Agenda item

Activity & Performance Data - Quarters 1 and 2

Meeting of Virtual Skype meeting, Worcestershire Regulatory Services Board, Thursday 19th November 2020 4.30 p.m. (Item 27/20)

Minutes:

The Environmental Health and Trading Standards Manager, WRS, presented that Activity and Performance Data for Quarters 1 and 2, 2020/2021; and in doing so highlighted that the first half of the year had seen extraordinary circumstances with officers helping to control the pandemic.

Members’ attention was drawn to the following:-

Activity Data

The Food Standards Agency suspended the Food Hygiene inspection programme at the beginning of lockdown in March and this continued throughout the second quarter. This explained the low number of inspections, reflecting that the service was engaging mainly with new entrants to the sector or those wanting re-rating. Clearly any allegations of serious misconduct were also followed up and food service requests did show an increase through the quarter.

Numbers of licensing complaints and enquires began to grow during quarter 2, in line with the re-opening of licensed premises and the growth in wider licensed activities. Applications also began to rise to the kind of levels one might expect.

Planning application numbers rose during quarter 2, going back towards their normal trajectory as the economy re-opened. Environmental Information Requests, often associated with the planning and development process were also returning to more normal levels during this period.

As we always see during the summer months, nuisance/ pollution complaints showed their characteristic peak. Noise complaint numbers exceeded the number for the same period in the previous two years, this time by a significant proportion, 12% or more above the previous two year’s equivalent periods.

Performance

Quarter 2 saw a broader report of performance measures than the starting quarter. The year continued reasonably well from a customer satisfaction perspective with the non-business customer measure at 74.4% and business customers at 97.7%. Given the pressures on the service during the first six months of the year, this was seen as good. At the same point last year, customer satisfaction was at 73.8% and business satisfaction at 98.3%. People who felt better equipped to deal with issues was at 72.3% compared with 63% this time last year.

Processing of taxi driver license renewals remained good with a county-wide average of 97.4% done within 5 working days.

Compliments outnumber complaints by 3:1 (24:78) and staff sickness was looking reasonably good at 0.95 days per FTE. This was better than the previous year’s figure at Q1 (2.91 days per FTE.)

Income as a proportion of budget was at 4.37%. This was as expected down on previous years due to the pandemic and our usual customer based of local authorities not requiring our services at the same level. At the same point last year, just over £160,000 had come in compared with just over £130,000 this year. To maintain comparability, we have not included income for measures to combat the pandemic in the calculation.

The Chairman took the opportunity to thank officers for a comprehensive report.

RESOLVED that the Activity and Performance Data Quarters 1 and 2, 2020/2021, be noted and that Members use the contents of the report in their own reporting back to their respective partner authority.

Supporting documents: