Agenda item

(Director of Governance) to consider the attached report.

The Assistant Director, Accountancy, Mr Maddock introduced the quarter 3 progress report of the Corporate Plan Key Action Plan for 2016/17. The Corporate Plan was the Council’s key strategic planning document, setting out its priorities over the five-year period from 2015/16 to 2019/20. The priorities or Corporate Aims are supported by Key Objectives, which provided a clear statement of the Council’s overall intentions for these five years.

The Key Objectives were delivered by an annual action plan, with each year building upon the progress against the achievement of the Key Objectives for previous years. The annual action plans contained a range of actions designed to achieve specific outcomes and were working documents and therefore subject to change and development to ensure the actions remained relevant and appropriate, and to identify opportunities to secure further progress or improvement.

Some actions have cross directorate responsibility. Where this is the case the most appropriate Select Committee was requested to consider the action. This report presented progress against the Key Action Plan for 2016/17 for actions most appropriately considered by the Resources Select Committee.

Progress against the Key Action Plan is reviewed on a quarterly basis to ensure the timely identification and implementation of appropriate further initiatives or corrective action where necessary. Q 3 progress against the individual actions of the 2016/17 Key Action Plan is as below:

There were 49 actions in total for which progress updates for Q3 are as follows:

·         Achieved or On-Target:                        26 (53%)

·         Under Control:                           13 (27%)

·         Behind Schedule:                        4 (8%) 

·         Pending:                                                  6 (12%)

Total    49 (100%)

13 actions fell within the areas of responsibility of the Resources Select Committee. At the end of Q3:

·         8  (62%) of these actions have been ‘Achieved’ or were ‘On-Target’

·         2  (15%) of these actions were ‘Under Control’

·         1  (8%) of these actions were ‘Pending’

·         2  (15%) of these actions were ‘Behind Schedule’

Councillor R Jennings asked what the status indicator ‘under control’ meant. Was it out of control before? Mr Maddock said that the Performance Improvement Unit should use a better term as it indicated an ongoing situation for that target that could be handled by officers by simply, for instance, changing the target date.

Councillor Patel noted that at a recent Audit and Governance meeting the same problem was identified. If a target date was not met then the officer should explain why not.

Councillor Dorrell said that ‘amber’ usually meant that the target was in trouble and not under control. Once a date had slipped then it has to be noted and reported on.

Councillor Lion noted that item 3 (develop additional business cases) was a rolling programme and so it was strange to put a target date on it.  Councillor Patel said that this had also been raised before. There needed a better way to report this for the entire council. Councillor Lion added that these were not SMART objectives and they should be. Councillor Jennings agreed. Councillor Patel said that this should be put to Management Board as a general issue and have them look at it and take it forward.

Councillor Patel asked about the Council’s apprenticeship scheme and where were we with the apprenticeship levy. Mr Maddock said that we had to pay £69k next year but were confident that we could use all this in our proposed schemes.

RESOLVED:

(1)  That the Committee noted and reviewed the third quarter (Q3) progress of the Corporate Plan Key Action Plan for 2016/17 in relation to its areas of responsibility;

(2)  That the Performance Improvement Unit find a better term than that used for  an amber target as ‘under control’;

(3)  That the Committee identified that the objectives should be recast more as SMART objectives; and

(4)  That item 3 (develop additional business cases) was a rolling programme and should not have a target date set.