Issue - meetings

The Committee considered the Corporate Performance Monitoring Report (in relation to quarter 1 of 2021-22), which had been submitted as part of the Council’s new performance monitoring framework.

The Committee had been invited to submit comments and questions regarding the report itself and specific performance indicators in advance of the meeting, details of which, together the officer response, were included in the Supplementary Information Sheet circulated prior to the meeting.

The Leader of the Council commented that this was still an evolving process and encouraged everyone to be engaged in improving the quality of the format of the report in terms of whether the Council was measuring the right things in terms of corporate performance and also whether the performance to those metrics was to acceptable levels.

During the debate, the following points were made:

·       Question as to whether information on the cost to the Council in respect of planning appeals, particularly in terms of officer time, could be included in future reports.  It was noted that this information could already be provided in the separate monitoring report on Planning Appeals, which was due to be reported to the Committee at its next meeting.

·       In response to concerns over the lack of data provided in respect of Environmental PIs, it was acknowledged that further work needed to be done, although there were difficulties in obtaining up to date environmental information from external sources

·       In response to the Leader’s comment on the type of performance information collected, it was suggested that as well as collecting information about satisfaction with online services, number of online customer accounts etc., the Council should also be monitoring performance in respect of response times in respect of telephone calls, in view of recent concerns over difficulties some residents have experienced in that regard

·       It was also suggested that future reports could cover the number of subscribers to the Council’s email newsletters.

·       Recognising that some performance indicators related to service areas under the Council’s control, and that others were are more economic indicators, it was suggested that future reports might split these into two sections so that the Committee receives a snapshot of how the Council itself was performing, and how the wider Borough was performing.  

The Committee, having reviewed the report

RESOLVED: That the contents of the report along with the Performance Monitoring Report for 2021-22 quarter 1, shown in Appendix 1 thereto, be noted, together with the update information set out in the Supplementary Information Sheet.

Reasons:

To support our new corporate performance monitoring framework and enable the Committee to monitor the Council’s performance against key indicators, as well as review key data relating to the ‘health’ of the borough.