Agenda and minutes

Please note that, in accordance with the Members' Code of Conduct, when declaring interests members must disclose the existence and nature of the interest, and whether it is a disclosable pecuniary interest (DPI) or personal and/or pecuniary.

No declarations of interest were received.

Councillor Richard Metcalfe, Portfolio Holder for Our People and Resources and Leader of the Council, presented a report to Performance Scrutiny Committee outlining the steps to recovery coping within the pandemic were in the following areas:

a)    Our People – many changes had been made in the way we worked:

·         Many staff still worked a significant proportion of their time from home with limited working from our sites and controlled and safe working on the front line. All this change had been accommodated whilst maintaining service delivery in very challenging circumstances

·         HR had developed lots of additional support to help both our physical and mental health support open to both members and officers

·         The roll out of new IT kit was halfway through along with the technology under the ‘One Council’ technology pillar to allow all staff who need it to work on Office 365 from September 2021

·         Decision making governance was maintained throughout 2020/21 by using Teams and Zoom meetings

·         The Member Bulletin had proved to be a popular way of sharing important information and keeping everyone up to date

·         Staff pulled out all the stops to manage a well-planned and executed election service with not one but three different elections on a single day

b)    key services continued with minimal negative effect on residents and businesses. Some key points to note include:

·         All defined critical services remained functional throughout lockdowns

·         Excellent communication delivered on our website and social media, helped the community understand what they could and couldn’t do and where to get help. Alongside social media messaging we had expanded our use of video messaging to keep the messages fresh and interesting

·         Significant level of support for the most vulnerable – including those rough sleeping and those suffering from social isolation

·         Customer Services had introduced a safe way of working with those in most need of face-to-face help – whilst managing even more telephone calls than usual

·         Revenues and Benefits had supported more customers as people had dealt with the changes caused by fluctuating work and changing Universal Credit amounts

·         We were now able to open up a wider (though still restricted) service level at our crematorium, and had started work on the new facility there

·         Despite facing issues with more cars parked in narrow spaces than in the past, our waste collection teams had fulfilled all collections including green waste

·         We had introduced footfall counters into the city centre as part of the recovery plans, these monitored how many and where we were seeing increased visitors and sat alongside our CCTV service which monitored for any ASB

·         Our FH&S team had been working under DEFRA guidance to ensure they still covered ‘at risk’ businesses whilst also helping all businesses deal with the rules for covid safety

·         Housing had continued to work through the year, collecting rent, repairing void properties and dealing with maintenance issues

·         Housing maintenance had commenced a pilot of a new scheduled repairs service

·         All public parks and commons, including Hartsholme Country Park,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 18.

Pat Jukes, Business Manager – Corporate Policy:

a)    presented and update to Performance Scrutiny Committee on agreed performance targets for 2021/22 for initial reporting in Q1 2021/22 and to provided additional supporting information on the rationale for the changes

b)    highlighted that Appendix A detailed the measures chosen for target monitoring. The targets were developed by the Assistant Directors in consultation with their Service Managers and then confirmed by Directors and Portfolio Holders, before presented to Performance Scrutiny Committee and Executive.

An additional column had been included for those measures with confirmed changes which summarised the rationale for the change and any planned next steps

c)    explained that there was a total of 19 proposed changes as follows:

·         Four measures had been removed altogether for 2021/22, all of which were targeted measures:

-       CS 4 – Average Customer Feedback Score (face to face enquiries – score out of 10). Not currently able to be collected

-       CS 5 – Customer Satisfaction with their Phone Call to Customer Services. Not currently able to be collected.

-       PRS 1 – Return on New Commercial Investments. Commercial property purchases no longer being pursued.

-       HM 3 – Percentage of Tenants Satisfied with Repairs and Maintenance. Not currently able to be collected

·         A further two currently targeted measures had been changed to volumetric measures due to ongoing uncertainty. The measures proposed were:

-       WBL 2 – Number of New Starters on the Apprenticeship Scheme

-       WBL 3 – Percentage of Apprentices Moving into Education, Employment or Training

·         Of the remaining targeted measures there were now 13 confirmed changes reflective of the current situation:

-       ACC 1 – Average Return on Investment Portfolio

-       REV 1 – Council Tax – In Year Collection Rate for Lincoln

-       REV 2 – Business Rates – In Year Collection Rate for Lincoln

-       REV 3 - Number of Outstanding Customer Changes in the Revenues Team

-       BE 1 – Average (YTD) Days to Process New Housing Benefit Claims from Date Received

-       BE 3 – Number of Housing Benefits/ Council Tax Support Customers Awaiting Assessment

-       BE 4 – Percentage of Risk-Based Quality Checks made where Benefit Entitlement was Correct

-       PH 3 – Number of Empty Homes Brought Back into Use

-       WM 1 – Percentage of Waste Recycled or Composted

-       RC 1 – Rent Collected as a Proportion of Rent Owed

-       RC 2 – Current Tenant Arrears as a Percentage of the Annual Rent Debit

-       HV 2 – Average Re-Let Time Calendar Days for all Dwellings – Standard Re-Lets

-       HV 3 – Average Re-Let Time Calendar Days for all Dwellings (Including Major Works)

d)    highlighted that following the call-in of the original report seen by Performance Scrutiny on 22 June 2021 and then by Executive on 24 June 2021, a Select Scrutiny Committee sat on Wednesday 26 July 2021 to decide on the way forward. It was agreed that:

·         The performance targets for 2021/22 as agreed at Executive on 24 June 2021  ...  view the full minutes text for item 19.