Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendation.

The Cabinet Member for Corporate Management introduced the draft Improvement Plan 2014/15 prior to its final publication in June.

It was a requirement of the Local Government (Wales) Measure 2009 to set Improvement Objectives and publish an Improvement Plan and it was a statutory requirement for the County Council to adopt the Improvement Plan.

For 2013/14, the Council carried out a thorough review of the priorities to streamline them and reset them with clearer outcome based aims.  A revised set of eight priorities supported by a structure of sub-priorities was adopted.

The Chief Executive explained that the new version of the Plan took full account of the advisory comments of the Wales Audit Office (WAO) from September 2013 with the content of the letter including the comments “enables public engagement with the Council priorities more effectively than in the past” and “the plan is much shorter than before and now communicates clearly and succinctly how each of the Improvement Objectives related to the Council’s eight medium-term corporate priorities and to those of partners in the Local Service Board”.

For 2014/15 a review of the current priorities and sub-priorities had been undertaken to set:-

·        Priorities that continued into 2014/15 for sustained attention

·        Priorities that could be removed as completion of a time-limited piece of work, e.g. Single Status

·        Priorities which could be merged e.g. School Improvement and School Modernisation; and

·        Emerging priorities for 2014/15 e.g. People Change and Development

The Policy and Performance Manager added that the Improvement Plan 2014/15 would be submitted to the Overview and Scrutiny Committees and Cabinet in June 2014 prior to formal adoption by County Council on 24 June 2014.

            RESOLVED:

That the Improvement Plan 2014/15 be approved prior to consultation and final publication in June.