Agenda item

(Director of Neighbourhoods) To consider the attached report.

The Corporate Plan (CP) 2018/23 was the authority’s key strategic planning document to transform the Council to be ‘Ready for the Future’. The CP linked the key external drivers influencing Council services, with a set of aims and objectives, grouped under three corporate ambitions – stronger communities, stronger place and stronger council. Each ambition had a set of corporate aims, which in turn were detailed by one or more corporate objective, as detailed in Appendix 1 of this report.

An annual ‘Corporate Specification’ (previously the Key Action Plan) would detail how the CP was being delivered through operational objectives, which in turn would link to the annual Services business plans. The CP would be assessed through the achievement of a set of benefits, to focus on what the Council had achieved for customers. Those benefits in turn would be evidenced through a set of performance measures, as detailed in Appendix 2 of this report.

This report outlining the draft benefits maps was being scrutinised by the four SCs and would go to the Overview and Scrutiny (O&S) Committee on 17 April 2018. Final definitions for the new key benefits and performance indicator set would then be agreed by the Finance and Performance Management Cabinet Committee on 21 June 2018 in consultation with the Head of Transformation. Ideally this would then help the SCs undertake effective scrutiny of the Council’s performance.

The Head of Transformation asked members for feedback on the proposed format for reporting the performance of the indicator set and the progress of the CP 2018/23. An alternative option was that members could focus on the essential parts relevant to this SC to cut down on the paperwork / duplication if that would help.

Members made the following comments:

·      The majority of members found the proposed / draft formats confusing.

·      Plan (page 78) – keep.

·      Aim 10 a draft format to present information in tables / charts (pages 81-82) – only scrutinise those relevant to the Neighbourhoods SC.

·      How would it be possible to scrutinise effectively if the SC never saw the others, as members needed to see what was being achieved.

·      Formats all seemed very busy, were difficult to follow and it was not easy to extract information.

·      Formats needed to be less complicated and more simplified.

·      Reports were far too wordy with repetitive phraseology and often stated the obvious about the Council.

·      If only looking at the customers, how could the O&S committees effectively scrutinise the Council’s work.

·      The draft Performance Indicator Profiles (Appendix 3, page 83) – would these be added to the existing ones and in what context would the new Indicator set be used.

The Acting Chief Executive stressed there was a need to increase transparency for members and their comments would be taken into consideration. The O&S Committee in April would have the final decision on whether to accept these new formats. The Head of Transformation would welcome any additional feedback brought to his attention by members. Councillor M Sartin suggested there might need to be a workshop to apprise members on how to understand / scrutinise effectively the new reports when a format had been agreed.