introduced the report advising that it not only gave an update on quarter one (April – June 2010) performance indicators but also showed proposed changes to the Council Plan.

Members were advised that it was unusual to suggest in-year changes to the council’s main business plan but this was in order to keep the plan consistent with recent changes brought in by the government. It was proposed that, in response to the government withdrawing funding, actions were deleted from the plan where there were related budget reductions.

Officers had also taken the opportunity, in light of the cancellation of any future work by the Audit Commission under the Comprehensive Area Assessment (CAA) arrangements, to re-visit and streamline the actions reported on in the plan and had concluded that some were not of a strategic level but more ‘day-job’ activities. These were highlighted in yellow on appendix 2 to the report and were proposed to be removed from the Council Plan.

The Assistant Director confirmed that although items were proposed for deletion from the plan this did not mean that the council would stop those services. The issue was not about the practical level of the service but about the amount of performance monitoring detail Members wanted to consider at meetings.

Some Members expressed serious concerns about the proposed approach to amending the plan in-year and considered that it would be better to keep reporting them this year with the narrative of the report reflecting the impact of loss of funding against the actions, rather than deleting un-funded activity from the plan. The Members considered that the items proposed for removal were also the priorities that mattered to the public and these should remain in the plan and be changed next year.

The committee considered various indicators proposed for deletion and voted on whether to recommend their retention in the plan.

Decision:

In accordance with the council’s policy framework rules, the committee agreed to recommend to Cabinet on 28 September 2010 and Council on 14 October 2010 the changes to the Council Plan actions and measures highlighted in Appendix 2, with the exception of the following actions and indicators which it recommended should be retained for the remainder of the reporting year:

(a)       page 73 of the agenda (page 2 of Appendix 2) – action - ‘delivery of Phase 2 of the Playbuilder Programme resulting in the refurbishment of 22 play areas by 2012’;

(b)               page 77 of the agenda (page 6 of Appendix 2) – action - ‘Supported by external funding, we will continue to deliver action plans in our key priority neighbourhoods of All Saints, Strood South, White Road and Twydall, to secure social regeneration’;

(c)        page 80 of the report (page 9 of Appendix 2) – action - ‘Increase public feelings of safety by maintaining a dedicated safer communities officer in each ward’;

(d)               page 96 pf the report (page 25 of Appendix 2) – indicator - ‘Number of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 367

This report presents proposed amendments to the Council Plan, targets for the measures of success used to track delivery of the Council’s priorities and gives a quarter one performance update for 2010/2011.  

Discussion:

The Director of Children and Adults introduced the report advising that it was important to continue to look at these indicators as the Ofsted inspection regime and ‘the best start in life’ priority remained in place, until any national changes were agreed to replace them.

The Director highlighted that as a testimony to the work in schools, permanent exclusions remained low and Medway was one of the top performers nationally. The mediation service to prevent homelessness had been successful this quarter and 91% of mediation had been successful. At the end of the first quarter, 22 young people were in temporary accommodation.

Areas of higher risk were outlined as a sustained and continued rise in referrals across all types of safeguarding and the management of this continues to be a risk. A further area of concern was care leavers in education, employment or training and the current achievement of 22% required a lot further work.

Members asked about the number of people affected by the NI148 targets (Care leavers in education, employment or training) and officers responded that for the first quarter of this year this applied to nine eligible children so a slippage of one or two children could affect the figures dramatically.

Decision:

The committee agreed to note:

(a)               the two stage process outlined at section 3.5 for reviewing the Council Plan to endure it responded to national abolition of the Comprehensive Area Assessment and accurately reflect the Council’s priorities and targets whilst taking into account resources to deliver them;

(b)               the proposal to change Council plan actions and measures highlighted in Appendix 2.

This report presented details of the Council’s performance for the first quarter of 2010/2011. In particular it included performance against indicators and actions agreed in the Council Plan 2010/2011.

It was noted that of the 45 key measures that could be reported this quarter 22 (49%) had achieved or outperformed the annual target and a further 9 (20%) were below target but within acceptable variance limits. 14 (31%) key measures were below the annual target.

In addition, the report set out a number of proposed amendments to the Council Plan in light of changes to some inspection regimes and in-year budget reductions agreed by Council on 29 July 2010. It also set out the targets for approval for the measures of success in the Council Plan used to track delivery of the Council’s priorities.

Reasons:

Full and accurate performance reporting to Members is consistent with best practice, and allows Members to review the Council’s performance.