Agenda item

(1)       The Director’s update set out some of the key issues and developments in KHS.

(2)       Traffic Management Centre  - the recent heavy rain gave an unexpected insight into life without the Traffic Management Centre (TMC) and the effect it had on Maidstone town centre.  The heavy rain led to flooding and the evacuation of the Traffic Management Centre on 15 January, and, as a result it was not able to change the traffic signal timings to respond to varying traffic flows and prevent queues building, nor to use the roadside variable message signs to inform people.  This led to pretty big queues in and around Maidstone.  Fortunately, the TMC was back up and running in two days.  This showed the benefit of the system that was now being rolled out into Canterbury and Kent Thameside.  At a recent Maidstone Business Forum meeting with the Town Centre Manager, Borough Council Members and business representatives all agreed the TMC was helping and a real benefit.  This was good news and a real sign of approval of the hard work of staff and investment by KHS.  Caroline Bruce, Acting Head of Network Management, was leading on this.

(3)       Public satisfaction tracker survey - Kent Highway Services latest residents survey was showing increasing levels of public satisfaction. Every year 1200 residents from across Kent were asked their views on the condition of roads, pavements and streetlights in the County.  The headline 2007 results were set out in the report and traditionally progress was measured through something called 'Net-Satisfaction'.  This was a figure calculated by taking the % of people who were dis-satisfied with the service from the % who were satisfied.  This gave a true reflection of the service and a balance between those happy, those un-happy and those who were not sure.  Members would remember that a positive net satisfaction in 2006 was achieved for the first time since surveys began 20 years ago.

Progress to raise the profile of the highway service was going well with branded KHS vehicles and the page every week in the Kent on Sunday paper, increased press releases about the service and not forgetting the 15,000 calls each month handled by the Contact Centre.    There was still more to do and the new shaped KHS would be ready for the start of the new financial year.  But, through all the change that had been going on in KHS over the last year, staff from across all the Alliance partners (this included Jacobs, Ringway and TSUK who made up the KHS Alliance) had shown how dedicated and committed they were by delivering a service that was recognisably better than last year, as measured by the residents who received the service.   

(4)       Dealing with service requests and calls – we were now reporting progress on dealing with service requests on a weekly basis to managers and staff.  This reporting by the new seven service groups ensured managers got regular information about how their teams were performing.  Over the last few months we had reduced the number of service requests that were still open after 28 days from over 2000 to under 500.  We still had more to do however to meet the answering letter target within  the 10 working day target.  Again we were reporting results on a weekly basis but were currently achieving around 85% replied in 10 working days.  More still had to be done to provide a more responsive service to the public and as the new teams were fully in place we would be driving this harder.

(5)       Annual Operating plan – the draft of the 2008/9 KHS Operating plan was well underway and a draft was available for any member of HAB who would like to review and comment on the draft document.  David Beaver, Acting Head of Business, Performance and Communications, was leading on this.

(6)       Inspector Vans and IT ‘handhelds’– The new highway and RASWA roadworks inspector vans would be rolled out during March and April.  We would have 60 KHS branded vehicles out and about across the County.  Inspectors were now being trained on their new ‘handheld’ devises which were mini computers that could be used on their inspections to speed up communications and the logging of faults.  Kim Hills, Head of Community Operations, was leading on this work.

(7)       Response to Insurance Claims - Over the last year the performance of processing insurance claims had been patchy. With potential changes to legislation proposed requiring shorter time scales, a review of the system was necessary. Initial meetings had been held with the corporate insurance team and the authority’s insurer, Zurich. A small working group had been established and some areas of improvement already identified. These included a new electronic claims form (ensuring appropriate information was provided by the claimant), greater use of the contact centre and the new KHS IT systems and earlier site visits.  Kim Hills, Head of Community Operations, was leading on this work.

(8)       EDF and connections for streetlights  – we continued to be affected by EDF failure to deliver a responsive service for power supply faults and new connections.  Norman Bateman, the Head of Technical Services was leading the work to get a better service and EDF were committed to a ‘Excellence in Un-metered Connections’ project to meet and exceed Ofgem targets.  The project would cover connections, faults and emergencies in relationship to street lighting, targeting timescales and reporting procedures.  We were keeping a close eye on the project and monitoring connection times to ensure that it delivered improvements.

