The Chief Executive submitted a report presented by the Interim Chief Officer – Finance, Performance and Change, the purpose of which, was to present the Annual Report 2020-21 (at Appendix A to the report) for Council to consider and approve.

By way of some background, she explained that under section 15 of the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2009 and in accordance with the related statutory guidance issued by the Welsh Government, the authority must publish its assessment of performance for the previous financial year before 31 October.

In March 2020, the Council published its new Corporate Plan 2018-23, revised for 2020-21. To take account of the impact of COVID-19 on priorities which was significant, the Plan was revised and some adjustments were made to it, which were agreed at Council in September 2020. The Plan as a result of Covid-19, then concentrated upon the more urgent priorities from March 2020 onward.

The revised Plan defined 32 commitments to deliver the three well-being objectives and sets out 46 success measures to monitor progress. However, to take account of COVID-19 and redirect resources, targets were removed for 14 success measures. At year-end, data was unavailable for 7 success measures, which are predominantly in education following the Welsh Government decision to postpone exams and use alternative arrangements to determine grades.

The Annual Report, prepared under the Well-being of Future Generations (Wales) Act 2015, evaluates how well the Council succeeded in 2020-21 in delivering its commitments and planned outcomes for the financial year, using success measures and other associated evidence.

The Interim Chief Officer – Finance, Performance and Change confirmed, that the Council made 32 commitments to support the delivery of its well-being objectives. 13 (40.6%) of these were fully completed with 19 (59.4%) achieving most of their milestones.

Of the 46 indicators identified for the Corporate Plan, 25 can be compared against their target: 14 (48%) met their target, 2 (8%) were off target by less than 10% and 11 (44%) missed the target by more than 10%. Detailed information about the Council’s performance was included at the report’s Appendix A. The Annual Report during this period including the Council’s performance against its objectives and the Interim Chief Officer – Finance, Performance and Change, commended the report given the difficulties experienced by local authorities since the pandemic. The Annual Report showed some considerable progress against the Council’s wellbeing objectives and its seven goals.

Once approved, she confirmed that the Annual Report will be published on the Council’s website and shared with stakeholders. Hard copies of the report will also be produced and placed in the Council’s public libraries.

The Leader commended the Annual Report for 2020-21 and all staff in BCBC who had worked tirelessly to make it so pleasing to read. He felt staff had gone over and above the call of duty considering the pressures of the pandemic which was still ongoing and gave examples of this in the different Council service areas. Where there was room for improvements, these would be pursued he added, including through not just the continued support of our employees, but also through Members such as those part of the Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Committees.

A Member supported the views of the Leader, but asked how BCBC compared against other ‘like Authorities’ in terms of performance.

The Interim Chief Officer – Finance, Performance and Change, stated that for the last two years, many of the national indicators had not been collated for obvious reasons, ie this duty had been suspended. However, Officers had recently been notified that these (ie the PAM) would be retrospectively collected, but more to inform future service delivery, rather than necessarily as a comparison. She added, that some of the Education Indicators had not been collected for comparable and publishing purposes and due to this, it was not easy to make a comparison on a like to like basis as part of any local performance indicator information. These were more compared nationally however, through the issuing to Authorities of a table type format. So we were able to compare performance with other like sized local authorities here. The Council did however look at how other neighbouring authorities ran their services as comparisons, to ascertain if they were operating these in a more improved way than BCBC were process wise, so that we could adopt also this style of approach going forward.

RESOLVED:                               That Council approved the Annual Report      2020-21 (at Appendix A to the report).