Agenda item

To consider and discuss the draft Strategic Delivery Plan summary.

David Whittle (Director, Strategy, Policy, Relationships and Corporate Assurance) and Elizabeth Sanderson (Strategic Business Adviser (Corporate), Strategy, Policy, Relationships and Corporate Assurance) were in attendance for this item.

1.    Mrs Sanderson introduced the report that set out the Strategic Delivery Plan (SDP) for Kent County Council which supported the delivery of the outcomes within the Strategic Statement. The SDP was collectively developed with services, Cabinet Members and the Corporate Management Team to ensure it encapsulated the significant activity that Kent County Council would need to deliver over the medium term as well as the resources and capacity required to ensure effective delivery at pace. Mrs Sanderson welcomed Members comments on the SDP process and the summary of that plan prior to Corporate Board approval on 4^th April 2019. She advised the Committee that the SDP would undergo further review in the spring to build on the successful momentum of the SDP process and would be used to positively address emerging issues for subsequent business planning rounds.

2.    Officers responded to Members comments and questions, including the following:

(a)  Mr Whittle acknowledged the points raised by Members in relation to the way in which the SDP had been written, however, he informed the Committee that whilst the summary document was due to be published on the Kent.gov website, it was not designed to be a public facing document and was primarily written to address the complex internal business of the Council. Mr Whittle agreed to look at simplifying language where possible and to explain acronyms. With regards to the Leader’s standardised wording, Mr Whittle agreed to liaise with Mr P Carter, MBE, to review alternative phrases. With regards to comments concerning the lack of environmental prioritisation, one of the key issues that emerged during the analysis of the plan was that the Strategic Statement outcomes were unbalanced, too broad and did not capture cross-cutting enabling activity. The SDP activity was prioritised using a tool called DECA (Delivery Environment Complexity Analytics) which assessed the submissions against the challenges, complexities and risks incumbent to the delivery of that submission, whereby; the environment submissions were too compartmentalised and  did not contain the level of cross-cutting activity to make it a prioritisation for the Council. Mr Whittle said the review in the spring would look at how the DECA process prioritised the submissions and would provide further advice officers not to overly compartmentalise strategies as these would likely be ranked significantly lower compared to the submissions relating to the activity required for Children and Adult services which cut across a breadth of services. Mr Whittle informed the Committee that he would refer Members comments regarding the environment issues back to the Corporate Board.

(b)  In response to the inclusion of the action plan as a result of the Select Committee paper on Social Isolation, Mr Whittle confirmed that the Executive was responsible for producing an action plan and would decipher whether this would be included in the SDP. Mr Whittle said that the point was raised at the Adult Social Care Cabinet Committee and agreed to refer Members comments back to the Corporate Board.

(c)  Mr Whittle confirmed that the appendix to the report was the SDP summary, however there was a 183-page version which was due to be published on KNet following approval at the Corporate Board. He said that the SDP was designed to be read in conjunction with other relevant strategy documents as it was unmanageable to include all 114 documents on KCC’s strategy and policy register within the document. However, the SDP did include the support functions required for each activity as well as the internal and external co-dependencies.

3.    RESOLVED that the draft Strategic Delivery Plan summary, be noted.