Agenda item

REPORT OF SERVICE DIRECTOR – RESOURCES

A report on the projects, risks and performance indicators supporting delivery of the Council Plan.

RESOLVED:

(1)   That Cabinet noted the progress against Council projects as set out in the Council Delivery Plan (Appendix A) including changes to milestones, performance indicators and risks.

(2)   That Cabinet commented on the presentation of the report for future meetings, especially in relation to milestones and project status.

REASON FOR DECISIONS: The Council Delivery Plan (CDP) monitoring reports provide Cabinet with an opportunity to monitor progress against the key Council projects, and understand any new issues, risks or opportunities.

Audio recording – 1:18:50

The Chair advised that a referral on this item had been provided from the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, however Councillor Val Bryant was unavailable to present this. Therefore, the Chair presented the referral and advised that:

·       There was a relatively light agenda at this meeting and so Members were able to pay close attention to this report.

·       There were a lot of comments and feedback on some date and milestone slippages on certain projects. The Controls, Risk and Performance Manager had provided some detail regarding these.

·       Councillor Ralph Muncer had several questions on projects which were not put at the meeting. These were submitted in writing and a response had since been provided by Officers and these would be circulated to Executive Members.

·       The Scrutiny Committee was a valuable space and it was important for those members to be able to ask questions and she had provided an apology to Councillor Muncer, as well as the Leader of the Opposition, for this not happening at the meeting.

Councillor Ian Albert, as Executive Member for Finance and IT, presented the report entitled ‘Q1 23-24 Update on the Council Delivery Plan’ and advised that:

·       This report helps all Councillors understand the projects the Council was undertaking and the progress made.

·       Staff resources were impacting on the delivery of the Council Delivery Plan.

·       A workshop on recruitment and retention was being held by the East of England Local Government Association in November and he would attend this to try and address some of these issues.

·       It was important to identify the main priorities within the Council Delivery Plan.

·       Needed to consider the presentation of the report to ensure the right information was being provided.

The Service Director – Resources continued that:

·       The yellow highlighting within the report indicated that a change to a milestone had been made and was to be approved by Cabinet. Progress would then be set and monitored against this revised date, which can therefore lead to difficulties in identifying original dates without reviewing past reports.

·       If there was a reduction in the projects included on the Delivery Plan, then a detailed review of the report could take place, but that was not possible with the current number of projects included.

·       Currently all milestones are retained within the report, but as milestones are met and completed, these could be removed once they had been through a cycle of Committees to assist with conciseness of the report.

·       Only the milestones from the current year, and previous years, were included, it did not cover all future milestones on projects.

·       There was an issue with the system which meant if more in year milestones were added, then this would see a decrease in the percentage update provided.

·       He was seeking feedback from Members on the display of the completion percentage and whether completed milestones should be removed.

The Chair noted that this was a document to be owned by Members and it needed to be agile and provide relevant data to ensure projects were on track and effective monitoring of these. She was supportive of removing completed actions, so long as these were recorded within the Pentana system.

Councillor Steve Jarvis advised that for projects with many completed milestone the deletion was fine, however noted that for some projects the milestones were useful indicators of progress made. The current system of counting milestones to produce a percentage was not always an accurate reflection of the project.

Councillor Sean Prendergast noted that some of the information provided was not particularly helpful to understanding the progress of a project and that this could be removed to make the report more concise.

Councillor Ian Albert proposed and Councillor Sean Prendergast seconded and, following a vote, it was:

RESOLVED:

(1)   That Cabinet noted the progress against Council projects as set out in the Council Delivery Plan (Appendix A) including changes to milestones, performance indicators and risks.

(2)   That Cabinet commented on the presentation of the report for future meetings, especially in relation to milestones and project status.

REASON FOR DECISIONS: The Council Delivery Plan (CDP) monitoring reports provide Cabinet with an opportunity to monitor progress against the key Council projects, and understand any new issues, risks or opportunities.