Agenda item

Report of the Strategic Director, Resources and Digital

The Committee received a report and presentation to update on the performance on the delivery of Council priorities for the 6 months period April to October 2021.

The development of the new approach to performance management began in autumn 2020.  Stages included engagement with councillors through Advisory Groups and Overview and Scrutiny Committees.  Engagement with employees has taken place on a regular basis through employee workshops and Management Team discussions.  Engagement with partners has taken place at the Health and Wellbeing Board with the Voluntary and Community Sector (Connected Voice).

The Performance Management and Improvement Framework is approved by Cabinet and Council.  All of the Overview and Scrutiny Committees of the Council will consider performance assessments appropriate to the role and remit of each Committee on a six monthly basis.

There are some risks and limitations to highlight in relation to the six month reports.  It is clear that the Council is still responding to the Covid-19 pandemic and that service disruptions have impacted on performance at the six month stage.  The Council’s Business Impact Assessment and Business Continuity Plan framework has enabled the Council to prioritise critical services to ensure that they can still be delivered.

The development of the Performance Management and Information Framework is ensure it remains a relevant tool for the Council to understand how well it is delivering against it agreed priorities.

The aims of the Performance Management and Information Framework are to deliver Thrive, give clarity on Priorities, inform how resources are allocated and budget determination and measuring the impact to inform policy and resource decisions.

The framework is based on the 6 policy objectives of the HWB Strategy and an organisational health check.

The analysis has highlighted some area where improvements have been made as follows:

·        More people are moving from Vulnerable to Coping according to LIoN data, although more assessment is needed to understand movement across the themes.

·        External assessment from OFSTED rated as Good providing reassurance

·        The Voluntary Undertaking with the Social Housing regulator has been successfully completed

·        Budget savings are regularly monitored and 97.5% of savings are projected to be achieved in 2021/22

Some actions which have been identified as part of the response to improve performance:

·        A new budget approach has been agreed in the context of the MTFS

·        Business Impact Assessments and Business Continuity Planning is continuing to address service pressures and service disruption.

·        Work is ongoing to develop and implement an effective employee engagement framework in response to new ways of working and improve employee morale.

·        Work will continue to take forward the customer experience and digital improvements to service delivery whilst ensuring there is support for people who are unable to access services digitally.

·        Development of Community Wealth Building

The next steps in the process are as follows;

·        Align the Performance Management and Information Framework to the new budget approach agreed by Cabinet in December 2021 to inform cross council reviews and zero based budgeting.

·        Further develop the priorities and actions as part of the iterative approach

·        Take the six month performance reports to Cabinet for consideration in March

·        Bring a year end report to Overview and Scrutiny Committees.

It was queried whether the locality based working is doing what it says is being done in this report as it doesn’t seem to be and will officers in the field continue as they are currently.  It was noted that locality working is identified as an action which needs to be developed.  The action will be to work with councillors to develop.

It was suggested that commissioning a happiness survey should be something which should be done with caution as the responses can very much depend on how someone is feeling on that particular day.  It was noted that we have baseline information from residents surveys undertaken in 2016 and 2018 and that will be incorporate with some questions around satisfaction with Gateshead as a place to live.

It was noted that if our overwhelming policy is for everyone to Thrive the figures seem to show that we are a long way from thriving.  It was noted that this is to be the policy direction going forward the stories from residents are that things are getting worse the inequality gap is worse and resources are limited.  It was noted that this is why the categories have been identified as to where we prioritise resource.

It was noted that the point of the budget deliberations is where we put resources into those areas and target the areas where we have the biggest impact.

It was requested that with regards to locality working effort is made to include ward councillors, it is not a one size fits all and it feels like a top down process  with very little input from local councillors.  It was noted that there is a report but it is understood that it is about developing some principles and then lets talk to councillors about how its developed.  It will be complex as it will be different for each locality. 

It was queried whether businesses were being paid within the timescales and whether there was something which could be done to improve where they are not.  It was noted that a new system has been put in place which will make sure businesses are paid more promptly, often the delays are due to an order number not being on the invoices.

It was queried whether when designing measures the no of bin collections missed was something which would be counted.  There are the areas which residents base their replies on when completing the survey.   It was noted that with regards to environmental type performance the framework wouldn’t be everything there are still performance management measures in place.

RESOLVED        -      (i)             That the comments of the Committee be noted.

                                   (ii)             That the Performance Management and Information report be presented to Cabinet for consideration in March 2022.