Issue - meetings

To receive and consider the report of the Deputy Chief Executive.

The Committee welcomed Howard Anthony, Performance and Partnerships Team Leader to present the Business Plans across all departments of the Council and Shared Service developments since February 2021.

There were 15 Business plans containing 170 projects.

It was highlighted on page 19, a graph highlighting progress of projects colour coded. A significant bar of Housing Solutions was red, but it was to be rectified with the appointment of the Housing Solutions Manager.

‘Accommodation, Property Services, and Town Centre Development’, was a large plan, and covered three separate services, the number of red projects did not reflect the volume of projects that the service was delivering.

For many projects in the red, the correlated factor was resources and capacity of certain teams.

Key actions to reduce the risk included the recruitment drive in ICT to fill shared and vacant positions. This would also decrease the skills gap and increase ICT capacity to support the delivery of business plan projects.

There were additional issues with the Council taking control of the leisure facilities. The decision impacted the finance team, which caused a delay to their Business Plan direction resources into the programme. It was noted that all spending towards the leisure centre was within the budget and no additional resources were directed to the service. Time and effort costs were required to implement payments and required systems.

Members raised that they were concerned with ICT and recruitment. ICT was a key service that crucially related to other services. Councillor Bradley added that ICT was being restructured on the back of Shared Services to co-align cooperation and unity.

It was acknowledged that alongside many businesses, the Council was short of staff at every level, and it was an amalgamation of Brexit, the pandemic, and changing lifestyles. There was a shortage of viable applicants, and increasing wage demands of qualified applicants. There was the investment risk of training staff to the level which enabled them to leave for greater wages in the private sector.

It was clarified that Northgate were paid to digitised records, which was a long term programme. 

In response to a query by the Chair relating to the purchase of 9 bungalows, it was confirmed that the decision was made by Council due to the short supply of bungalows in the borough.

It was expected that the coming months, matters would improve, and a presentation to be given to Councillors at the end of November.