Agenda item

Mr P B Carter, Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member for Policy and Performance; and Mr D Cockburn, Executive Director, Strategy, Economic Development and ICT, will attend the meeting from 11.15 am to 12 noon to answer Members’ questions on this item.

Mr Carter, Mrs Garton and Miss Purvis were present for this item.

Mr Smyth began the debate by referring to code CMA1 – within area for improvement 2 – communications, the inspectors’ comment stated that ‘the council was over-keen to claim credit’, the monitoring comment stated that “there was no need for separate action, given the recognition that this was ‘unintentional’” Mr Smyth challenged the word ‘unintentional’;  Mr Carter explained that in his opinion the monitoring comment was right and appropriate and he was keen to ensure that the transformation that the Council had been delivering was embedded and working.  The Council should be proud of its successes and not be afraid of publicising them.

Mr Smyth referred to code CPA1 – within area for improvement 6 – corporate practice/processes, it was acknowledged that it was not possible to revise the T2010 document at this stage but Mr Smyth asked for an assurance from Mr Carter that the next plan took into account the implications from the comprehensive performance assessment, ensured that KCC’s role in achieving targets was made clear and that they had SMART indicators against them.  Mr Carter explained that over the next four years the quality of performance management would be improved and the Council would work on limiting the bureaucracy involved. 

Mr Hart referred to code MMC3 and MMC4 and asked whether it was right that the Leader was the ‘lead director’ for those improvements?  Mr Carter explained that he had worked hard to ensure that the Chairmen and Members of the POCs made them more effective; he considered that it was up to the POCs to make themselves more vibrant and more exciting.  An Informal Member Group would look at and monitor the progress of the Performance Improvement Plan recommendations.  Mr Hart asked whether the Leader of the opposition group would be a more appropriate lead on that area for improvement.  Mr Carter stated that the leaders should work together to achieve the objectives. 

Mr Truelove referred to code CPB1, he stated that a recent Highways Advisory Board meeting showed that Kent Highways were still showing poor performance when it came to responding to the public, progress was being made but there was still a long way to go.  In relation to code OCC2 - Mr Truelove also considered that further thought needed to be given to action to adapt to climate change and congestion within Maidstone town. 

Mrs Hohler agreed with Mr Carter and explained that Members of the Communities POC, of which Mrs Hohler was the Chairman, were encouraged to input into the Committee and she had been impressed with a recent meeting of the Children’s Families and Education POC. 

Mr Harrison queried code WDD2; the monitoring of that area stated that reports would be made to the Kent Public Service Board and Mr Harrison queried who the Board comprised of.  Mr Carter explained that the Board was chaired by himself and included the Chief Executives of all the big public agencies in the county on issues of significant collective importance. The Chairman asked how and when the Board reported to the Council and Mr Carter confirmed that it reported to the Kent Partnership and had to report to the sovereign body with any decisions.

Mrs Dean referred to code MMC1, KCC were asked to ensure that Members had real public engagement and debate with all sections of the community; this was a crucial area for the Council.  The evidence of improvement stated that there should be ‘wider implementation of the Neighbourhood Forum model of Local Boards’ and evidence under code MMB3 stated ‘increase in officer support to Local Boards’.  Mrs Dean asked about the level of support expected in the new council for the Local Boards, a number of Members considered that the Neighbourhood Forum model was the best in terms of engaging with local Members but there was clearly an issue of resources to support the local boards.  Mrs Dean asked the Leader how the issue would be taken forward and how the issue of resources would be resolved.  The Leader explained that the Council was in a transition from local boards to predominantly Neighbourhood Forums, it was an evolving process, a budget had been set for officer support, which had been increased and this would have to be reviewed at the end of the year or in the case of a significant crisis where the demands placed on officers were unreasonable.  Members should not expect, individually, the same number of hours of officer support as they would do if they were working in a collective of three or four Members.  

Mr Simmonds considered that KCC did some excellent work informing its Members but the take up of briefing sessions was often disappointing.  Many agendas, such as the CFE POC contained a lot of statutory material which submerged the agenda and often stifled discussion on pressing issues.  Mr Simmonds asked that this be considered to allow the POCs to concentrate on significant issues.  The Corporate POC was a good model of how the Committees should work.  Mr Carter concurred with Mr Simmonds and expressed his view that the CFE POC was trying to do the impossible with the statutory material it had to deal with. 

The Chairman referred to code RMC3 under relationship management, the Inspector’s comment stated that ‘there was a need to strategically manage District Council relationships at senior management level, promoting a better level of trust to make them more effective’.  The inspectors comment for RMC4 stated that the Council should ‘adopt a less defensive approach to advice and guidance from regulators and local partners on areas of improvement and ways of doing things’ Under evidence of improvement for both issues the comment stated that ‘we believe this is the way we currently work’.  The Chairman queried whether there was a degree of awareness of the way in which the Council was operating?  Mr Carter stated that he didn’t have to agree with everything the inspector said and he didn’t on a number of issues.  The relationship with the districts was a good one, and the two tier system did not get in the way, the Council was proud of its achievements.

The Chairman referred to code MMC1 – ‘ensure Members have real public engagement and debate with all sections of the community’ the evidence stated that ‘regular Members attendance at District (s) LSPs’ and this would be evident from the Member annual reports.  The Chairman asked what structures would be put in place to allow Members to attend the District LSPs and therefore be able to include it in their Member annual report.  Also, in terms of the monitoring of the improvement, whether it should include the fact that the LSP papers were available to the Members within the local area that they represent.  Mr Carter considered that it might be appropriate for the Member Information Point to network with the LSPs around the county and inform the relevant Members. 

Referring to code MMB1 (Members) which was ‘ongoing via Inphase’, the Chairman asked for more information on Inphase as he was not aware of the system.  Mrs Garton explained that Inphase was a new performance management system used to record performance data, it was at an early stage and the new national indicator set, the LAA2 information, and the T2010 information was currently being entered onto it.   It would bring those three elements together to enable to user to drill down to look at the performance of directorates or business units.  It was the intention to pilot the system initially with Cabinet Members, in terms of having remote access, and then it could be open to all Members.  The Chairman queried whether it would contain real time performance information?  Mrs Garton confirmed that where possible it could be 'real' time, more likely quarterly or six monthly, but in most cases the indicators were collected on an annual basis and therefore real time would not be possible.  The Chairman asked that if information was being reported to the Cabinet Member, it would also be made available to all Members?  Mrs Garton explained that directorates could decide which indicators they would report to their Members and how regularly. 

Mrs Law referred to code WDA2, it was surprising that the inspector’s comment contained the word ‘ambitiously’ and Mrs Law asked the Leader whether he considered it a very good aspiration to want to get to level one on the Equality Framework, Mr Carter agreed and the Council was making good progress.

Resolved that:

1.      The Cabinet Scrutiny Committee thanked Mr Carter, Mrs Garton and Miss Purvis for their attendance at the meeting and for answering Members’ questions;

2.      The Cabinet Scrutiny Committee requested that further clarification be added to the Improvement Plan setting out the actions taken to achieve the improvement;

3.      The Committee asked that the Performance Improvement Plan be reported back to the Committee in six months time when it was reported to COG and Cabinet.