Meeting documents
Cabinet
Wednesday, 7th April, 2004
11111
|
Bath & North East Somerset Council |
|||
|
MEETING: |
Council Executive |
PAPER |
|
|
DATE: |
7th April 2004 |
||
|
TITLE: |
|||
|
WARD: |
All |
||
|
AN OPEN PUBLIC ITEM |
|||
|
List of attachments to this report: Appendix A ODPM Guidance on Performance Plan requirements |
|||
1 THE ISSUE
1.1 The Government issued new guidance on the 17th February 2004 for the publication of Performance Plans. This guidance reflects the Government's desire to give greater freedoms and flexibilities to Councils that have achieved a "good" or "excellent" CPA rating.
1.2 Appendix A sets out the changes that can be made if the Council is to take full advantage of the proposals.
1.3 The guidance suggests that the primary audience of the Best Value Performance Plan (BVPP) published in June should be the Council itself. In addition the Summary Performance Plan, which we have produced in March, will continue to provide information to the public on our performance.
2 RECOMMENDATION
The Council Executive is asked to agree that:
2.1 That the Executive notes the new guidance outlined in Appendix A and as a result requests Council to agree to a modification to the Council's Annual Performance Plan as indicated in 4.2.
2.2 That the Executive delegates authority to the Chief Executive, in consultation with the Group Leaders, to produce a final plan by the end of June.
2.3
FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS
2.4 The new guidance results in a less costly June plan but a greater expense will be incurred in producing a March summary and in monitoring performance. Budget impact is therefore neutral.
3 THE REPORT
3.1 The Government has responded to criticism that the Performance Plan takes too long to produce and has introduced freedoms for good and excellent Councils. Being a `Good' council we are able to take advantage of the freedoms contained in the ODPM guidance.
3.2 These freedoms allow us to use the Corporate Plan as our Performance Plan, providing certain conditions are met. The ODPM have confirmed that our Corporate Plan is suitable for such treatment, with an addendum containing detailed performance statistics and a statement on our compliance with the Code of Practice Code in our approach to workforce matters and contracting.
3.3 The Plan in total will be published on the Council's web-site by the end of June.
4 RISK MANAGEMENT
A risk assessment related to the issue and recommendations has been undertaken, in compliance with the Council's decision making risk management guidance.
5 RATIONALE
5.1 The recommendations take full advantage of the freedoms allowed by the Council's CPA rating of `Good' and enable us to publish a more concise Performance Plan, with references to the published Corporate Plan.
6 OTHER OPTIONS CONSIDERED
6.1 A Performance Plan similar to previous years could be published, but this would not take full advantage of the freedoms allowed nor would we take advantage of linking the Performance Plan to the Corporate Plan.
7 CONSULTATION
7.1 Copies of this report have been issued to Trades Unions; any comments received will be reported to the meeting.
|
Contact person |
Peter Rowntree, Operations Director, 01225 394453 Jay Williams, Performance Improvement Manager, Corporate Performance Unit, 01225 395333 |
|
Background papers |
Addendum to ODPM Circular 03/2003 - Local Government Act 1999: Part 1 Best Value and Performance Improvement - Guidance on Best Value Performance Plans |
APPENDIX A
ODPM GUIDANCE ON BEST VALUE PERFORMANCE PLANS
The Government has been criticised for the amount of resources that goes into producing the Performance Plan and so they have reacted with new guidance. The main features are set out in the extract below;
Source: Addendum to ODPM Circular 03/2003 - Local Government Act 1999: Part 1 Best Value and Performance Improvement - Guidance on Best Value Performance Plans
a) plans are not prepared in isolation from authorities' business planning. All authorities should ensure that the improvement planning process that underlies the Performance Plan is integrated with authorities' corporate planning arrangements.
b) the primary audience for the plans should be the authority itself
c) For authorities that are categorised in CPA as excellent and good, the Government has reduced its requirements further. Accordingly, for these authorities the Government will accept their annual corporate plan as meeting the statutory requirement to prepare a Performance Plan - providing that it is identified as such and contains the following information, necessary for Government to monitor performance:
· outturn data for Best Value Performance Indicators (BVPIs);
· targets for BVPIs in the current year and subsequent 2 years; and
· confirmation that they are adopting the Code of Practice in their approach to workforce matters and contracting.
This information could simply be annexed to the annual corporate plans/ Performance Plans
d) Authorities will be able to prepare and publish their Performance Plans at any time up to the end of June. However, recognising that one of the requirements for all authorities is to provide outturn BVPI data, authorities must ensure that their BVPI data is annexed to, or incorporated within, their Performance Plan by the end of June.
e) all best value authorities, should continue to prepare summary performance information by March each year