Agenda and minutes

To confirm the minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny Performance Panel meeting held on 10 July 2014 (enclosed)

RESOLVED – That subject to the inclusion of Councillor Mike Handley being present at the meeting the minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny Performance Panel meeting held on 10 July 2014 be confirmed as a correct record for signing by the Chair.

Members are reminded of their responsibility to declare any pecuniary interest in respect of matters contained in this agenda.

If you have a pecuniary interest you must withdraw from the meeting. Normally you should leave the room before the business starts to be discussed. You do, however, have the same right to speak as a member of the public and may remain in the room to enable you to exercise that right and then leave immediately. In either case you must not seek to improperly influence a decision on the matter.

There were no declarations of any interests.

Report of the Chief Executive (enclosed)

Councillor Graham Dunn, Executive Member for Customer and Advice Services will be in attendance at the meeting.

The Panel received a report of the Chief Executive that provide contextual information and proposed initial questions to initiate discussions regarding current levels of customer dissatisfaction with Council services.

The Head of Customer and ICT Services, Asim Khan and Head of Policy and Communications, Chris Sinnott along with Policy and Partnership Officer, Natalie Taylor Proctor attended the meeting to answer questions of the Panel about the information contained with the report.

Ensuring that customers are satisfied with the services they receive from the Council is a high priority for the authority. The council measures satisfaction in a number of ways including a comprehensive resident’s survey every few years that captures residents’ views on levels of satisfaction of the quality of life in their local area and of the Council and its services, together with a monthly survey which seeks feedback from customers on specific services they have requested from the Council.

The 2013 resident’s satisfaction survey showed that 73% of people were satisfied with the way in which the council runs things, a significant improvement on the 50% satisfaction recorded in 2008. A target of less than 20% had been set to measure customer levels of dissatisfaction with the services that they receive from the Council. This target reflected the council’s ambitious approach in continually improving its services and levels of customer satisfaction. The latest figures taken at the end of August reported current performance levels at 22.6% which indicated that the figures continued to fall and officers were confident that their target could be achieved.

The main reason for customer dis-satisfaction was staff not getting back to customers in a timely manner and many steps had been taken throughout the Council to address this. My Account had been launched to enable customers to track the progress of their requests 24/7 via the website and contractors such as Veolia had been issued with mobile devices to enable them to provide up to date progress on customer requests.

The results of the satisfaction survey, including customer reasons and comments, continued to be reported to Strategy Group on a monthly basis and Information Exchange to enable Heads of Service to address any service related issues.

By developing My Account, the information that officers input can update customers with the status of their request and it is only closed when actually complete, rather than when it is expected to be finished.

There had been an internal communications drive for all staff to get back to the customer within two working days.  Customer dis-satisfaction levels are available via the Loop and articles appear on a regular basis reminding all staff of the importance of customer call backs. And everyone within the authority can use the My Tasks system to assess the current status of any request. Work is progressing to ensure that the same standards are implemented across all services, whether by email, phone or face to face.

Some issues however are more complicated to resolve as they can involve several partners and can  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14.OSP.60

Report of the Chief Executive (enclosed)

The Chief Executive submitted a report giving progress made to date on the delivery of the Organisational Improvement Plan, including the delivery of key projects and the performance of key indicators.

Good progress was being made with 83.6% of projects rated green or complete. One projected was rated amber and one, rated red. 13.11% of projects had not yet been started, with work scheduled to start over the next few months.

A breakdown of the projects by Corporate Priority was included within the report, there one project, development of the Buttermere Community Centre that was rated red and one project, provision of Off Street Parking in Croston, that had been rated amber. An explanation as to why was given as follows:

Work on the new Buttermere Community Centre was yet to start due to a delay in the tender process by the developer. Work had been due to start at the beginning of September however the company had gone into liquidation so the developer was now looking to reappoint with a view to begin work early December 2014.

A number of sites had now been identified and presented to Western Parishes as potential options for Off Street Parking in Croston. Feedback on the proposals was still outstanding and the parishes had been chased a number of times for their feedback.

Although delivery of the organisational plan is only just underway with some projects not yet scheduled to start there had already been a number of notable achievements that were listed within the report.

However there was a number of key performance indicators that were off track and Members were informed of the reasons as to why they were below target that included:

% of domestic violence detections

Domestic Violence detections was a measure that had been set by the police and adopted by the Council. The original target was set as a stretch target and due to changes in legislation, the work that was undertaken to encourage people to report, interventions and alternative disposals, including mediation to reduce the number reaching ‘detection’ stage, the police argued that this would change. This was echoed to the Panel by Detective Inspector Geoff Hurst at a previous meeting in March 2014. The Council’s Corporate Strategy is due to be refreshed in November and it was agreed that the authority needed to identify a new way of capturing the relevant statistics in order to target specific areas more effectively.

It was also reported that the current funding arrangements for the IDVA service were due to come to an end, as funding from Lancashire County Council would cease shortly. The Community Safety Partnership would be holding its Annual Conference in October and it was hoped that both issued could be addressed at this forum.

Number of long term empty properties in the borough

Although slightly off target, the number of long term properties in the borough had continued to reduce. Current performance was 208 empty properties, against a target of 195, however the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 14.OSP.61