Invitees

As above for Item 4

The Interim Chief Officer Finance, Performance and Change introduced the report upon Performance against the Wellbeing Objectives for 2020-21. She noted that some Members as Chairs of Scrutiny, would have attended the Corporate Performance Assessment (CPA) Q4 and presented a brief overview of the report which was a reflection of the year against the Corporate Plan Objectives, which were revised for 2020-21 because of the pandemic and the affect that had on delivery of services and agreed at Council in September 2020. The revised plan defined the 32 corporate commitments to deliver against the 3 wellbeing objectives and set out 46 outcome focussed indicators to measure the progress for the year. The usual process was followed with Directorate business plans, with all the indicators that fed into that corporate plan. Appendices A to D outlined each of the Directorates end of year dashboard and COSC had a key role in monitoring and scrutinising progress of the delivery of those wellbeing objectives.

The year-end data showed that 12 of the 32 commitments were completed, with the other 20 achieving most of their milestones, noting that this was a unique year, with some services not able to be delivered, some partly delivered, and there was a need to bring in new services to assistant with the residents living through difficult times. Of the 440 indicators collected as part of the corporate planning process, there were 89 that had targets where the data had been submitted, which was a reflection of the very difficult year. The Council was not able to collect data for all the indicators. Of the 89 indicators with targets over half were on target, 10 were off target by less than 10% and 32 missed their target by more than 10%. There were 51 indicators with either no target or no data available at the year-end, which was detailed in part A of the annex. There were 79 indicators that had trend data, of which 46 showed an improvement or maximum performance with 10 not being able to be improved any further. One indicator was the same as last year, and 32 worse than the previous year.

Members of the Committee asked the following:

The Chairperson advised she had been asked as Chair to make an opening statement about how the report was set out, that some of the information wasn’t clear, there was confusion with the indicators going up and down, and some of the data set out.

A Member raised that Members had been asking for an executive summary because of the amount of data in the reports. She acknowledged the recent response, which advised that the Corporate Report Template would not be reviewed until next year, but Members had been requesting executive summaries for each scrutiny report for over 2 years.

A Member advised that this issue had been picked up by the Chairs at the CPA meeting with data hard to understand in some cases. He was  trying to see it from a point of view of a person who was not on the Council and looked at the data and asked whether the Council were doing well or not from the targets, and it was not very clear for people to understand on certain topics. He noted that there were some that were fine, but some were over complicated, and there was a need to be more succinct.

The Cabinet Member – Communities explained that as a new Cabinet Member at his first CPA he had raised the same issues. He raised that fact that if someone from the public was looking at these documents, would they understand the way they were being presented. It could be confusing unless people were in the industry of understanding performance, which a lot were not. It has been brought to Officers attention at the recent CPA meeting, and hopefully there would be an improvement in these.

The Chairperson suggested a meeting of the three Chairs should take place to open up discussion on how to simplify the reports for scrutiny of performance, including what wasn’t understood, what was understood and how the information should be simplified.

A Member asked whether elected members should be having DSE assessments for working from home similarly to Staff.

The Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services confirmed that the e-learning DSE was available to all staff and Members. In addition the Council was working with the Independent Remuneration Panel for Wales (IRPW) to determine if there were issues that needed to be addressed, whether they fell within the parameters of what could be provided under the IRPW, or whether the Council did it under anything else. If any individual Members had concerns they could contact the Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services and in the meantime, Members could access the e-learning to undertake the DSE assessment.

The Member suggested that an email be sent to Members of the Council advising them of the E-learning DSE they could access.

The Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services advised that the information had been included in a Bridgenders message that had been circulated to all Members, but confirmed that a specific message would be sent to Members.

A Member asked whether as staff completed the DSE with the view of working at home for a limited period at the beginning of the pandemic, had staff been re-assessed, as whilst it might have been appropriate for them to work at home on their dining room table for 3 months, they may not now have the capacity to do more agile working.

The Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services explained that the DSE was an ongoing process, so staff and Members should be updating it as they felt appropriate. There were staff surveys and also Managers were instructed that whenever they were doing 1 to 1’s with their members of staff, they reminded them that if there were changes to their circumstances, they should re-complete the DSE.  The offer for the equipment was an ongoing offer, so whenever they needed that equipment it could be made available.

The Member advised she was somewhat reassured and appreciated that staff needed to take some responsibility in completing their DSE. She asked what was happening with those staff that didn’t meet the tax threshold, so they were able to claim the working from home allowance, and asked what was being done to support those Members of staff.

The Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services advised that there was ongoing work with the WLGA around the tax threshold and working from home allowances.

It was suggested in relation to the welfare of elected Members, that it would be helpful to do a sample survey of calendars, to have a look at the frequency and length of meetings, to consider some protocol on how meetings, gaps with meetings and comfort breaks within meetings were looked at.

The Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services confirmed that the calendar of meetings was set by Council and this was the starting point for any other meetings to be put in. Unfortunately, there were occasions when there would be more than one meeting on one day. This was sometimes to do with statutory requirements as to when the meeting needed to be held or for licencing issues, for example, these had to be when applications came through the door. Where possible Members having more than one meeting was avoided, but unfortunately in the circumstances sometimes this was unavoidable.  

The Chair asked when there would be a move back to the Chamber for face-to-face meetings.

The Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services confirmed that this was being worked on at the moment. At the last assessment, it was calculated that the Chamber could only hold 12 individuals, which would be the Officers that were needed and allocation of certain seats to Members. The Democratic Services Team were virtually visiting the Vale of Glamorgan Council, as they had a hybrid system in place.  There was a need to make sure that the Teams technology could link in to the technology in the Chamber, because if they didn’t work together there could be a lot of echo and feedback, which would make the meeting quite difficult to run. It was hoped that some hybrid meetings could be held in the Autumn.

The Chair referred to the increase in stress related sickness since April and requested that COSC Members receive monthly updates to monitor the levels.

The Chief Officer Legal, HR & Regulatory Services confirmed that the information would be provided from HR to scrutiny to circulate to Member of the Committee to monitor.

RESOLVED:          That the Committee noted the year-end Council Performance and the revised Corporate Plan targets for inclusion as an addendum to the Corporate Plan 2018-23 revised 2021-22.