Agenda item

The Head of Regulatory Services, Worcestershire Regulatory Services (WRS) presented the Activity and Performance Data for Quarters 1, 2, 3, and 4 for 2022/2023; and in doing so highlighted the following key points: -

Activity Data

The service moved into the final quarter of 2022/3 knowing that it would be the last period where Covid grant funding had any influence on activities. With Government support ended on 31^st March, however, there remained several workstreams where covid staff had been redeployed to deliver successful support to the partners.

The service had continued to address the Food Standards Agency’s (FSA) recovery plan as part of its activity this year. A creditable 1,657 interventions were completed across the year. Of those businesses included in the Food Hygiene Rating Scheme (FHRS), 69 were rated as non-compliant (0, 1 or 2) with most of these ratings were issued to takeaways, restaurants, and small retailers.

Quarter 4 followed the downward trend in relation to reports of stray dogs, this had been attributed to helpful Members of the public posting on social media to try to reunite dogs with owners before contacting WRS.

WRS continued to receive a higher number of enquiries about licensing matters rather than complaints about licensed or unlicensed activity. Based on the 532 complaints recorded, 40% related to taxi licensing, 23% to alcohol licensing, and 22% to animal licensing.

Nuisance complaints followed their long-established seasonal pattern, however, following the drop from the summer peak through Q3, Q4 saw an increase in numbers despite it being Winter. The good weather during February may have accounted for some of the increase as people were tempted outside earlier than they may had been otherwise.

Homes for Ukraine

Support continued to be provided to Bromsgrove, Malvern Hills, Redditch and Wychavon through quarters 3 and 4 with the provision of the Homes for Ukraine scheme.  This involved host and guest checks, support and guidance as well as facilitating appropriate payments.  This was completed utilising staff formerly employed as COVID Advisors.  At the end of quarter 4, this work ceased for Wychavon and Malvern but continued for the other two partners.

Planning Enforcement

In Bromsgrove and Redditch, former Contact Tracing and Enforcement staff had been utilised to support planning colleagues in tackling a backlog of planning enforcement issues.  Most of these cases were live and going through the enforcement process. The work had been well received.

Performance

The customer satisfaction perspective with business customers continued to be high at 98.1%, but non-business customer measured at 59.2%. This was attributed to how stretched the service was during the Summer where there was limited capacity available to respond to nuisance complaints with the continued draw on resources to meet Food Standards Agency road-map requirements for visits with the limited capacity in the system to back-fill with agency staff.

It was also noted that WRS attempted to shift customers from paper satisfaction forms to electronic responses, this led to a clear reduction in responses with only 138 whereas previous years there had been 200-250.

The figures for licensing processing were good with the year ending at 97.5% of taxi driver renewals completed within 5 working days. However, all districts had slightly more vehicles having been taken off the road during stop-checks or failed by local garages when vehicles were presented for their routine tests. This was attributed to the current economic climate, with cost-of-living pressures continuing to impact on Members of the trade.

Staff sickness was down at 2.93 days per FTE. This includes all staff employed during the year and was a significant improvement on 2022/23 (5.2 days) and below the 5-year average (3.71 days).

Staff satisfaction was at 92%, slightly lower than last year but still an excellent result. 48 of WRS staff responded, which was a low, however, two-thirds of staff who responded scored the service as 8/10 or better to work for, which shows the majority of staff like working in the environment WRS provided. Further work would be done during the year to look at more detailed feedback.

The increases in both salaries and hosting costs incurred, plus some modest investments in areas like additional funds for gull control in the City and a continuous analyser purchased for Wychavon at Wychbold, had pushed up the overall spend by the partners. Therefore, the cost per head of population was up this year at £5.51 per head of population. Officers detailed that it was difficult to compare costs with other providers due to the way the service was delivered, however, WRS were confident that this spend was comparable or modest compared to similar areas for the functions discharged.

Members sought clarification on whether there was an issue with defective vehicles on the road in Redditch as there were 25 vehicles detailed on page 166 of the main agenda pack, removed during spot checks or routine safety inspections, which was substantially higher than other partner authorities. The Licensing and Support Services Manager replied that Redditch had the most vehicles out of the partner authorities so would expect a higher value, however, Officers were continuing to monitor the situation.

RESOLVED that the Activity and Performance Data Quarters 1, 2, 3 and 4 for 2022/2023, be noted and that Members use the contents of the report in their own reporting back to their respective partner authority.