Agenda item

Councillor Richard Metcalfe, Portfolio Holder for Our People and Resources and Leader of the Council, presented a report to Performance Scrutiny Committee outlining how the Council were taking steps to recovery following the pandemic. He explained that:

a)    throughout the past year Council staff had spent a large amount of time working from home. This approach had ensured our staff had been kept safe and helped ensure service continuity.

b)    A wide range of training and support measures had been implemented as identified at 3.9 of the report

c)    outlined the key achievements in 2020/21 in the following areas:

·         Financial Sustainability

·         Revenues Shared Service

·         Procurement

·         Property Services

·         Emergency Planning

·         Business Continuity

·         Risk Management

·         Brexit

·         Corporate Health and Safety

·         Human Resources

·         Work Based Learning – Apprenticeships

·         Craft apprenticeship scheme

·         Corporate Communications and media relations

·         Civic and International Partnerships

·         Legal Services

d)    highlighted that whilst delivery had been challenging, the following key projects had been completed in the past 12 months:

·         The Boultham Park and Boultham Park Lake restoration projects

·         Development of a new extra facility at De Wint Court

·         A range of refurbishment work to Lincoln’s Crematorium

·         Approved plans for the development of the Western Growth Corridor in the west of the city

·         Progress in the Sincil Bank/Cornhill area

·         Commenced work on the renovation and repurposing of Lincoln Central Market

·         Raising awareness of the Lincoln Community Lottery as a fund-raising tool

·         Successful sign up of over 100 local organisations to the Lincoln Social Responsibility Charter

·         Second year celebrations of the Heritage Action Zones programme

·         The development of a residential scheme on land off Rookery Lane.

e)    invited members’ comments and questions.

Members asked questions in relation to the report and relevant answers were given. In summary:

·         The balance of staff working in City Hall and at home depended on the nature of the job and what the service required, there wasn’t a one size fits all approach.

·         Work was underway regarding the Local Government Pay Award on how it would be rolled out and how it would affect the Council’s finances going forward.

·         There had been a positive response from the recent staff satisfaction survey that had been sent out to all staff to gauge levels of motivation from staff since the shift in the new ways of working.

·         Staff shortages remained an issue and officers were working hard to ensure that current staff were kept on and the direct impact of this was consistently being managed.

·         The MTFS had allocated £65,000 to the Christmas Market to allow extra support should they incur any additional charges with new contracts.

·         Officers had already seen a positive number of stallholders for this years Christmas Market. The cost to stallholders hadn’t changed significantly and it was on track to becoming another fully occupied event.

·         Staff were working hard to ensure that people who weren’t computer literate were still able to access services easily but there was still a lot of work to do to achieve this.

·         There was a long term aspiration to develop a comprehensive Car Park strategy. A review was due to commence in September which would involve looking at the current car parks and trial using some floors to widen car park spaces.

·         Additional changing places were being considered and there was aspiration to create a new place in Castle Square/the uphill area of the city.

·         Work on creating an offsite substitute system at Hamilton House was nearing completion. In addition many systems are now hosted in the Cloud  so they can still function should a catastrophic loss of systems happen.

·         Discussions had taken place with other Local Authorities on what other local businesses they could collaborate with within the city.

·         Money had been allocated as part of Vision 2025 to plant extra tree’s however there was a longstanding issue of the wrong tree’s being planted in the wrong areas of the city creating a legacy of increased maintenance.

·         There was a 10 year vision on enhancing the Christmas Market which involved other partners such as the Castle and The Lawn.

·         Work had commenced on the swimming pool at Yarborough Leisure Centre. It was predicted that the work would be complete by the beginning of 2023, hopefully sooner.

RESOLVED that the content of the report and discussions held be noted.