Agenda item

The Council Plan is the organisation’s overarching business plan, setting out the Council’s commitments to achieving certain outcomes during the life of the Plan. Following feedback from members and officers, the current set of indicators, used to assess the delivery of the Plan, have been reviewed and adjusted. This report enables Members to consider the proposed suite of indicators prior to consideration by Cabinet on 11 February 2014. 

Discussion:

The Assistant Director for Communications, Performance and Partnerships advised that the Council Plan was the Council’s overarching business plan, setting out the Council’s commitments to achieving certain outcomes during the life of the Plan. Following feedback from Members and Officers the current set of indicators used to assess the delivery of the Plan have been reviewed and adjusted. The purpose of this review was to ensure the delivery of the Council Plan was assessed using a focused, informative and streamlined set of indicators to cover the period 2014/15 which took into account of recent financial and service developments.

Officers had also taken the opportunity to review and refresh the key projects referenced in the Plan to reflect the main focus for activity over the next year to deliver the Council’s Priorities.

Members’ attention was drawn to Appendix 2 of the report, where detailed information on target levels of performance against the key measures was set out. The targets would be agreed alongside the budget at Council on 20 February 2014. If there were any significant changes to the budget that would require targets to be revised this would be reported to Members as part of quarterly monitoring.

With regard to Adult Social Care it was noted that one extra indicator would be included to measure the number of delayed discharges from Medway Maritime Hospital attributable to adult social care. This supplements the measure that looks at delays attributable to social care and health.

Members then raised a number of issues and questions including:

·                    Social Care – why are measures around user satisfaction and staff vacancy rates not consistent across children’s and adult social care - it was explained that there was an indicator relating to satisfaction with the services provided for adults as this was the subject of a nationally required survey. There was no national requirement for a similar survey on satisfaction with services provided by social workers for children. However the Committee was assured that taking account of the voice of the child was an important strand of the children’s care improvement plan. Vacancy rates for social workers for children were a particular priority issue for the Council and so was included in the Council Plan.

·                    Average journey time along six primary transport corridors to measure congestion - Members had previously asked for a review of the routes so they do not focus exclusively on Chatham and progress on this was queried. The Director of Regeneration Community and Culture agreed to send the Member concerned a written update on the Member group proposals. He reported that overall average journey times had improved significantly, dropping to 1 mile in 2.5 minutes from 1 mile in 4 minutes along the Chatham centre through routes.

·                    Number of visitors to tourist attractions - in response to a question about which tourist attractions were to be measured the Director of Regeneration Community and Culture advised that all the “paid for” attractions would be covered including those owned and run by the Council as well as others such as Dickens World run by other organisations.

·                    Reason for removal of indicator relating to satisfaction with the bus station  - it was explained that the bus station satisfaction survey had been dropped because last time a satisfaction survey had been taken, in the rush hour in appalling weather, the satisfaction rate had remained very high. Due to this outcome it had been removed from the Council Plan indicators as it was not a priority for improvement.

·                    Reason for removal of litter/graffiti indicators – the Committee was advised these indicators had been removed from the measures as the Medway area was now largely clear of graffiti and any offensive or personal graffiti was removed the same day as it was reported. It was acknowledged that the Council did not have any control over private property and it was noted that the Council’s new relationship with Network Rail might generate a dialogue about removal of graffiti visible from moving trains.

·                    Percentage of residents registered to vote - a Member asked if this could be included as a new indicator, particularly in the context of introduction of individual registration. The Assistant Director for Communications, Performance and Partnerships agreed to take this request away for consideration and respond via the report to Cabinet.

Decision:

(a)       That the Business Support Overview & Scrutiny Committee’s comments on the Council Plan Indicator and Key Project sets 2014/15 (Appendix 1 of the report), the 2014/15 Target Planning document (appendix 2 of the report) be forwarded to Cabinet on 11 February 2014 for consideration; and

(b)       That a reduction in the number of indicators from 102 to 62 was welcomed by the Committee.