Issue - meetings

As detailed in the recommendations.

The Chief Executive introduced the Annual Performance Report 2015/16 Part 2 report which was the final monitoring update for 2015/16 of the Improvement Plan.  This would inform the Annual Performance Report which would be presented to Cabinet and Council in September. 

            The Improvement Plan monitoring reports gave explanations of the progress being made towards the delivery of the impacts set out in the 2015/16 Improvement Plan with narrative supported by measures and/or milestones which evidenced achievement.  In addition, there was an assessment of the strategic risks and the level to which they were being controlled. 

Individual sub-priority reports had been completed by the lead accountable officers and were brought together to provide the information in the report before Members.  An overall assessment was provided in the report which was based on the detailed reports.

The Chief Executive commented on two activities which had been assessed as having a low (red) level of confidence in achieving the outcome which were:

1.    Housing – deliver financial support to repair, improve and adapt private sector homes

2.    Modern and Efficient: develop and implement a four year financial plan that reflects anticipated funding, costs and efficiencies to support strategic decision making

Full details of those service performance areas were provided in the report.

Year end (net) risk levels for the strategic risks identified in the Improvement Plan were:

• 3 (7%) of risks were rated as major (red)
• 30 (67%) of risks were rated as moderate (amber)
• 8 (18%) of risks were rated as minor (yellow)
• 4 (9%) of risks were rated as insignificant (green)

The Chief Executive provided details of the following three high (red) risks:

• Education and Youth: limited funding to address the backlog of known repair and maintenance works in Education and Youth assets: further reduced to meet new pressures on the Education and Youth budget.  Continued programming and prioritisation of works was undertaken to minimise the impact.
• Modern and Efficient Council: capacity and capability of the organisation to implement necessary changes in relation to the Alternative Delivery Model Programme.  This risk was now reducing as evidenced by the positive progress being made with three of the key Alternative Delivery models during early 2016/17.
• Modern and Efficient Council: scale of the financial challenge.  The scale of the financial challenge still continued to be high risk.  The quality and integrity of the Council’s Medium Term Financial Strategy provided robust evidence for the future funding situation.

The report had been considered at Corporate Resources Overview and Scrutiny Committee the previous week and received positive feedback.  Some comments had been received on the layout of the report which had been accepted.  The Corporate Business and Communications Executive Officer explained that that format of the final Annual Performance Report published in October on the website would be in a user friendly layout which was welcomed.

On the risk Modern and Efficient Councillor Kevin Jones commented that the public were still unaware of the future financial position of the authority.  Councillor Attridge explained that public consultation events  ...  view the full minutes text for item 37