Agenda item

The Scrutiny & Overview Committee is presented with a report setting out the performance measures that will be used to report progress made with delivering the five outcomes within the Mayor’s Business Plan.  The Committee is asked to review these proposed performance measures and their alignment with the five outcomes. 

The Committee considered a report set out on pages 17 to 46 of the agenda which outlined the proposed performance indicators that would be used to measure the delivery of the Mayor’s Business Plan. The report had been included on the agenda to provide the Committee with the opportunity to comment on these indicators prior to the first performance report being prepared for the Cabinet meeting on 25 October 2023.

The Executive Mayor of Croydon, Jason Perry, Chief Executive, Katherine Kerswell, Assistant Chief Executive, Elaine Jackson, Corporate Directors Nick Hibberd, Debbie Jones, Annette McPartland, Susmita Sen, Jane West, Director of Policy, Programmes & Performance, David Courcoux and Business Insight Manager, Craig Ferguson, attended the meeting for this item.

During the introduction to the report, the following points were noted: -

• The Mayor’s Business Plan had been agreed by Council on 14 December 2022 and the report presented to the Scrutiny & Overview Committee outlined the key performance indicators (KPI) that would be used to monitor the delivery of this plan.
• The performance framework had been created through a process of reviewing the previous framework to align it to the Mayor’s Business Plan and benchmarking against KPIs used by other boroughs.
• This process had resulted in the identification of the 78 recommendations set out in the report. There were also another 10 potential KPIs that had been suggested by the Mayor which were being developed for inclusion in future reports.
• The KPIs had been deliberately kept at a strategic level and were split into two categories. The first category were indicators where the Council had direct responsibility for delivery and the second category were indicators the Council delivered in partnership and did not directly control.
• It was proposed that the performance reports would be split into three sections. Firstly, a broad high level report, secondly an appendix setting out the indicators with a Red, Amber, Green (RAG) rating and benchmarking data, and thirdly an appendix providing more detail on each of the indicators including context from the relevant directorate.
• The methodology for grading the RAG rating would be as follows; if performance was on target, it would be rated as green, if performance was within 10% of the target it would be rated as amber, if performance was over 10% below the target it would be rated as red.
• Where available and relatively current, national bench marking data would be included in the performance report.

Following the introduction to the report, the Chair advised that the consensus of the Committee from their pre-meet had been that the performance report was a good piece of work and clearly presented.

The first question raised by the Committee on the report asked whether there had been any community engagement in the development of the KPIs. It was advised that the process to create the KPIs had started with the previously used KPIs, supported by benchmarking these against six other local authorities. The indicators had then been cross checked against the Business Plan to select the most relevant before coming to the Scrutiny & Overview Committee for its feedback. There had been no direct community engagement on the development of the KPIs, but the Mayor’s Business Plan did come with community support as it was based on the Mayor’s election manifesto.

As the process had included benchmarking against other local authorities, it was questioned whether this had included other Mayoral authorities and how the number of KPIs identified compare to the other authorities. It was confirmed that the 78 indicators proposed were of a similar number to that used by other local authorities. It was also the case that there was not a wide range of difference in the KPIs used by different authority types, so the benchmarking had not included a specific comparison against Mayoral authorities.

It was questioned whether consideration had been given to using regular residents’ surveys rather than KPIs to measure performance. It was highlighted that a survey would provide the residents views on council services, while the performance report was data driven. Work was underway to prepare a resident survey, but it was likely that this could only be undertaken on an annual basis. Qualitative data would also be gathered from other areas such as through analysis on complaints and feedback received at Mayoral events.

In response to a follow-up about how the residents survey would be conducted, it was advised that it would involve face to face surveys. An external company had been contracted to undertake the process with it expected that 2,700 interviews would be completed. There was a requirement for the interviewees to be representative of the borough, so it may be the case that further targeted interviews are undertaken if it was found that certain groups were underrepresented.

The Committee agreed that identifying specific KPIs to demonstrate the vitality of the town centre would be a challenge, it was welcomed that the Mayor had asked officers to explore potential options in this area. The Committee suggested that footfall, the number of empty unit or the level of business rate income could be potential indicators used for this. 