(9)       Highway Drainage – a paper on highway drainage was presented to the Board at the last meeting.  Information on highway flooding was still being collected and this would be the basis of future improvements to the drainage system and asset.  The new Drainage team within Norman Bateman’s Technical Services Group were reviewing all programmed gully cleansing activity to ensure we had better information about when work was planned and better cyclic maintenance of known hot spots.

(10)     A229 Bluebell Hill, Aylesford resurfacing – We were putting in place a weekend closure on the uphill stretch of the A229 between 28 and 31 March to resurface the road.  This would be from 21.00 hrs on 28 March until 05.00 hrs on 31 March.  We had decided on a short, sharp hit over a weekend to ensure disruption was kept to a minimum.  Our crews would be working 24 hours a day for both days laying 6,400 tonnes of material using 3 paving machines on the 3km scheme length.   We would be putting in place an extensive publicity campaign to advise residents and road users as this was a key strategic route and the closure would cause disruption.  Behdad Haratbar, Acting Head of Countywide Improvements, was leading on this.

(11)     Traffic Management Act update – The Traffic Management Act 2004 had offered the opportunity for local highway authorities to introduce a permit scheme across their networks.  The schemes had been designed with the aim of improving the management and co-ordination of all activities on the highway therefore minimising disruption and providing more reliable journey times for the travelling public.  Kent County Council (KCC) had taken the decision to make a bid to the Secretary of State for Transport to run a permit scheme across the highway network in Kent.  Our formal bid would be submitted to the Secretary of State for Transport and the Department for Transport in May 2008.  It was the intention to begin the introduction of our Permit Scheme in the last quarter of 2008 by permitting our own works for a 4 month period.  It must be stressed that the dates could be only indicative at the current time.  KCC would be one of the first authorities across the country to make an application for a permit scheme and there were many processes and guidance documents to be put in place.  All local highway authorities were reliant upon the IT software providers to release the necessary applications around August time.  Until the packages were released, installed and tested we would not be in a position to confirm the roll out date of our full permit scheme system.  Caroline Bruce, Acting Head of Network Management, was leading on this.

(12)     Speed Management in Kent  - a successful launch of a new ‘Understanding’ leaflet and the PIPKIN process to assess schemes that ‘change’ the highway layout was held with Members and Parish Town Councils on 10 January.  The conference, chaired by Keith Ferrin, was designed to explain KHS’s new policy on local speed limits and traffic management schemes.  In future any request for us to make improvements to the road must be supported by the local community in the area (for example through a known group, parish or town council).  Information had been sent out to Members and Parishes who were unable to attend the conference.  David Hall, Head of Transport and Development, was leading on this.

(13)     New Quiet Surfacing – following the successful trial of a new low noise surfacing on the A26 at Tonbridge we would be developing a policy and priority system to ensure sites for resurfacing were chosen fairly and prioritised in a quantitative manner.  The policy would be submitted to the next Board.  Behdad Haratbar, Acting Head of Countywide Improvements, was leading on this.

(14)     Re-organising KHS – the new KHS structure was now around 75% populated with on-going recruitment processes both internal and external to fill the remaining posts by April.  Two recruitment fairs had been organised to attract new talent to the Alliance.   The changes to the Environment and Regeneration Directorate Resources Division would have an impact on the Business, Performance and Communications Group and the Finance Group, and I am working closely with Adam Wilkinson to ensure this did not affect service delivery on the front line.  The organisation structure and posts currently filled was detailed in the Appendix to the report.

(15)     Graduate programme – I am pleased to announce that a new engineering stream had been added to the successful Corporate ‘Kent Graduate Programme’.  This would roll out in June and we hoped to have two graduates working across the Alliance and ultimately taking up full time employment with us.  This first phase was focussed on  Transport  and Development where there currently was a skills shortage.  David Beaver, Acting Head of Business, Performance and Communications, was leading.

(16)     During debate the Chairman referred to paragraph (8) above, and informed the Board that he had already met with 2 of EDF’s senior managers who explained their reasons for non-performance, but these were unconvincing. It was now his intention to meet with the Managing Director of EDF in an effort to finally resolve the issues.

(17)     The Board noted the positive progress being made to improve service delivery and supported staff through the period of significant change that lay ahead.