Issue - meetings

Report of Director of Regeneration and Planning

Lead Cabinet member: Councillor Merry

(Non-key decision):

(1) That the council’s progress and performance for quarter 1 be received and noted.

(2) That the recommendations made by Scrutiny Committee at its meeting on the 13 September 2018 be considered.

The Cabinet considered the report of the Director of Regeneration and Planning, regarding the Council’s progress and performance in respect of key projects and targets for the first quarter of the year, detailed at appendix 1 to the report.

68% of the Council’s performance targets were either met, exceeded or within acceptable levels during the first quarter. Good news for quarter one were detailed at section 5 of the report and included an improvement in sickness figures, successful launch of the single use plastics project and roll out of co-mingled recycling. 19 of the Council’s 24 key projects were on track at year end and there were no significant project delays.

Performance targets not met were detailed at section 7 of the report and included call answering times, benefits processing, re-let and planning. All of these were closely monitored and managers were shifting staff resources to alleviate any issues.

In response to a question from visiting member, Councillor Catlin, it was clarified that the additional 7,000 calls received this quarter were Lewes only and that the target indicator for calls answered within 60 seconds was by a Customer Advisor and not an answering machine.

Councillor Gardiner, Chair of Scrutiny Committee detailed the discussion of the report at the Scrutiny Committee on the 13 September 2018 and the recommendations to Cabinet.

The Cabinet, visiting members and Ms Debbie Twitchen, Tenants Representative, discussed the call response and abandoned calls performance. The Director of Service Delivery detailed the steps taken to improve the performance target for future quarters. This included significant training to the team for new calls, due to the implementation of revenues and benefits as a new service for Customer Advisors, implementation of queue busting and launch of a recruitment drive in May, with eight candidates being offered roles. There were still vacancies within the team and it was proposed to over recruit by an additional four and that would provide another eight new starters. It was also intended to appoint eight temporary staff for the next six months to undertake customer contact work related to social media, emails and post.

Resolved (Non-key decision):

(1) That the council’s progress and performance for quarter 1 be received and noted.

(2) That the recommendations made by Scrutiny Committee at its meeting on the 13 September 2018 be considered.

Reasons for decisions:

To enable Cabinet to consider specific aspects of the Council’s progress and performance.