Agenda item

To receive the Performance Dashboard for Quarter 3.

The Group had before it and NOTED a *slide showing performance information in the Community, People and Equalities area for quarter 3.

The following was highlighted by the Corporate Performance and Improvement Manager:

·         The Dashboard aimed to give an "at a glance" understanding of how services were performing in terms of performance, finance, and risk. Any measures that were also part of the Corporate Plan were listed in yellow text.

·         The indicators were presented with their current performance, the annual target, and a RAG (red, amber, green) rating to indicate whether the Council was on track to meet their targets.

·         Overall performance was presented in a pie chart and combined the RAG ratings from both the performance and finance measures.

For the measures showing as Red:

·         New subscribers to Let’s Talk Mid Devon - during Quarter 3 the Communications Team used the platform once again for the Council’s Residents’ Survey. However, for the first time the Council asked the public to sign up to the platform before they could complete the survey questions. This meant the Council saw a big uptake in the number of people joining the platform. In Quarter 3 there were 3,729 visits to the website, 598 contributions, 123 sign ups and an engagement rate of almost 21%.

·      Licenced vehicle inspections. Due to vacancies within the Licensing Team and the work associated with implementing the new Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Policy, the team had undertaken few taxi inspections. The new Policy introduced additional criteria as part of the vehicle inspections. While the team worked through the process to ensure consistency of approach, the number of inspections had decreased. The vacancies meant it was unlikely the target would be reached this year.

·      Private water supply sampling. Additional staff were being trained to undertake the private water supply work. Each officer had to be accredited to take samples.

·      Food Service - Total Inspections completed. The service was now struggling to keep up with demand due to vacancies. The Regulatory Officer role had now been filled and would concentrate on those premises rated D and E, however, this role was not competent to deal with the higher risk premises. Due to difficulty recruiting to a senior role, the Council were now unable to deliver the number of inspections per quarter that were needed to achieve the target of 100%. A review of resources and structure to deliver was underway.

Discussion took place regarding:

·         Was the sign up rate of 21% on “Let’s Talk Mid Devon” what the Council expected? The Council had shown that it was committed to using the tool, there had been some successes in Housing and the Planning Team were now looking at how they could use it. The Management Team were constantly reviewing how they could encourage people to utilise the platform for the benefit of the residents as well as for the benefit of the Council.

·         Were there too many public platforms and was that confusing for the public?

·         Licenced vehicle inspections were lower for Quarter 3 due to some key changes in the Hackney Carriage and Private Hire Policy which brought in new standards and new requirements. Those changes had been substantially different for operators, so whilst the operators were getting used to the new requirements there had been a ‘soft touch’ approach with them. This year the approach had been around education and making sure that they were familiar with the Policy and some of the new requirements.

Note: *slide previously circulated.