Agenda item

·      To present the report of Audit Wales.

·      To present the organisational response.

The report of Audit Wales was presented for the Committee’s consideration. The report set out the findings of a review of the service user perspective and outcome information provided to senior officers and senior members at the Isle of Anglesey County Council and how this information is used. The review was being undertaken in each of the 22 councils in Wales as part of the programme of national value for money examinations and studies and in addition to a local report for each council a national report would be produced drawing together examples of good practice.

The Head of Profession (HR) and Transformation reported on the organisational response and explained that the response by way of the Action Plan is detailed to reflect the amount of work ongoing with regard to the range of processes and mechanisms that generate performance information for senior officers and senior members. The organisational view is that this work including a review of the Corporate Scorecard and the introduction of thematic data dashboards provides an opportunity to ask the Council’s senior members what additional information they require to better understand how well services and policies are meeting the needs of service users. The Council is looking forward to the publication of Audit Wales’s national report bringing together good practices from across the other local authorities in Wales in which the review has also been conducted, and to using those to inform the way forward for the Council and the approaches it develops. The Head of Profession (HR) and Transformation confirmed that in the meantime, the Council will continue with its planned work including the review of the Corporate Scorecard in anticipation that the national report will be available by the Action Plan’s scheduled completion date of September 2024 although the timescale may have to be reviewed if it is not.

Points of discussion by the Committee –

·      The personnel interviewed to arrive at the conclusions and recommendations set out

·      That although the review is about using performance information to understand the service user perspective, the review has not focused on engagement with service users to establish how well the Council understands their needs

·      Whether the organisation concurs with the findings of the audit review.

·      That it would be helpful to have included information to show how existing data can be gathered from across the Council to provide a picture of performance and how services can be encouraged to share information and data within the parameters of freedom of information legislation.

Lora Williams, Audit Wales clarified the audit scope, questions and criteria as set out in section 4 of the report and in Appendix 1 as well as the performance related documentation reviewed and what that reflected in terms of the service user perspective. She confirmed that the audit was not about the Council’s consultation or engagement arrangements nor about how it conducts major surveys of user views with regard to service changes or the development of policies and strategies with the focus having been on how day to day feedback on service user satisfaction levels is obtained and how that information reaches senior officers and senior members and is then used.

The Head of Profession (HR) and Transformation referred to the mechanisms within services operationally to capture users’ views and perspectives such as the Tenants Forum and Older People’s Forum which are then processed and analysed within the relevant services and used to inform priorities for service delivery and performance management but not necessarily reflected routinely in corporate or committee documentation and hence those practices are not reflected in the audit review report. The Council will use the good practices to be shared in Audit Wales’s national report to consider what it can do differently going forward and to better evidence how the information it gathers about the user perspective is used to inform performance management. The new Customer Charter and Customer Experience project which is underway will provide an opportunity to highlight services’ existing information and practices in relation to the user perspective.

It was resolved to note the report of Audit Wales and to accept the organisational response.