The Chief Executive introduced a report proposing a one-year Corporate Plan Delivery Plan (CPDP) to support the Council’s new Corporate Plan and an updated Corporate Performance Framework to help the Council measure progress on it. He explained that the report was based on a lot of engagement, consultation and feedback from a variety of sources over the last few months, including from Members in terms of member briefing session. It reflected some of the suggestions and recommendations from Members and some of the recommendations from Audit Wales about how the authority managed performance going forward.

The Policy and Performance Manager explained that they had moved to an annual delivery plan approach. Since the recent all Member briefing session they had spent time with the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee to continue to make improvements as in the plan before them. The new Corporate Plan Delivery Plan represented a much better set of information to inform decision making and should give a comprehensive view of progress against the Corporate Plan. The Policy and Performance Manager outlined the main improvements and added that the Graduates in her team had started the background work and there would be an update later in the year. She hoped that this was a useful document that clarified some things that had been unclear in the past and helpfully outlined the roles and responsibilities for officers and Members and the relationships and interdependencies between them.

The Chair of the Corporate Overview and Scrutiny Committee thanked the Chief Executive, the Policy and Performance Manager and her team for the engagement with the Committee and for all the work they had put in on the Delivery Plan and Performance Framework. This was a major step in the right direction in addressing some of the weaknesses relating to performance management, which were raised by Audit Wales. He was conscious that this was the start of the process and that the documents would evolve, be flexible and agile as the Delivery Plan and Framework moved to the next stage. He added that rather than monitoring service areas within their own individual silos, they needed to adopt a more holistic approach and closely align scrutiny work to become more performance focused. The Scrutiny Team were working on a proposed model for this, and the options would be presented in due course.

A Member thanked the officers for the honest assessment of where the authority was and where it was heading. He touched on the how they had specifically used the feedback provided by Audit Wales to better clarify what success looks like to be shared as a Council, as residents and stakeholders.

The Policy and Performance Manager explained how the Corporate Plan Development Plan would address some of the criticisms and she provided several examples.

The Chief Executive added that that there were some elements that they were still in dialogue with Audit Wales on, where they did not wholly agree. There were very good examples within the Council of the use of data to inform strategic decisions, particularly in education and family support and within social care and they believed that had not been adequately acknowledged. There were some other elements where they had taken on board the comments and needed to improve.

The Leader thanked the Team that had worked on this and the Scrutiny Committees, the Cabinet Members and the Corporate Management Board for their input. He recognised that they would be continuing to work on quantitative data and indicators and that the plan would continue to evolve with new priorities.

A Member asked what mechanisms were in place to make sure that data was accurate. The Policy and Performance Manager outlined the two main ways that they would be doing that in the coming years.

RESOLVED:   Council:

·            Considered and agreed the first draft Corporate Plan Delivery Plan 2023/24 in Appendix 1

  Considered and agreed the updated Corporate Performance Framework in Appendix 2 and how best to use the document across the Council.