Issue - meetings

(Joint Report of the Chief Executive and the Acting Director of Finance – To be introduced by the Leader and the Cabinet Member for Resources): To set out an exception report on the finance and performance monitoring for April and May 2007 using the balanced scorecard format. To agree virements as set out.

The Council's Performance - April and May 2007 (JointReport of the Chief Executive and the Acting Director of Finance  – Agenda Item 8)

We noted the new style scorecard illustrating progress against Council priorities and that, overall, the average across all the five priorities showed that 81% of indicators were achieving or close to achieving targets even at this early point in the year up from 71% at the same point last year.  We also noted that good progress was being made across all the priorities particularly encouraging life time well-being where 91% of indicators were either green or amber and achieving excellent services where 82% were green or amber as at May.

We were informed that 72% of indicators had maintained or improved performance since the end of 2006/07 and that some areas where performance had shown improvement recently included -

• Street Cleanliness –Levels of litter and detritus
• Waste recycled or composted
• Reduction in the number of people killed and seriously injured
• Waiting times for assessment of older people
• Stage 1 Complaints and Member enquiries
• NHS & Community Care Act Stage 1 responses
• Invoices paid in 30 days
• Average speed of processing new benefit claims
• Rent collection
• Customer Services performance

However, there were a number of areas where performance had declined and where more attention needed to be focussed -

• Waste tonnage collected

• Overall number of crimes
• Young people not in Education Employment or Training (NEETs)
• Direct payments
• Average length of stay in hostels
• Stage 2 Complaints
• Housing rent arrears

RESOLVED:

That the report be noted and approval granted to the basket of indicators to be monitored for 2007/08 together with the new format of the balanced scorecard to show progress against Council priorities.