The Chief Executive submitted a report, which sought Council approval of the proposed changes to Corporate Plan targets for 2021-22, as outlined in Appendix A to the report.

The Interim Chief Officer – Finance, Performance and Change presented the report and confirmed that as part of the approval process for the refreshed Corporate Plan, it was acknowledged that COVID-19 had an impact on BCBC’s planning cycle, making it more challenging to set targets for 2021-22. It was therefore agreed by Council that a flexible approach to setting corporate plan targets was necessary to ensure business planning is robust and effective.

As part of BCBC’s COVID-19 recovery planning, each directorate had the opportunity to consider targets for 2021-22, based on verified year end data. Proposed changes to targets have been considered at Corporate Overview Scrutiny Committee (COSC) meeting on 5 July 2021 to ensure appropriate challenge and transparency.

On 20 July 2021 Cabinet considered the proposed changes to Corporate Plan targets for 2021-22.  Appendix A to the report, sets out the proposed target changes, and will be published as an addendum to the current Corporate Plan.

As part of a wider review of performance and governance due to the Local Government and Elections (Wales) Act 2021, the Council was proposing that corporate planning adopts this approach to target setting in future planning cycles. This will ensure that the published corporate plan remains up to date with the most recent year end data and avoids the issue of publishing the corporate plan without targets due to lack of data.

The Leader thanked Officers for their work on refreshing the targets in and some aspects of the wider Corporate Plan, some of which had inevitably been delayed due to the pandemic. There had been an obvious impact on the target relating to rough sleepers and the homeless, as well as Wi-Fi connectivity in Primary and Secondary Schools. He thanked Members of the CO&SC in their recent analysis and scrutiny of the refreshed Plan.

A Member noted from the report’s Appendix, that the number of additional dwellings created as a result of bringing empty properties back into use, was showing as 2 for 2020/21 while in 2019/20 this had been 20. A revised target had now been set for 2021. He asked if this decrease had been as a result of the pandemic.

The Interim Chief Officer – Finance, Performance and Change confirmed that this was the case.

The Cabinet Member – Future Generations and Wellbeing added that this was further compounded by the Lead Officer dealing with this having been seconded to head up the TTP Enforcement Team. As we moved out from the pandemic, this target would look to be increased in future years.

RESOLVED:                              (1) That Council approved the revised Corporate Plan targets for 2021-2022.

                                                (2) That Council also approved the proposal to introduce a flexible process to review the setting of targets informed by year end data. Any revised targets will then be published as an addendum to the Corporate Plan.