Agenda item

Report of the Chief Executive (enclosed)

Members considered a report of the Chief Executive that set out performance against the Council’s Corporate Strategy and key performance indicators for the second quarter of 2014/15, 1 July to 30 September 2014.

Overall performance of key projects was excellent, with the majority either completed or on track. Only two projects, deliver the Chorley Youth Zone and the Friday Street Health Centre were rated amber due to issues relating to timescales in delivering the initial actions, however work was underway to bring these projects back on track. Both of these projects would be contained within the Corporate Strategy for 2015/16.

Overall performance on the Corporate Strategy indicators and key service delivery measures was excellent, 71% of the Corporate Strategy indicators and key service delivery measures were performing above target or within the 5% tolerance.

Two indicators, the number of long term empty properties in the borough and percentage of customers dissatisfied with the way were treated by the Council were currently below target, however, work had been undertaken to address these figures and improvements were starting to be made.

The Home Office has introduced a new classification for the recording of crimes which is based on a positive outcomes framework. This has resulted in changes to the way Domestic Violence is measured with positive outcomes now being recorded rather than the number of detections. This has meant that the Council is no longer able to report on one of its key performance indicators within the corporate strategy; the percentage of domestic violence detections, target 70% and Members were informed that alternative measures for obtaining this indicator were currently being explored.

There was one indicator that was performing below target, the time taken to process new claims and change events for Housing and Council Tax benefit was currently performing at 10.5 days against a target of 12.5 day. The service was still impacted by the high work volumes which occurred during the first quarter and overtime had been and still continued to be offered to help manage the workload. Performance has been further impacted on due to the ongoing implementation of the single front office transformation programme approved by Members in January this year. Members were informed that the programme of staff training and mentoring in this area was a two year programme, and to assist in keeping reductions in performance to a minimum while the training was being delivered, the Council were temporarily using the Capacity Grid to process some housing benefit work.

Members were also informed that there had been a change to the way the processing of planning applications is now calculated, to align with the planning performance submitted through government returns to the DCLG and also to reflect the actual performance of the service in determining applications within agreed timescales.  Performance would be reported under two measures from quarter 3 onwards, the number of applications where extensions had been agreed and the percentage of extended applications determined in the agreed time and it was expected that the service would perform well.

RESOLVED – That the report be noted.