Issue - meetings

For the period 1^st January to 31^st March 2022.

The Committee scrutinised a report which presented a review of the Council performance for the month of March 2022 and for the 2021/22 financial year. The Committee was invited to examine areas of under-performance and where appropriate recommend appropriate remedial action. The Committee was also asked to note areas of good performance.

The Corporate Performance Report monitored delivery against the Council’s Covid-19 Recovery Strategy. In this regard it was noted that 89.2% of actions within the Recovery Strategy were either on track or had already been successfully completed. There were 68% of updated targeted measures performance that were on or above target at the end of the fourth quarter of 2021/22. In addition, the report noted that 66% of updated target measures had achieved their stated goals.

The Committee was advised that throughout 2021/22 Covid-19 had continued to impact on the Council’s performance in a range of areas either through staffing capacity (because of Covid-19 sickness) or external factors that affected performance that arose because Covid-19 controls were in place. The Council has, and continues, to monitor recovery closely; through working with services to support recovery planning and to reflect key areas to prioritise delivery in the new corporate plane. The submitted report provided breakdowns by ‘Recovery Areas’ and further details on ‘exceptions’.

The report highlighted the following actions/measures that were coded red (unlikely to achieve a positive outcome in the specified timescale), for which portfolio holders and lead officers were requested to be accountable.

a.    Promoting health and wellbeing and supporting the most vulnerable

b.    Working with communities to improve health and wellbeing

c.    Enabling area

In considering these ‘red coded’ areas of work, the Committee sought assurances from Officers that remedial action was in place to attempt to rectify the various problems that had been highlighted in the report.

A member referred to action M918 (Percentage of calls answered) and expressed concern at the relatively large numbers of unanswered calls that were being reported.

Members of the Committee also expressed concern at the rising levels of staff sickness across the authority. The authority was currently losing, on average, 11.36 per employee to sickness an increase from 7.75 days that was reported at the corresponding point of 2021.although the levels of long-term sickness absence (absences longer than 20 working days in duration) had reduced to 60.5%, compared to 83.9% in 2021. The divisions in the authority with the highest sickness levels were Adult Social Care, Economy and Children’s Social Care. In this regard the Committee requested that a report be submitted to a future meeting of the Committee analysing the absence trends in the authority and outlining any remedial action that was being taken to address these issues. The Committee also requested that future reports include breakdowns of staff turnover.

A Member also requested that a report be submitted to a future meeting regarding analysing the contract management process for a selected operational area of the Council.

RESOLVED:

1.    That the report be noted

2.    That  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8