Agenda item

(Director of Governance) To consider the attached report.

The Select Committee received a report from S Hill the Assistant Director, Governance regarding the Key Performance Indicators 2017/18 – Quarter 1 Performance.

The Local Government Act 1999 required that the Council make arrangements to secure continuous improvements in the way in which its functions and services were exercised, having regard to a combination of economy, efficiency and effectiveness.

As part of the duty to secure continuous improvement, a range of Key Performance Indicators (KPI) relevant to the Council’s services and key objectives, are adopted each year by the Finance and Performance Management Cabinet Committee. Performance against the KPIs was monitored on a quarterly basis by Management Board and Overview and Scrutiny to drive improvement in performance and ensure corrective action was taken where necessary.

A range of 32 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for 2017/18 were adopted by the Finance and Performance Management Cabinet Committee in March 2017. The KPIs were important to the improvement of the Council’s services and the achievement of its key objectives and comprised a combination of some former statutory indicators and locally determined performance measures. The aim of the KPIs are to direct improvement effort towards services and the national priorities and local challenges arising from the social, economic and environmental context of the district that are the focus of the key objectives.

The overall position for all 32 KPIs at the end of Quarter 1 was as follows:

(a)          27 (84%) indicators achieved first quarter target;

(b)          5 (16%) indicators did not achieve first quarter target, although 1 (3%) of these indicators performed within the agreed tolerance for the indicator.

There were 5 KPIs which fell within Governance Select Committee’s areas of responsibility, the overall position with regard to the achievement of target performance at Q1 for these 5 indicators were as follows:

(a)          5 (100%) indicators achieved target;

(b)          0 (0%) indicators did not achieve target;

(c)          0 (0%) performed within the agreed tolerance for the indicator; and

(d)          5 (100%) indicators were currently anticipated to achieve year end target.

The ‘amber’ performance status used in the KPI report under agenda item 8, appendix 1, identified indicators that had missed the agreed target for the quarter, but where performance was within an agreed tolerance or range. The KPI tolerances were agreed by Management Board when targets for the KPIs were set in March 2017.

The Select Committee was requested to review Q1 performance for the KPIs within its areas of responsibility. The full set of KPIs was also considered by Management Board on 16 August 2017 and the Finance and Performance Management Cabinet Committee on 14 September 2017.

Councillor J Knapman asked if these statistics were accurate, as he understood more to be instances of applications getting near to the 8 week deadline, withdrawn then re-submitted a few weeks later and the 8 week deadline would start again.

S Hill advised that he was not aware of this practice on smaller applications and there wasn’t an officer present at the meeting to be able to answer.

Councillor D Stallan asked Members if they would like a report on this item to come to the next meeting of the Governance Select Committee.

Members agreed and asked that the report included information about the performance from the date when the application was validated to the date the application received a decision.

RESOLVED:

(1)          That the Key Performance Indicators 2017/18 for Quarter 1 be noted; and

(2)          That a report comes to the next meeting detailing the time planning applications were first submitted to the time they received the final decision.