Agenda item

(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 KHS and EDF were performing together. A standard needed to be achieved that County Members and the public were satisfied with. There was no doubt that neighbouring authorities had been suffering in the same way that Kent had in the past and we were pursuing a joint approach with them for future working relationships with EDF.

(8)       Tracker Survey 2008 – the 2008 resident, Member and Parish/Town Council tracker survey would take place in November.  In 2007 only 23% of Members responded to the on-line survey and this year it was planned to undertake a telephone survey with each Member in order to increase the response rate.  Parish/Town Council return rate was also low at 18% and more work would be done to ensure a more representative return rate was provided as with such a low response rate the validity of the results was often questioned.

(9)       Competitive Tendering – tenders had been prepared and work would commence early in the new year for the delivery of £1.5 million of road resurfacing and £750k of integrated transport schemes.  This market testing process was designed to ensure that information about current market rates was available to ensure the competitiveness of the long term Alliance arrangements with Ringway.  It was important for all of us to ensure that the Alliance contracts drive benefit both in terms of the wider customer care and contractor design input from our commercial partners but this must be backed up by competitive prices.

(10)     Parish Council Seminars – Kim Hills, Head of Community Operations had invited a representative from all Parish/Town Councils to seminars organised in Maidstone or Canterbury on 14 and 15 October.   The events were designed to update them on the changes in KHS and provided them with a chance to meet their local liaison and engineering teams.  The seminar would be a mix of providing information and listening to their views.  On this occasion the meetings were targeted to Parish and Town Councils and would not involve local County or District Members.

(11)     Awards – KHS had recently been highly commended in the National Transport Authority of the Year award and had been short listed for the British Quality Foundation Achievement Awards under Partnership Development category, we would find out the result in October.

(12)     The Board noted the progress being made and supported to staff as the organisational changes bedded in.