Agenda item

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 Sure Start Children Centres’;

(e)               page 98 of the report (page 27 of Appendix 2) – indicator - ‘Timeliness of social care assessment (all adults) - percentage from first contact to completion of assessment within 4 weeks’;

(f)                 page 104 of the report (page 33 of Appendix 2) – action - ‘minimising of congestion arising from roadworks’;

(g)               page 108 of the report (page 37 of Appendix 2) – indicator - ‘Bus services running on time’;

(h)               page 110 of the report (page 39 of Appendix 2) – action - ‘Implement a £1m per annum housing renovation programme for the poorest quality housing in Luton and All Saints’;

(i)                 page 111 of the report (page 40 of Appendix 2) – indicator - ‘Repeat homelessness (To be local measure)’;

(j)                  page 111 of the report (page 40 of Appendix 2) – indicator - ‘Average time taken to re-let council dwellings (days)’;

(k)               page 111 of the report (page 40 of Appendix 2) – indicator - ‘Homelessness decision cases decided within 28 working days (To be local measure)’;

(l)                  page 114 of the report (page 43 of Appendix 2) – action - ‘Work to improve Public Spaces/town centre environments through the public spaces working group to be informed by town centre action plans, developed by economic development and social regeneration teams’;

(m)             page 117 of the report (page 46 of Appendix 2) – action - ‘400 individuals accessing retail workforce training programmes’

(n)               page 122 of the report (page 51 of appendix 2) – action – ‘tackling the barriers to public participation in sport’.