Agenda item

The Portfolio Holder for Customer First and Community Safety will attend the meeting to give account of his performance against Council targets in his portfolio for matters in the remit of this committee.  

Discussion:

The Portfolio Holder for Community Safety and Customer Contact, Councillor O’Brien, addressed the committee outlining the main achievements within areas of his portfolio within the remit of this committee which included:

Customer First

·        first point of contact for environmental/street scene services and pupil service enquiries, handling approximately 14,500 calls per month

·        successful management of the dedicated lines that received enquiries about the Olympic Torch Relay, the Medway Test and the Police and Crime Commissioner Elections.

Customer Contact

·        currently received all initial revenues and benefits, social care, development management and housing solutions enquiries and was responsible for revenues and benefits assessment activity, social care financial assessments and planning application validation

·        under the next phase of the ‘Better for Less’ programme (to be fully implemented by the end of January 2013) it would additionally take ownership of initial library service, licensing, heritage, greenspaces, traffic and road safety, integrated youth, integrated transport, early years and Medway adult and community learning enquiries

·        the new Customer Contact and Administration models were on target to deliver £6 million savings between 2011-2014

·        90% plus of customers surveyed in random monthly surveys of customers contacting Customer Contact expressed satisfaction with the way their contact was handled

·        Macmillan welfare benefits service - a tripartite agreement between the council, Macmillan Cancer Care and NHS Medway

·        community interpreting service

·        community hubs

·        single contact number - 333333

·        cross-party Member User (Review) Group.

Blue Badges

·        a very important part of the package of support for people with severe mobility problems

·        in the year to date, the council had received 3,909 applications of which 3,127 badges had been issued

·        there had been continuous improvement on the percentage of Blue Badge application customer journeys achieved to 20 days: from 40.2% in Quarter 1 (during the introduction of new national requirements and new national supplier of badges) to 75.9% in Quarter 2, with a target of 95% by Quarter 4

·        a programme of improvements was planned, including: Members guide on Blue Badges eligibility; Blue Badge amnesty i.e. encourage people to return Blue Badges of deceased relatives or for those who no longer require the badge; and Blue Badge anti-fraud campaign, including the introduction of a Blue Badge Fraud Hotline.

Legal

·        the Portfolio Holder gave his thanks and best wishes to the ex-Head of Legal Services and announced the appointment of her successor

·        continued to provide a broad range of in-house legal advice and representation to a variety of council teams

·        retained the legal practice management standard ‘Lexcel’, as well as the quality management standard ISO 9001

·        key to the delivery of major projects, such as the ground breaking private public partnership between the Kings’ School in Rochester and the council over the Stirling Leisure Centre and the procurement of the successful application for £14million of grant from DCLG to facilitate weekly recycling in Medway

·        enforcement work, followed up by successful prosecutions in court, including benefit fraud, a resident putting trade waste in a domestic container and the conclusion of a long running planning enforcement case

·        a strategic relationship had been developed with Kent Law School at the University of Kent which had involved a joint training event and also the offer of training placements for local students, within the council’s legal team

·        a recent benchmarking exercise against other councils had shown that the service provided upper quartile value for money compared to similar authorities

·        last quarter (April to October 2012) there was 97% customer satisfaction with the service

·        work had begun to explore how the council could market its legal services to other partner organisations to provide a source of income. This might include shared services or a joint private public partnership.

Members discussed the operational issues from earlier in the year for benefits processing and asked the Portfolio Holder what was being done to ensure this did not happen when there was a change to the benefits system in early 2013. The Portfolio Holder advised that Customer Contact had robust systems prepared for the increase in volume of enquiries when benefit changes were applied. 

In response to the Portfolio Holder’s announcement of a Blue Badge Fraud Hotline, a Member advised that the Audit Committee had recommended that there was one hotline number to deal with all fraud and he would be concerned if a separate number was set up purely for Blue Badge fraud. The Portfolio Holder agreed that it would be easier to have one fraud hotline number and that he would discuss this with officers.

A Member raised concern at the risk-adverse advice given by the legal team for the quasi-judicial processes (planning and licensing hearings) as it erred on the side of caution. Other councils took a less cautious approach in their decision-making, which might result in more legal challenges but was a decision that residents would expect to see the council making given the circumstances of the case. Another Member advised that for licensing hearings, legal advice should be to interpret the law to find creative ways to avoid granting licences in particular instances and also asked that officers provided advice to Members about how to make appropriate representations on quasi-judical applications. The Portfolio Holder advised that legal officers could only give professional legal advice on the facts of each application and it would be up to Members if they wished to heed that advice, or not. However, he would discuss this with the Assistant Director of Legal and Corporate Services.

Following Members concern on the projected £153,000 overspend in the legal budget for 2012/2013, the Portfolio Holder advised that the income from capital receipts had not been realised and that officers were investigating ways to reduce this and he was confident that this service would achieve a balanced budget by the end of the financial year.

Decision:

The committee agreed to:

(a)   thank the Portfolio Holder for his presentation and the answers provided to Members questions;

(b)   send its thanks to the ex-Head of Legal Services and to wish her well in the future;

(c)     send its thanks to officers in the Customer First, Customer Contact and legal teams.