Agenda item

To follow.

Cathy Tyson (Assistant Director – Policy) presented the report and answered questions from Councillors on the Council’s spending, activity and performance in Quarter 3 of the financial year 2009/10. In general the Council had made progress towards delivering the key objectives in the Corporate and Community Strategies, with the majority of Vital Signs indicators – considered critical to the success of the Council – performing broadly in line with the targets set. A total of 53% were on or just below target, but 25% were well below target. One issue affecting the reporting of performance had been missing or delayed data. This had led to delays in reporting, and was being addressed internally.

Performance relating to the theme of ‘a great place’ was best, with 47% of targets regarded as low risk, and 35% as high risk. There was concern that recycling had missed its target slightly, also that there had been a slight increase in gun and knife crime, against the background of a longer-term downward trend. The level of sports participation by young people was below target, largely because of seasonal variation and the severe weather.

Performance around the theme of ‘a borough of opportunity’ had been affected particularly badly by a total of 27% missing data, which would be chased. Some of the missing data related to Local Area Agreement (LAA) targets on social care and the performance of the Primary Care Trust (PCT). The Council was continuing to focus on increasing the level of self-directed support to social care clients and, although the target had not been achieved, there had been a large number of new direct payments made to people with mental health needs. There had also been good performance on reducing delayed discharges from hospital.

Performance on the theme of ‘one community’, affected by missing data on 24% of targets, showed 39% of targets as low risk. The main concerns were Special Educational Needs assessments and the provision of local foster care placements. Cathy Tyson reported that, although the number of looked after children was stable, the lack of in-borough foster placements meant that children were being placed with independent carers at a higher cost.

Also on the theme of ‘one community’, increased awareness of the MEND (Mind, Exercise, Nutrition, Do it!) programme, aimed at reducing child obesity, meant that this target had been achieved. While the slowdown in the housing market had proved a challenge to achieving the target of increasing the number of affordable homes, there were some housing schemes due for completion soon. There had also been good progress on reducing the number of households in temporary accommodation.

Duncan McLeod (Director of Finance and Corporate Resources) informed the Committee that there had been three main areas of overspend. One was children’s services, partly as a result of the large increase in referrals following the Baby Peter case. The second aspect was the recession, which had affected income from parking and land charges, for example. In addition, there had been an increase in demand for services. However, the forecast underspend to be carried forward to the financial year 2010/2011 was currently around £1.4m. In terms of capital income and expenditure, the Council had received relatively generous amounts of resources for schools and it needed to be mindful of the work and delays involved in spending the money and engaging in dialogue with schools. Asked whether some projects could be fast-tracked, Duncan McLeod informed the Committee that the Council was looking at how it managed all its projects, and that the large regeneration projects involved a range of areas, such as interaction with schools, that needed improving.

The Committee noted that it had not seen performance data on Quarter 2, as this had been delayed, but it was reviewing Quarter 3 before the Council’s Executive did so.

RESOLVED:

that the report be noted.