Agenda item

The Divisional Director and Strategic Performance Manager made presentations to the Committee. A copy of their PowerPoint slides is attached as Appendix 1 to these minutes.

The Strategic Performance Manager made a presentation on performance management. He said that he worked closely with the Audit and Risk Team; he believed that risk management and performance management were inseparably connected. He circulated copies of the Performance Pack that is presented to the Strategic Directors Group to Members and said that it was perceived that too much information was circulated at present; it was planned to streamline it so that key facts and trends could be identified more quickly.

A Member commented on the fact that information was not being circulated until a few months after the period to which it referred. The Strategic Performance Manager replied that compiling the pack took a lot of time and staff resources; in future by producing more streamlined reports it should be possible to circulate information more quickly. He also agreed with the Member that it would helpful to provide more commentary with the information.

The Chair noted that the Committee did not receive corporate performance information. The Divisional Director noted that the role of the Committee was to look at the framework and systems in place and that detailed member scrutiny was a role for Cabinet and Scrutiny Panels.

A Member said that the information seemed retrospective and there did not appear to be a great deal of involvement by elected members. The Strategic Performance Manager replied that performance was being reviewed against internal targets and benchmarks. As for elected member involvement, the Divisional Director again emphasised the roles of Cabinet and Scrutiny and that relevant portfolio holders were given regular briefings. In response to questions from other Members, he said:

·  a great deal of work was being done to improve co-ordination between different services

·  the ultimate aim was to give all elected members access to the quarterly performance report through the intranet

The Chair commented on the Council’s new strapline which states that B&NES is the best place to live, work and visit, whereas the previous strapline was aspirational: “making B&NES an even better place to live, work and visit”. A question was raised as to whether this could be judged, assessed or even benchmarked. The Strategic Performance Manager detailed how the strapline had been consulted with Cabinet and stated that it was now more difficult to make comparisons between local authorities since the Comprehensive Area and Performance Assessment process had been abolished, however benchmarking ‘families’ still existed.

The Divisional Director continued the presentation on the theme of Risk Management. He referred members to the Organisational Dashboard of Corporate Risk for Q4 and explained its structure. A Member asked why the financial challenge was coded in red and assessed at level 5. The Divisional Director – Finance explained that that it was because there was no doubt that there was a financial challenge and that its impact was very high. The Dashboard stated that a plan was in place to meet the challenge, which included a 3-year budget. The budget is monitored monthly. There was a blip in Q3 when the possibility of an in-year overspend was foreseen, so remedial action was taken.

The Chair thanked the Strategic Performance Manager and the Divisional Director for a useful presentation.