Agenda item

Key Performance Indicators 2022-2026 - Quarter 1 Performance Report for the Period 1 April to 30 June 2022

This report is to update the Committee on the Q1 Performance Outturn for the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which make up the Corporate Plan, for the period 1 April 2022 to 30 June 2022.  It will also report on any items referred by other committees to this committee.  As this is the first cycle of the new process this is described in section 4. of this report.

 

Minutes:

The Interim Group Head of Finance and Section 151 Officer, on behalf of the Group Head of Organisational Excellence who was unable to attend the meeting, presented this report which provided an update on the Q1 Performance Outturn for the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) which made up the Corporate Plan for the period 1 April 2022 to 30 June 2022.

 

The Chair invited questions from the Committee. One Member identified the issue of staff resourcing as a thread running through many of the red areas and asked how successful the council had been in recruiting permanent staff rather than having to use agency staff. The Director of Environment and Communities firstly dispelled the assumption within the question about agency staff not being as effective when many were experts brought in for specific projects, and she secondly noted the general problem with recruitment nationally and the need to take on agency staff when recruitment had failed. She stressed that the most important thing was having the right people in the right roles with the right skills though ideally this would be within a stable workforce. The Director of Growth added that as an organisation the council needed to make itself more attractive in a competitive jobs environment, but that that also meant looking at initiatives such as apprenticeships and developing people locally which took time to achieve outcome. He noted one issue with the current environment of flexible working meant catchment area could be significantly broader so the market was very different right now but that the council was looking at all opportunities to improve the situation.

 

CP36 [Number of new homes completed] and the council failing to meet its housing targets was raised by a Member who asked it the Committee could have an update on the larger developments in the pipeline. The Director of Growth confirmed the latest on key strategic sites around the District. For West Bersted, a planning application was expected imminently after chasing following a delay and that this was expected to add 2000 homes to delivery numbers. For Ford, that Planning Committee had approved in principle an application but that this was being delayed by complex negotiations around an outstanding Section 106 Agreement. For BEW, which could deliver up to 1250 homes, this would not go to Planning Committee before Christmas as there still remained a number of questions. For the site in Angmering close to the raceway site, that this was moving forward. He concluded that it was a mixed picture and that the council continued to push developers to bring forward their proposals where they had yet to as this was the only way to make a dent in the 5 year housing land supply.

 

That a number of the Indicators missing their targets were within Planning or areas under the Director of Growth was raised by another Member. The Director of Growth explained that many were Planning related and that multiple issues, rather than a single one, were the cause of this including the number of vacancies of senior planning staff, the recruitment of planning staff being a national issue with the industry not producing enough planning officers which also affected the speed of receiving consultation responses from professional third parties, the use of external consultancies being useful but never being a complete replacement for having staff in-house, and the timescales involved in apprentices becoming officers. He stressed that Arun had continued to offer a constant service and had not done what some other councils had and shut down their communications when in similar situations. When asked by another Member whether delays to getting planning through were due to the lack of staff in the Planning or Legal departments, the Chair confirmed that there were a substantial number of vacancies in both.

 

Another Member raised concerns CP6 [Compliance with Health and Safety programme] and how our compliance was very important and needed to be as close to 100% as possible. The Chief Executive explained that this was the responsibility of the senior management team who would continue to look at and achieve compliance.

 

At the end of the discussion, the Committee noted the report.

Supporting documents: