Agenda item

The Corporate Performance Report provides a quarterly analysis of the council’s performance. The Performance Report, providing performance analysis for the first quarter of 2018-19, is set out at Annexe 1. The report is being presented to each of the Overview and Scrutiny Committees for comment and any recommendations they may wish to make to the Executive.

Recommendation

It is recommended that the Overview & Scrutiny Committee considers the performance of the service areas under the remit of the committee as set out in Annexe 1 to this report and makes any recommendations to senior management or the Executive as appropriate.

The Chief Executive, Tom Horwood, introduction the item. He highlighted that the new overarching performance report provided broader focus, covered a range of important Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), dataset and corporate snapshot that would be useful for the senior managers and the Overview and Scrutiny. He emphasised that this was a first version that could be tweaked in light of any feedback and suggestions and needed to be fit for purpose.

During a comprehensive, constructive and frank discussion, a range of views, underlying themes and comments were made. The Chairman invited the Committee members to cogitate over the new format – values, charts, colour, information provided and the ability to understand the material provided. For example, at a practical level, did the new formatting, colours, information and pie charts make sense to the Committee Members?

A Councillor stated that she was not happy with the new format of the report as the Committee used to receive such style of report many years ago, and had to ask to receive the kind of reports which was relevant to do their job - smaller focussed reports with more relevant information and details to avoid losing the emphasis on monitoring and overseeing the service delivery for the residents.

Pages 119, 101, 104 and 110 were cited as perhaps not being very clear and thus created many queries. For instance, what did the red actually mean in each area - bad, good or both depending on what and how was an area being measured? Did the Members and others fully understand what these values, colours and jargons were? Were up/down arrows good or bad? Should there not be a long term and short term comparison and trend?

It was mentioned that there needed to be a serious consideration of the target audiences - their needs, roles and aims (Would one identical report be suitable for Senior Managers, Executive as well as the Scrutiny that probably had different approaches, aims and priorities?). Could the competing priorities be realistically balanced and one report fit for purpose for all? A few Members felt that there was far too much jargon and the report needed to have fewer jargons in plain English wherever possible, e.g. what was E11/HA1 and was it the best way to explain?

Others felt that effective housing scrutiny might need more information to examine and keep track of performance/service delivery. Just by way of example, page 120 needed the cost, details and further commentary, and page 101 was mixed up. It was requested that if a table dropped, please repeat the headings on the next page and needed to explain what a particular value in tables was. It was added that a better, simpler and jargon-free set of keys/legends would be helpful and there was a need for long-term and short-term information.

A Member felt that it would be useful to know more about what was being done to address any highlighted issues/concerns instead of just raising these in the report. Others were of the view that if a report created too many questions then perhaps it was not such a good change and the Committee was only interested in housing element to focus their minds instead of an overcomplicated report with legends/keys paragraph repeated. On the other hand, a Member felt it useful to have a comparison with other service areas and added that as he was unburdened in relation to the past format and history, therefore, overall, the new report was fine except for the need for some clarity, relevant information and details that could be added in.

It was mentioned that former KPIs were still available in a perhaps slightly different format. A member noted that he was neither overjoyed, nor would completely dismiss the new format as a badly updated format. He felt that it might be that some time was needed to evaluate, and perhaps it was a question of adding more explanation and simpler information with details therefore he was prepared to give it a benefit of the doubt.

In relation to the new report had been presented to all other O&S Committees and was perhaps rather passively received – it was commented that, quite possibly, other O&S Committees were not as inquisitive as the Housing O&S or maybe it was due to the continuity of the Housing Committee over the years?

The Chief Executive responded to comments and observations. He stated that target audiences were important - Managers needed to take relevant action, Scrutiny was to oversee, and the report was not intended for the full council meetings. He said that, previously, the performance report was rather narrowly focussed.

The Chief Executive noted the points about formatting, colour, content and details and stated that the commentary was there but could perhaps be further improved by the relevant Service Managers. He informed that the report could be refined further with more details and information, if the Committee wished but added that he would not wish to create too many separate reports but the Housing O&S could have only their housing section of the wider performance report. It was contended that there were some positive comments/comments in regard to the new corporate performance report at other O&S meetings, and the passiveness was perhaps a tongue in cheek reference. He added that housing was a substantial part of the council and it was good to have a healthy debate. He concluded that he was not perturbed about any criticism or questions about the new format and welcomed debate and appreciated the feedback to make the new corporate performance report fit for purpose.

After the detailed discussion, it was noted that:

·         The Committee was pleased to see that housing was the only service area not to have any red sections;

·         The Committee would provide offline comments to the Chief Executive; and

·         The Coordinating Board would consider the new format of the corporate performance report with a view to arriving at a final joint response and/or to providing further feedback.