Issue - meetings

The Chairman invited the Portfolio Holder for Policy, Performance, Communications, Customer Services, Legal, Equalities, Democratic Services and Human Resources together with the Policy Manager to introduce the report.  The Policy Manager provided Members with background information on the report and explained that future Performance Reports would concentrate more on “measures” rather than performance indicators which would span a time period and be produced in a chart format.  An example of this format would be provided to the Board for comment at a future meeting.   This format would provide Members with a more responsive view at any one particular time and each department would be responsible for its own data and be able to access this on a daily basis.

Members noted the indicators which had improved, in particular the time taken to process Housing Benefit and Council Tax Claims.  This service area had recently been subject to transformation/intervention and it was anticipated that this would lead to further improvements.  The indicator which was giving some concern was the number of households living in temporary accommodation and Members were informed that work was being carried out to closely monitor this as future legislative changes could impact further on it.

The Policy Manager provided the Board with the figures in respect of the number of British Crime Survey comparator crimes reported.  For the period 1st April 2010 to 31st December 2010 the total amounted to 2,034 and for 2011 these had decreased to 1,838.  The Board discussed the following areas of performance in more detail and the Policy Manager agreed to pass on the Board’s concerns to the relevant Heads of Service and noted that if no improvement was shown in Quarter 4 the Board would request further detailed information.

• Residual waste per household
• The percentage of household waste re-used, recycled or composted (Members discussed the possibility that this could be a seasonal decline).
• Processing of planning applications within specified timescales and how a small number of applications could dramatically change these figures.  Members agreed that it would be helpful if details of actual numbers of applications were provided to give a more contextual view.
• Number of households living in temporary accommodation and the cost implications for the Council.

The Board discussed in detail the complaints procedure, the number of complaints reported and the Council’s improvement in responding to complaints within the agreed timescales.  Members also commented on the Satisfaction Poll on the opening page of the Council’s website and improvements which could be made in order to make the website more accessible.  The Head of Customer Service informed Members that this was being addressed, although currently the Council was in a partnership with other authorities and Worcestershire County Council (WCC) and largely funded by WCC which made it difficult to make major changes.  After further discussion it was

RESOLVED that the Quarter 3 Performance Monitoring Report be noted.