Agenda item

To consider a report of the Corporate Director, Corporate and Support Services

The report sets out the annual Portfolio Performance and Resources Reports for the Citizen Focus & Engagement and Resources, Commissioning & Governance Portfolios. Given the current unprecedented circumstances, it has been agreed that these focus on the financial and performance out-turn data for 2019/20.ratjher than the usual more comprehensive summary of progress against priorities.

The Scrutiny Committee is recommended to:-

·         Consider the Annual Portfolio Performance and Resources Reports;

·         Review the progress against delivering key targets and budgets for 2019/20;

·         Highlight key areas of and responsibility for taking forward corrective action to address any performance or resource issues;

·         Highlight any significant issues or changes to be fed back to the Cabinet alongside the Corporate Performance and Resource Report;

·         Identify how areas of strong performance and good practice can be shared in other services.

Officer Contacts:-

Resources, Commissioning and Governance

Peter Owston on 0161 474 3274 or email: peter.owston@stockport.gov.uk

Citizen Focus and Engagement

Alan Lawson on 0161 474 5397 or email: alan.lawson@stockport.gov.uk

Financial Resources and Monitoring (both Portfolios)

Stephen Pate on 0161 218 1086 or email: stephen.pate@stockport.gov.uk

The Corporate Director, Corporate and Support Services submitted a report (copies of which had been circulated) setting out the annual Portfolio Performance and Resource Reports (PPRR) for the Citizen Focus & Engagement and Resources, Commissioning & Governance Portfolios. Given the unprecedented circumstances, it had been agreed that it focussed on the financial and performance out-turn data for 2019/20 rather the usual more comprehensive summary of progress against priorities.

The PPRR was based on the 2019/20 Portfolio Performance and Resource Agreement which had been considered by the Committee on 9 July and approved by the Cabinet on 23 July 2019. Out-turn performance data was reported where available. Provisional data was included in some cases, and the latest data was shown where the full-year figure was not yet available. Exception commentary was also included to provide context to the data.

The Cabinet Members for Citizen Focus & Engagement (Councillor Kate Butler) and Resources, Commissioning and Governance (Councillor Tom McGee) attended the meeting to respond to questions from the Scrutiny Committee.

The following comments were made/issues raised:-

Citizen Focus & Engagement Portfolio

·         An increase in the number of complaints upheld was partly as a result of training for Officers on complaint handling and Officers being advised to apologise if a particular service fell below the standards expected by complainants. There had been ongoing improvements to the complaints management process including Officer development in relation to good complaint handling principles, improvements made to the online complaints form, and the roll-out of the Council’s case management system (Verint) for complaint management. The aim was to distinguish between a service request and a complaint. Feedback would be given to the service area more quickly so that service improvements could be made.

·         A Member felt that a complaint either had justification or did not, and should be investigated at source. How complaints were handled did not alter the number of complaints as by then the complaint had been received and logged as such.

·         A Member felt that there was still a significant number of telephone calls to the Contact Centre which were not answered. However, the introduction at busy times of a system when customers could request a call back for later the same day was an important improvement. The Cabinet Member agreed to send further information on the call back system to the Member.

Resources, Commissioning and Governance Portfolio

·         An average of 9.56 FTE days per employee were lost due to sickness absence in the rolling twelve months’ period up to 31 March 2020. The Cabinet Member agreed to provide more information to Members on the types of sickness absence to see if it demonstrated any trends and  how it compared with the public sector as a whole  The Bradford factor, a formula used by Human Resources staff to calculate the impact of employees’ absences on organisations, allowed comparisons to be made between short term absences and long term absences.

·          The £0.20m for increasing the provision of personal assistant/ business support to a wider group of senior Officers across the Council was highlighted. The Corporate Director advised that this was to ensure the optimal use of Officer time, ensuring senior Officers spent less time on administrative tasks and ensuring there was appropriate business support to senior managers.

·         Members highlighted the Council Plan measures that were not improving or maintaining high performance and the percentage of targeted Council Plan measures on or ahead of target, and felt that it needed to be identified where the difficulties lay and what issues should be examined. The performance measures would be examined as part of the review of the Portfolio Agreement and any proposed changes included in the report to the Scrutiny Committee.

·         Of the current performance measures for the Portfolio, four were improving and five were getting worse. It would be opportune for the Committee to look at how certain service areas had changed the way they work in attempt to improve their performance.

·         It was maybe the case that the performance issues which the Committee examined in the future would change as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic.

·         The Government had issued guidance on what local authorities should be investing in. The Corporate Director advised that as part of the Treasury Management report, one of the aims was to ensure that the Council did not take any undue risks. HM Treasury had recently issued consultation regarding proposed changes to limit borrowing from the Public Works Loan Board to purely commercial reasons. This would not hinder what the Council had previously done or wished to do in the future with regard to its regeneration strategy.

RESOLVED – That the report be noted.