Agenda item

1.            Ms Kennard introduced the report and, with Ms Spore and Mr Watts,  responded to comments and questions from the committee, including the following:-

a)    asked if the large number of green ratings might be an indicator that targets were set too low, and if the right things were being measured to give the best view of challenges, Ms Kennard advised that targets were reviewed every year as a matter of course. Mr Watts added that reviewing and commenting on the dashboard and the targets in it was a key part of Members’ role, and Members were able to shape the dashboard to include the information they wanted to monitor;  

b)    asked if data was available on how long people waited to get help with IT issues, Ms Spore advised that IT indicators had been reviewed and that IT needs would inevitably evolve as the county recovered from the pandemic; 

c)    asked why targets had not been increased where the current performance had exceeded target, as no explanation seemed to be given in the report, Ms Kennard advised that targets had not been raised for this coming year in recognition of the impact of the pandemic on normal service delivery over the last year and the uncertainty, particularly around demand, that was likely to be associated with the upcoming period of recovery. She undertook to send Members an explanation of the rationale outside the meeting;

d)    asked for clarification about what was included in the measure of the number of committee reports being published late, Mr Watts advised that the committee team worked to statutory requirements for publishing material which was to be considered at a formal meeting of the Council or a committee. Accordingly, it was to be expected that all papers would be published on time.  It was sometimes necessary to send an item ‘to follow’ in a supplementary agenda, for example, if the information being reported had not been available when the main agenda was published, but these supplementary agendas were not included in the figure shown on the dashboard. What was important was to be able to distinguish between something sent late unavoidably and what was late due to lack of preparation.  Mr Watts reminded the committee that Ms Kennard’s team was small and the level of detail which they could record and report was therefore limited;

e)    asked about the range of themes of Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and how this impacted on the time taken to respond to them, Mr Watts advised that, early in the pandemic, FOI requests had been about covid-related issues and the ability to access services such as household waste sites and libraries. Similar issues re-emerged during later lockdowns.  FOI requests were now much more complex and took longer to respond to.  Mr Watts undertook to set out more detail in a report on FOIs to the committee’s next meeting;

f)     concern was expressed that, in an age of digital access and online records, information required to support a timely response to an FOI request should surely be easier and quicker to locate. Late responses or shortage of information could lead to the Council being fined by the Information Commissioner’s Office. Mr Watts advised that available staff resources had been directed during the pandemic to deal with frontline services, and issues such as responding to FOI requests had been given a lower priority; 

g)    Mr Watts advised that the Council held some very historical documents, which existed only on paper and which would either be very difficult or costly to digitalise or which were referred to so infrequently that the cost of digitalising them would not be cost effective. Delays in responding to FOI requests were usually as a result of research time in looking through paper documents, which had the added complexity during the pandemic that staff had to access closed buildings to locate and examine them; and

h)    a view was expressed that Members needed to be able to find out in more detail about target-setting and performance monitoring so they could make an informed contribution to it.  The targets and key performance indicators (KPIs) on which the dashboard was based were as important, if not more so, than the dashboard itself, and should be the subject of a separate and more detailed report, to raise their profile.  Ms Kennard advised Members that they had scope to review what was measured and how this was reported.  It was suggested that a small group of Members have a separate briefing meeting to discuss target setting and shape future reporting, and Members who were interested in attending this gave their names to the clerk. Mr Watts confirmed that a meeting between those Members and Ms Kennard would be set up as soon as possible.

2.            It was RESOLVED that:-

a)    the performance information set out in the dashboard for Strategic and Corporate Services be noted;

b)    Members’ comments on the KPIs for 2021/22, set out above, be taken into account; and

c)    a briefing meeting be arranged at which Members could have more information about target setting, KPIs and monitoring and discuss what they wished to see included in future reporting.