Agenda item

Purpose of Report

To present the Executive with a summary of the operational performance position for quarter 2 of the financial year 2017/18 from July 2017 to September 2017.

Decision

That the Executive:

(1)          Notes the achievements, issues and future concerns highlighted in the report for this quarter.

(2)          Agrees that relevant Portfolio Holders ensure that management has a local focus on those highlighted areas showing deteriorating performance.

Alternative Options Considered and Rejected

None.

Reason for Decision

Regular monitoring of the Council’s operational performance was a key component of the Local Performance Management Framework.

The report provided an update on four corporate measures noted as:

·         sickness;

·         corporate complaints, including ombudsman rulings;

·         employee fulltime equivalent headcount, vacancies and turnover;

·         staff appraisals completed.

In terms of performance, the following exceptional areas of performance were noted:

·         business rates in year collections were at 61.13%, 1.05% higher than the previous year;

·         the time taken to process new benefit claims remained above target at 23.24 days;

·         the average time to process housing benefit claim changes of circumstances continued to out-perform its 9 day target at 7.62 days;

·         the number of housing benefit and council tax support customers awaiting assessment had reduced from 1021 at quarter 2 last year to 810 at quarter 2 this year;

·         there were now just over 63,000 individuals on the electoral register, above the target of 62,500;

·         the end-to-end time to determine a planning application had dropped from 63.49 days last quarter to 54.32 days this quarter;

·         both major and non-major planning applications were being determined within the government’s 2-year rolling target;

·         the number of people requesting Public Protection and Anti-Social Behaviour services had dropped from 1049 at quarter 2 last year to 818 at quarter 2 this year;

·         satisfaction with service at Yarborough Leisure Centre had risen to 88% from 79%.

Areas of underperformance were noted as follows:

·         the volume of face-to-face enquiries in customer services remained high, at 12,123;

·         the average time taken to answer a call to customer services had risen to 62 seconds from 41 seconds at quarter 2 last year;

·         the level of outstanding revenues customer changes had more than doubled to 624 from 289 in quarter 2 last year;

·         the percentage of food health and safety visits completed to schedule had dropped from 90.1% last quarter to 81.1% in quarter 2;

·         satisfaction with the way that Public Protection and Anti-Social Behaviour complaints were handled was down from 88% to 68% in quarter 2;

·         satisfaction with the cleanliness of public highways had declined from 84.3% to 73% in quarter 2;

·         the percentage of households approaching the Council considering themselves homeless, where advice intervention resolved the situation had declined further below target to 30.87%;

·         the average time taken for re-lets did not meet the lower target of 28 days despite improving at 29,95 days. It was noted that September and October had met target, so there should be an improvement in performance at quarter 3.

The overall year to date sickness data as at 30 September 2017 was 6.34 days per full time equivalent, excluding apprentices. This was 1.24 days more per full time equivalent compared to the same point last year. The Council’s Corporate Management Team had instigated a new project on the High Performing Services Programme to look at the causes and possible actions needed.

All performance measures by individual directorate groupings, with annual and quarterly measures, were set out in Appendix A of the report.