Agenda item

The One Medway Council Plan (OMCP) 2024/28 sets out the Council’s priorities and the performance indicators used to monitor performance. This report and appendices summarise how we performed in Quarter 4 (Q4) 2025/26 on the delivery of these priorities. This report also presents the Q4 2025/26 review of strategic risks which fall under the remit of this committee.

Estimated time: 45 minutes

Discussion:

The Chief Information Officer introduced the report. He highlighted that two of the four performance measures had exceeded performance targets during the year, these were the reduction of phone calls to the Council and the accessibility rating of the Council website.

There had been three change to the Strategic Risk Summary in the quarter. Risk SR03B ‘Insufficient budget funding’ had been reduced from A2 to B2 which reflected the three year financial settlement from central government. Risk SR54 ‘Recruitment and Retention’ had increased from C3 to B2. This reflected the difficult recruitment and retention environment. Risk SR58 ‘Gun Wharf building closure’ had been de-escalated from the Strategic Risk Register as the RAAC issue has been dealt with and the Gun Wharf project was now at the renovation stage.

The following issues were discussed:

AI Search Agent - in response to a question whether the Council had data available on the use of the AI search tool, the Chief Information Officer stated that the Council received weekly reports highlighting various data including what was searched and the responses provided. The launch of the AI search agent was undertaken with enhanced support, so changes to the web in real time to respond to identified issues. After the first few days, real time updates were no longer required and searches were over 90% successful. He added that this data would be included in future reports to the Committee.

Website – A Member requested further information regarding the presentation of the website, the Chief Information Officer stated that the focus was to increase the accessibility of the website for visually impaired users, the Council’s website had risen from 73% accessible to 90%. He acknowledged that more work was required in some areas of the website. There were two parts to the website, one area was designed on a similar basis to Gov.uk and focused on factual information and making payments. The other part of the website such as theatres and leisure needed to have a more commercial outlook.

Recruitment and retention – in response to a question why the risk related to recruitment and retention had increased. The Chief Information Officer stated that it was believed that Local Government Re-organisation (LGR) was the primary cause alongside competition form London for staff.

LGR - it was asked if LGR not going ahead was also a risk. The Chief Operating Officer stated that LGR was included in the Risk Summary, but if LGR did not go ahead it would not necessarily result in abortive work for the Council as much of the Council’s preparations for LGR were focused on areas which would require development should LGR and improvement anyway irrespective of LGR.

Cyber Security – further information was requested regarding the risk related to Cyber Security. The Chief Information Officer stated that Cyber Security was considered a managed risk because there was always a potential risk, however the Council worked to reduce the risk on an ongoing basis.

Budget Savings – in response to a question what were the savings associated with the investment in AI and other Medway 2.0 projects. The Chief Information Officer stated that direct savings had led to underspend in the relevant departments, for example. CABS had been able to hold vacancies, because they have used AI. Another service where invested in AI had realised savings was Invoice processing. There were now automated checks to ensure invoices met the Council’s criteria for payment and automated emails. As a result there was a saving of £468,000, staff were redirected to other areas and one post was removed.

Decision:

a)     The Committee considered the Q4 2025/26 progress of the performance indicators used to monitor progress of the Council’s priorities, as set out in Appendix 1 to the report.

b)     The Committee noted the Strategic Risk Summary as set out in Appendix 2 to the report.