The Panel is asked to review and note the Council’s proposed performance indicators and targets for the 2015/16 year.
Minutes:
In presenting the report, the Personnel Services Manager explained that the Council’s Performance Management Framework included quarterly monitoring and reporting of performance. Each quarterly performance report was presented to the Resources and Performance Panel.
It was noted that at the Resources and Performance Panel meeting on 2 June 2015, Members considered a report showing the full year performance for 2014/2015. During discussions Members expressed an interest in understanding the process that was adopted to set performance targets for the year end, in particular, to understand why certain targets had been set.
The Personnel Services Manager explained that this report had been produced to provide an overview of the corporate performance monitoring indicators and associated targets which had been set for the 2015/2016 year. The report also outlined the process that had been followed to agree these with Portfolio Holders.
The Panel was informed of the key changes to Indicators for the 2015/16 year as set out below:
· The first key change to note in the presentation of the targets was that the ‘RE’ targets which were held by the former Deputy Chief Executive had now been merged into other Directorates (mainly the Chief Executives, and a smaller number of Commercial Services) to reflect the Council’s revised management structure.
Chief Executive’s Directorate
The main changes from the 2014/2015 year were:
· To include new indicators to monitor the Major Housing Project (CE7 and CE8) with a corresponding revision to CE9 (formerly RE1) which related to capital receipts.
· To include a new indicator relating to corporate savings (CE10).
· To include revised indicators in relation to the processing of benefit claims (CE13 was new and CE14 (formerly RE10) was revised) to enable Management Team and Members to monitor the take up of new on-line methods of processing benefits claims that had been introduced this financial year.
· To introduce a new target (CE20) relating to income from business rates for renewable energy projects.
Central and Community Services Directorate
The main change was a new target (CC9) to monitor customer satisfaction with the use of the revised on-line system for processing benefits claims mentioned above.
Commercial Services
The decision had been taken to cease to monitor a former indicator relating to the waiting time for cremation bookings, as this indicator had consistently met the target for some time and therefore Management Team felt monitoring was no longer required.
Environment and Planning Directorate
The key changes were:
· To revise the indicator which related to food premises food hygiene law to reflect changes in legislation.
· To cease to monitor indicator EP3 which related to response times to certain types of planning applications, as the indicator simply monitored response times of an internal function.
Members were reminded that the targets for each of the agreed indicators were also shown in Appendix A.
Councillor Devereux expressed concern that all the financial performance indicators were not included in this one report. He asked if there were any plans in place for a performance management system for the whole Council to include elected Members, employees and partners to raise the level of performance. In response, the Assistant Director explained that the performance indicators for finance included business rates and council tax collection rates and would be detailed in a separate budget monitoring report for June 2015 which was to be circulated shortly.
The Personnel Services Manager explained that the Council had a corporate performance framework and explained that the performance indicators set out in the Corporate Business Plan were cascaded down from Executive Director level to Directorate Service Plans and employees individual performance targets. Every employee received an annual appraisal and set targets to achieve. Councillor Devereux commented that it would therefore be useful to receive information on the corporate performance management framework. The Chief Executive suggested that this would be added to the Panel’s Work Programme.
In response to questions from Councillor Gourlay regarding indicator EP1a - % of appeals lost against total numbers of majors determined over a two year rolling period, the Chief Executive explained that the previous year had been exceptional year and was unlikely to be repeated. The Chief Executive referred to a discussion with the Leader on the appeals process and performance indicators and gave an example of a planning application that had gone to appeal and different decisions determined by two inspectors.
The Chairman, Councillor Humphrey commented that it would be useful to have a target for the % of staff who received an appraisal each year. In response, the Personnel Service Manager advised that all employees were subject to an annual appraisal and a robust monitoring process was in place. However, it was agreed that an indicator to monitor this, with a 100% target would be added.
The Vice-Chairman, Councillor Hipperson commented that not all targets were directed to finance.
RESOLVED: The Panel noted and commented on the Council’s proposed performance indicators and targets for the 2015/16 year. Performance against those targets will be reported to the panel via the quarterly Performance Monitoring report and associated Action Report.