Agenda item

To receive a report from the Policy and Performance Officer.  This will be presented by the Corporate Policy Manager.

Recommendation

To consider the performance of the service areas under the committee’s remit and make any recommendations to senior management or the Executive as appropriate, and consider the Annual Review of Performance Indicators and make any comments or recommendations to the Executive.

The Policy and Performance Officer explained that there were suggested new performance indicators.

There was a discussion about the suggested performance indicator F6 – Net Return on Property.  It was stated that Waverley had a new Property Investment Strategy.  One of the Committee thought the indicator should not include historic information.  It was also felt that cost information should be separated out.  The Head of Finance and Property felt that all the properties in the Council’s portfolio were investment properties whether they were historic or recent acquisitions.  They all provided a return.  He did not feel there was a difference between ones the Council had had for a long time and recent ones.  There was just one portfolio for investment assets.

There was a discussion around MRP (Minimum Revenue Provision) and how management costs were estimated and whether they featured in the proposed calculation.  The Head of Finance confirmed that MRP wasn’t attributed to a particular asset within the portfolio.  It was considered when a purchase was made and when Waverley borrowed money.  It applied to the overall provision not individual assets.  The Asset Management team looked after all the assets in Waverley’s portfolio. 

The Committee were unclear on what was envisaged regarding property information for the performance report in terms of how it would be presented and how it differed from the property investment information which was also supplied to the Value for Money Overview and Scrutiny Committee.  The committee felt the indicators had to be meaningful and had to relate to corporate targets.

There was a discussion about the best way to measure whether the Land Charges provision was effective.

There was further discussion surrounding PG3b regarding freedom of information requests.  It was stated that it was possible to respond saying that we couldn’t respond yet.  It was felt that a more useful performance indicator would tell us how many requests were responded to with the information that was asked for.

The Committee suggested a review of the new performance indicators after 12 months.  The Committee also suggested having a brief description of definitions such as subject access requests.  It was also felt that it would be useful to see trends rather than snapshots where possible.

It was clarified that the suggested indicator C4 – Percentage of complete building control applications checked within 10 days came under Commercial Service’s remit not Planning’s.  The Committee wanted to know what issue the proposed indicator was trying to address as they had had complaints from residents about land charges.  The Committee thought the layout of the indicators could be improved so that all the related ones were grouped together.

The Committee felt that the target for the percentage of building control applications checked within 10 days was too low and that a higher percentage would be better. The Corporate Policy Manager thought that the applications had to be processed within a certain time.  She said she would circulate information clarifying this to the Committee.

It was clarified that Environment Overview and Scrutiny considered the Performance Indicators for Planning but Value for Money Overview and Scrutiny considered Economic Development.  There were not yet any established performance indicators for Economic Development although the service was keen to establish some.