Agenda item

A report of the Strategy and Engagement Manager – an opportunity to review annual performance results before they are reported to Cabinet on 18/6 and Council on 24/6

 Agenda item 8 was introduced by Richard Gibson, Strategy and Engagement Manager. This corporate performance report relates to delivery of the Council’s Corporate Strategy Action Plan 2012-13 agreed by council in March 2012. The aim of the report was to review, challenge and comment on the council’s performance over the last year.

The Strategy and Engagement Manager talked through the structuring of the report mentioning that there were some amber milestones that hadn’t been reached.

The chair referred to the red milestones, such as the Joint Core Strategy and the review of Parish Council boundaries. He also mentioned that there is already a cabinet member group that is reviewing the approach to household waste management and that there had been an O&S review of Ubico.

Another councillor commented on the amount of good information the report had revealed, although he said that it was difficult to link the activity milestones with the performance indicators and the achievement of outcomes. He mentioned that the linkage between milestones and outcomes can be lost. The Strategy and Engagement manager said that the linkages are there, but that they could do with being better defined in the 2014/15 corporate strategy. 

The chair referred to the report’s assessment of the council’s carbon emissions and suggested there be a scrutiny task group on this. Jane Griffiths, Director of Commissioning, responded that there is already a Cabinet Member task group on carbon emissions, the members of which had built up a good deal of expertise and they could report back to O&S if there was a specific issue that the committee wanted to cover. If there was a Scrutiny task group on this matter, then the task group may end up duplicating the work of the Cabinet Member task group. The chair felt that an O&S review would focus on the council’s performance and approach to climate change and carbon reduction as opposed to policy and operational delivery so there should not be any duplication.

A member commented that the Review and Outcomes section of the report highlights a lot of possible subjects that O&S could look into.

The member went onto say that Cheltenham Borough Homes is delivering excellent services to council tenants but that their performance is not replicated by other housing providers leading to the possibility that tenants are receiving very different levels of service across the town with those in the private sector who may be at greatest risk. .

Finally the member referred to the People and Healthy Lifestyle stream of the report. She suggested that Scrutiny should start looking into youth provision and highlighted the good example of the local charity, CCP, which provides a youth café - open to youngsters four nights a week.

Another member highlighted that the Boots corner closure was omitted from the report and that a lot of her constituents wanted to know what was happening. This, the Strategy and Engagement responded, was because funding was secured from the local sustainable transport fund and the activity should take place in the current year.

The chair talked about supporting neighbourhood management. He suggested that the Community Governance task group could look at the effectiveness of the neighbourhood management structures.

The Strategy and Engagement Manager said that he was bringing together the chairs of the various neighbourhood management groups in early June to begin a review of structures and he stated that it would be good if Scrutiny could support this work. The chair responded that he would have a discussion with colleagues and discuss this at the next meeting.