Agenda item

Purpose: To provide assurance that the core business and council priorities for improvement measures (Council Strategy 2019-2023) are being managed effectively.

To highlight successes, in particular maintained strong levels of performance for core business areas, supported by the actions taken by the Council, partner organisations and community groups to recover from Covid-19 crisis.  In a few cases, where performance has fallen below the expected level, either as decisions of the Council to support the Covid-19 response or due to restrictions imposed due to the virus, details are provided, including any further actions.

Resolved that:

·         The strong progress and achievements made, despite challenges and constraints as a result of Covid-19, be noted.

·         The impact of the Council’s conscious decision to provide additional support to residents and local businesses and any further actions planned had been reviewed, in particular for:

•    Council Tax collected as a percentage of Council Tax due

•    Non domestic rates collected as percentage non domestic rates due

·         The inclusion of new measures emerging as a result of Strategic Goals being delivered (as recommended by the OSMC) be approved. The list of measures and further details are provided at Appendix D.

This decision is eligible to be ‘called-in’.  However, if the decision has not been ‘called-in’ by 5.00pm on 29 December 2020, then it will be implemented.

The Executive considered a report (Agenda Item 11) which provided assurance that the core business and Council priorities for improvement measures were being managed effectively.

The report also sought to highlight successes, in particular maintained strong levels of performance for core business areas, supported by the actions taken by the Council, partner organisations and community groups to aid the recovery from Covid-19. In the few cases where performance had fallen below the expected level, details were provided including any further actions.

Councillor Jo Stewart in introducing the report explained that this had been another challenging quarter which included a lead up to a period of lockdown. She then highlighted the following points from the report:

·         There had been a continued rise in the number of benefit claimants, in particular young people. Councillor Stewart was therefore very pleased to report that the Council was participating fully in the Kickstart scheme that sought to help get young people into the workplace in both local businesses and within the Council. To date 13 posts had been created within the Council and it was hoped that more would follow.

·         The Council had been very busy in distributing grant funding to support local businesses.

·         Exception reports had been produced for the collection of Council Tax (reported as ‘amber’) and the collection of Business Rates (reported as ‘red’). These both came as a result of the action taken by the Council to ease the financial burden on residents and businesses by pausing the collection of Council Tax and Business Rates. It was hoped that some of the deficit could be covered by Central Government and further information was awaited on that.

·         The report recommended the inclusion of new measures as part of striving to continually improve. These were listed in Appendix D. Two related to befriending schemes within the Health and Wellbeing Portfolio and three in relation to key activities within the Finance and Economic Development Portfolio.

Councillor Stewart concluded her presentation by advising Members that links were provided within the report to its data sources.

Councillor Lynne Doherty took the opportunity to give thanks on behalf of the Executive to the Council’s officers for their continuing hard work, particularly during such a challenging year. The hard work of officers had kept services running as close to normal as possible, as was evidenced in this report.

Councillor Graham Bridgman pointed out that a large number of the key performance indicators had been thrown into disarray by Covid-19. This was making it difficult in some cases to be clear on the progress being made. By way of an example, he referred to Adult Social Care. The Care Quality Commission had largely suspended operating meaning areas of improvement in Adult Social Care could not be retested at the present time.

RESOLVED that:

(1)       The strong progress and achievements made, despite challenges and constraints as a result of Covid-19, be noted;

(2)       The impact of the Council’s conscious decision to provide additional support to residents and local businesses and any further actions planned had been reviewed, in particular for:

•     Council Tax collected as a percentage of Council Tax due

•     Non domestic rates collected as a percentage of non-domestic rates due

(3)       The inclusion of new measures emerging as a result of Strategic Goals being delivered (as recommended by the OSMC) be approved. The list of measures and further details were provided at Appendix D.

Other options considered:

None considered.