Agenda item

To receive a report from the Head of People, Governance and Waste and the Corporate Performance and Improvement Manager on the Annual Corporate Performance for 2024 - 2025.

The Committee received and scrutinised the performance indicators and information received in the *Annual Corporate Performance Report 2024/25.

The following was highlighted:

• The report provided performance information for the 2024/25 financial year. The report and the accompanying appendices were structured according to the five themes in the Corporate Plan.
• Section 2 of the covering report provided performance analysis on a theme by theme basis, with the focus on the Corporate Plan performance indicators.
• Further information on performance against the Aims and Objectives detailed in the Corporate Plan was provided in Appendix 1 to 5.
• Appendix 6 contained the performance dashboards for quarter 4. These contained 100 measures highlighting how services were performing across the Council. Those indicators that were part of the Corporate Plan were highlighted in yellow text.
• The Performance Dashboards had also been reviewed by the relevant Policy Development Groups (PDGs) and the Planning Committee. 

Discussion took place regarding:

• The Community Risk Register was under development and not yet published. The final draft had been completed and was circulating to the service specific leads to identify what mitigating actions the Council could take.
• The Council were represented by its Resilience Officer on a regional working group on Emergency Hubs which was led by the Devon Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly Local Resilience Forum. The region were aiming to follow a consistent approach that met the needs of the responder agencies and provided the whole society resilience that was intended by creating an Emergency Hub. Locally, little had happened regarding Emergency Hubs as the Council were waiting for the common operating procedure before introducing the plan to communities.
• Householder Planning Applications, where the target was 70% of applications determined within 8 weeks in line with the Government threshold. A local target had been considered but had not been changed for the consistency of reporting.
• Capital slippage 22%, target 0% - this was because two of the nine projects had slipped. One was the Building Management System at Phoenix House was currently being scoped and the other one was the Cullompton Relief Road, which was now well underway after securing funding.
• As part of the budget process, an aspirational £0 budget was set for the use of agency staff in Corporate Services. In 2024/25 it had been challenging to recruit in key areas such as Finance and Legal which therefore required agency staff to fill those critical roles costing £200k.
• In the drive towards Net Zero how much attention were the procurement team giving to the Council’s own anti-slavery requirements? Should the spend be brought within the UK to ensure that slaves were not used in the supply chain? The Council focussed on modern slavery but the slavery outlined could be tackled through the Council’s procurement processes. An answer would be provided to the Councillor asking the question following the meeting.
• The Homes Dashboard showed a figure for unoccupied and unfurnished empty homes across the district including those in the private sector to explain the implications it had for pressures on housing in the district and by extension the Council’s homelessness team. The Homes PDG Performance Dashboard (HRA) had a measure entitled ‘MDH Housing stock occupancy rate’ which showed 97.5% and therefore 2.5% voids. – That meant that out of 3000 homes, approximately 75 were voids.
• National Non-Domestic Rates were otherwise known as Business Rates and 99.83% of those rates due were collected. The Economic Development team were aware of the empty properties that would attract a Business Rate. A large proportion of those properties were listed buildings where the owners received 100% relief and so there was no incentive (in the way of business rates) for the business to expand.
• The Council set its own target for the collection of business rates. Of the rates collected, 50% went to Central Government, 40% to the Council, 9% to the County Council and 1% to the Fire Service. However, the Council were a tariff authority, which meant that they had to pay further monies back to the Government which left the Council with a comparatively small amount of money.

Note: Report previously circulated.