Agenda item

This report sets out the performance against the Council’s Key Measures of Success for the first quarter of 2012/2013. 

Discussion:

The Assistant Director, Communications, Performance and Partnerships introduced the report advising the committee that it was considering a new basket of measures for 2012/2013. At the last meeting, Members had requested additional measures to be included and these had been re-introduced. Two others still under development were ‘Satisfaction with Community Officers’ and ‘Impact of work with Looked After Children’, both of which would be included in the information provided at quarter two as final work was on-going to ensure the measures could be recorded with quantifiable objectives.

The committee considered the summary table at appendix 1 where core assessments for vulnerable children and adult carer assessments remained a problem. With regard to the carer assessments, the Assistant Director advised that the service was looking to let a new contract to achieve more timely assessments. She also advised that with regard to the employment targets shown with a red rating, data was awaited from Locate in Kent.

Members asked for more information on the pilot arrangements in relation to domestic abuse (paragraph 7.4 on page 113 of the agenda). Officers advised that this had arisen following a recommendation from an Ofsted inspection. The Police held a lot of information from their call outs to domestic abuse incidents. The pilot was to test how notifications of these incidents could be shared with health professionals and schools so that all had access to information that could indicate a potential risk to a child’s safety.

A Member expressed concern with the performance of indicator HS156 (number of people in temporary accommodation) and advised that as he was seeing his own caseload around housing issues rising, this could become a worsening situation. He also raised concern that the police, and in some cases the Police Community Support Officers (PCSO), were not attending PACT meetings and because they were a key partner, the PACTs were looking to disband, as the meetings were meaningless without their attendance. Therefore, should SF14 (Council attendance at PACTs and SACTs where notified a fortnight in advance) be included in the basket of indicators if the number of PACT meetings was going to reduce. Other Members advised that the police were also not engaging with their local PACT meetings.

With reference to the FUSE Festival (page 112 of the agenda), a Member raised concerns over the arrangements for this year’s festival regarding the re-siting of the event on the Great Lines, licences that were not obtained for the practice events and the clearing up operation afterwards. The relevant officers had responded to his concerns but he wanted to ensure that next year’s event did not have the same problems.

Decision:

The committee agreed to:

(a)   note the first quarter performance against the Key Measures of Success used to monitor the progress against the Council Plan 2012/2013;

(b)   refer the issues raised with regard to the increase of the number of households living in temporary accommodation (HS156) and the FUSE Festival to the Regeneration, Community and Culture Overview and Scrutiny Committee for further consideration;

(c)   ask the Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Customer Contact to look into the issues raised over lack of police engagement with PACT and SACT meetings.