In response to a question about whether, given the high profile challenges within the service, there was enough housing related KPIs in the report, it was highlighted that there was already a significant focus on housing, with quarterly reports to Cabinet and the Housing Improvement Board, alongside the regulator working with the service. At present a full suite of indicators were being developed for the service in conjunction with the Housing Improvement Board and residents. The Committee suggested that void turnaround times and repair response times should be considered as possible additional indicators for future performance reports.

It was noted that there were very few KPIs included in the report on staffing, such as vacancy rates. It was advised that there were a few indicators related to staffing, but as it was a public facing report, the primary focus was on public facing services rather than inward facing areas such as staffing. It was agreed that officers would be asked to review how staff issues were reflected in the report.

In response to a question about why there were few indicators in the report that related to poverty, it was advised that identifying indicators that could measure the level of poverty in the borough were difficult to define. Options under consideration included the employment rate in the borough and an annual KPI on weekly earnings. It was highlighted that there was a wealth of poverty related information on the Croydon Observatory, which was broken down to ward level.

It was suggested by the Committee that indicators should also be considered for Adult Social Care, to monitor the waiting times for services, although it was acknowledged this was being tracked at a directorate level. It was also suggested that an indicator on the level of violence perpetrated against women and girls could also be monitored, even thought this area of work was primarily led by the Police.

In response to a question about how the data underpinning the report would be collected and verified, it was confirmed that the data would be reviewed by the Corporate Management Team and the Mayor’s Advisory Board monthly. If any issues were raised by the monitoring process, these would be picked up at the departmental level in the first instance, with an escalation process being trialled. Many of the KPIs would be drawn from pre-existing data and tested by the Business Insight Manager.

It was questioned how the data used for the performance report would be presented, with a request made for as much visual representation as possible. It was advised that a lot of the data relating to services would be imported into the Croydon Observatory, which would allow it to be presented in different formats, with other ways to display data within Croydon Observatory being explored.

The final question of the session asked whether there was a buy-in from the wider workforce on the importance of the reporting process and ensuring accuracy and openness when submitting data. It was advised that a clear message had been given to staff that the performance reporting process was not about hiding bad data and presenting everything as perfect. Having a ‘red’ RAG rating allowed issues to be highlighted and would prompt a discussion on what was needed to improve performance.

At the conclusion of this item, the Chair thanked the Mayor and officers for their attendance at the meeting and their engagement with the questions of the Committee.

Actions

The Scrutiny & Overview Committee agreed the following actions arising from their discussion of this item: -

1.    A request was made for the questions to be used in the Residents Survey to be shared with the Committee, once available. 

Conclusions

Having reviewed the report and the information provided at the meeting, the Scrutiny & Overview Committee reached the following conclusions on the Mayor’s Business Plan – Performance Report: -

1. Having reviewed the proposed performance indicators to be used to track the delivery of the Mayor’s Business Plan, the Committee agreed that it was broadly supported of the 78 indicators outlined in the report.

2.    Although supportive of the 78 performance indicators included in the report, the Committee also agreed that there were some areas where additional indicators may be beneficial, such as indicators to help measure the vitality of the town centre, the performance of the housing service and waiting lists for services in Adult Social Care.

3.    The Committee agreed that, wherever possible, clarity had been provided in setting out how the performance indicators would be measured and how success would be defined.

4.    The Committee welcomed the use of a clearly defined RAG rating system to provide an overview on delivery, especially as it was supplemented with the provision of an appendix giving a more detailed breakdown on the delivery of each of the indicators. 

5.    The Committee also welcomed the use of benchmarking data, where available, as a means of comparing the Council’s performance against that of similar local authorities.

6.    The Committee was supportive of the proposed approach to use qualitative feedback gathered from resident surveys to crosscheck service performance against the quantitative data used in the Performance Report.

Recommendations

The Scrutiny & Overview Committee agreed to submit the following recommendations for the consideration of the Mayor: -

1.    The Committee recommends more performance indicators to measure the vitality of the town centre be included, such as footfall, the number of empty units and business rates.

2.    Given the substantial transformation within the service, the Committee would recommend that additional performance indicators related to Housing are added to the Performance Report to monitor improvement for key areas, particularly void turnaround times.

3.    Given the increasing demand upon services within the Adult Social Care directorate, the Committee would recommend the inclusion of performance indicators to track the waiting times for residents to access services with the highest demand.