Agenda item

To submit a report by the Head of Profession, HR and Transformation.

The report of the Head of Profession (HR) and Transformation incorporating the Corporate Scorecard for Quarter 2022/23 was presented for the Executive’s consideration. The scorecard portrays the position of the Council against its wellbeing objectives.

In the absence of the Portfolio Member for Finance, Corporate Business and Customer Experience, Councillor Carwyn Jones, Portfolio Member for Economic Development, Leisure and Tourism presented the report confirming that 94% of the KPIs continue to perform well against their targets. He referred to the performance against the Council’s three wellbeing objectives and highlighted several positive stories across those objectives. However, although performance against targets on the whole are green or yellow, there are decreasing trends against a number of performance related indicators especially in relation to Wellbeing Objective 2 and those indicators along with their associated processes and work streams will be the subject of particular attention as the Council moves into the winter period especially given the context of increasing fuel and food poverty and cost of living pressures.

Councillor R. Llewelyn Jones, Chair of the Corporate Scrutiny Committee provided feedback from the Committee’s 22 November, 2022 meeting where the Quarter 2 Corporate Scorecard was discussed, and he confirmed that the Committee was provided with a comprehensive report regarding corporate performance against the various indicators and had challenged the Officers and Portfolio Members on a number of areas. The Committee had welcomed, and was grateful for the assurances and responses provided by the latter and recommended the report and mitigation measures therein to the Executive.

The Director of Social Services confirmed with regard to the several Yellow and one Red performing indicators within Children and Families’ Services that the number of referrals is increasing and that cases are also becoming more complex thereby putting pressure on the assessment process. He provided more detail regarding PI 23 (the average length of time for all children who were on the CPR during the year and who were de-registered during the year) which was ragged Red, clarifying that all children on the Child Protection Register for longer than the target 270 days are subject to Public Law Outline (PLO) care proceedings i.e. they remain on the register for legitimate care and legal reasons. He gave assurance that all the indicators ragged Yellow are subject to regular internal review and that PI 23 is under consideration to establish whether the performance can be measured in a way that more accurately reflects the actual situation and the complexities involved.

The Executive in recognising the consistency of performance across the Council’s services suggested that with a new Council Plan in the offing, it might also be timely to review and reinvigorate the performance management framework and reporting process with perhaps more focussed attention on a select number of performance indicators and targets each quarter instead of the current standardised across the board format of reporting. 

The Chief Executive in acknowledging the point advised that another important element in refreshing performance reporting is the use of technology, digital media and social media presence to chart aspects of performance and to bring the Council’s successes and any changes in performance to the public’s attention by means other than that of formal meetings and documentation.

It was resolved to accept the Scorecard monitoring report for Q2 2022/23 along with the mitigation measure outlined.