Issue - meetings

(1)       Prior to presenting his report the Director informed Members that this would be his last Board meeting, prior to commencing work on the Transport Strategy for Kent.  Mr Mee thanked the Board for their support and assistance during his time as Director, KHS.

(2)       The Director Update set out some of the key issues and developments going on in KHS.

(3)       Opening of the new Office/Depot at Ashford – a successful opening took place at the end of July and in recent weeks staff from across the Alliance had been moving into the new building and depot and getting to grips with their new surroundings and co-working teams.  We continue to look at options for the west of the County to deliver our plan of delivering most of the highway services from two primary operational centres and Invicta House.  In the interim we will be moving staff to Doubleday House complex by October.

(4)       Highways Agency Area 4 Contract – the tender was returned in August and we await, hopefully by Christmas, a decision from the Highways Agency.  The tender was returned in the name of Ringway Jacobs with KCC acting as a key supply chain partner to the company.  This had ensured that any commercial risk remained with the private sector companies but still allowed KCC to be part of, and influence, the delivery team and services to the public of Kent.

(5)       Performance – monthly key performance indicators had dipped in recent months leading to a backlog in outstanding faults repairs, letters answered and increase in complaints.  This was primarily due to bedding in of the new operational structure, accommodation moves and new IT system implementation.  The Alliance wide Executive management team had developed an action plan to get the service back on track and we had seen the elimination of the backlog in Community Operations and Drainage.

(6)       New Contact Centre call logging system – demand on the 08458 247 800 and kent.highwayservices@kent.gov.uk continued at over 15,000 calls/emails per month and the new system was helping us to identify, track and put in place specific improvements to deal with the back log in outstanding service requests that had been building up.  We continued to encourage Members to recommend this point of entry to the public, Parish Councils and indeed themselves for all service requests so that they could be actively managed.  There had been problems in recent weeks caused by a lack of agents to answer and handle calls but meetings had taken place with the contact centre management team and we were assured that service would improve by the end of October.

(7)       EDF – pursuit of a closer and more cohesive relationship between KHS and EDF was continuing.  Contact is now at a weekly operational meeting together with regular meets at Senior Management level.  Although the performance of EDF had shown some improvement, it was important that we continue to pursue both their own performance as well as the way that  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4