Agenda item

RESOLVED: To

Note the Mayors Business Plan performance report (Appendix A and B) with latest data available on 30 November 2023 (unless otherwise stated) regarding overall council and partnership performance, and actions being taken to improve outputs.

The Executive Mayor introduced the Mayor’s Business Plan 2022-2026 Performance Report which provided further update of achieving outcomes and Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).

The Deputy Mayor and Cabinet Member for Homes, Councillor Lynne Hale, shared with Cabinet that the KPIs had shown a clear indication of where the Housing department were and the scale of challenge, they were facing to improve the service. The aim was to build strong sustainable foundations across the service including developing KPIs based on accurate and reliable data, monitoring, and the use of data. The Housing Strategy, which aligned with the recent resident’s charter, was to form as part of the decision process for long-term foundations in the service. The contact centre had faced a significant number of high calls and staff resource issues, and now a new inhouse contact centre had been overwhelmed by the demand. Following the problems seen, a new staffing plan had been developed and a contact centre refreshed with permanent staff appointed receiving bespoke training programme. With shared accommodation being a national problem, Croydon council aimed to refocus services to prevent homelessness at a much earlier stage. There was progression on the key priority of voids, where 650 voids were made to offer homes to families who had spend years on temporary accommodation. Overall, a new NEC system was being stabilised, data was under validation and cleansing, permanent staffing were under recruitment, with refocus on customer service through the customer care training programme, closer performance monitoring and management, would see improvement in service delivery.

The Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Councillor Maria Gatland, shared with Cabinet of the known demand for statutory social work service which had risen by 16% in 2022 and 2023 and highlighted some red indicators, though there was positive factors such as the proportion of 16 and 17 year olds who were not in education, employment or training (NEET) had received positive work with increased availability with face-to-face learning for 16 to 18 year olds, other means to assist learns and a robust , further with an additional case worker externally funded to work with the pupil referral unit in supporting the school year 11 with post 16 planning and transition. Further, the EHPC had a huge amount of work undertaken with quality and design which was highly rated by the DfE. Since June 2022 there was introduction of weekly reporting by team managers to their heads of service for scrutinising weekly performance; further there was equality SEND database to inform practice. Child protection plans was monitored very closely. The transformation with the front door service – the Multi-Agency Safeguarding Hub (MASH) with enhanced management oversight would help monitor the indicators which were all under scrutiny.

The Cabinet Member for Health and Adult Social Care, Councillor Yvette Hopley, shared with Cabinet in detail that the indicators for the percentage of safeguarding intervention leading to reduction/removal of risk, the rate of 65+ clients in long term care, and the rate of 65+ clients supported to live independently were currently in the green zone in performance. The amber indicators concerning the percentage of people who approached the council for help with adult care and resolved at the point of initial contact, the percentage of people still at home after 91 days after returning home from using reablement service, and the rate of 18-64 year-old clients supported to live independently, have seen more strategic work in each segment. The red risks indicators noted the management in the demand programme with significant shifts in the transformation work that had started; further, more work was to be done on rehabilitation, and the service was looking to improve the facilitation of people into their own homes. There were other projects to be delivered, and new technology and smarter working would help move figures into the right direction.

The Cabinet Member for Communities and Culture, Councillor Andy Stranack, shared with Cabinet that the latest London Borough of Culture statistics had been collated as of November 2023, highlighting that over 200 cultural events had taken place across the borough reaching over one million people. There were 14,000 opportunities for young people to engage with the culture sector, there were over 6000 volunteers helping and taken part in the events, and 104 local schools had taken part in some way. “A Very Croydon Christmas” was a recent event which took place in the Croydon Clocktower, Queens Garden and the Fairfield Halls which received feedback as good or very good. The real value of events came from personal impacts of the individuals. The key aim of the year was to shine a positive light on Croydon and its amazing cultural talent.

The Cabinet Member for Community Safety, Councillor Ola Kolade, shared with Cabinet that the council was continuing to make Croydon a safer place to be through the Safer Croydon Partnership. Further work was undertaken though the Community and Safety Engagement Board working with a number of community groups to address crime and antisocial behaviour to provide the assurance of safety in workplaces and residence in the borough of Croydon. Reviewing the key performance indicators in detail, the domestic violence offences rate saw it was ringfenced and maintained the family justice budget through working closely with public health to protect and safeguard local residents within the borough. This remained the highest issue, where the family justice service would be leading on. The knife crime with injury indicator had shown that the service was launching a new youth outreach which would run for a full year to give additional support for young people. The service was acting much quicker in response to street robberies and antisocial behaviour in the district and town centre and investing in additional resources.

The Cabinet Member for Planning and Regeneration, Councillor Jeet Bains, shared with Cabinet that the service continued to see performance improving each quarter which was a refection of the work as part of the planning transformation programme and the clearance of the backlog. The key indicators addressing the major planning applications determined in time over a rolling 2 year period, remained well above the government target threshold of over 90% within target, and the non-major planning applications determined in time over a rolling 2 year period, was also above target with more than 80% in target.

The Cabinet Member for Streets and Environment, Councillor Scott Roche, shared with Cabinet that further improvements continued to be made within the service, and though more work was to be done, the progress of improvement was on the right track. The key performance indicators relating to the percentage of reported flytips removed within one working day showed a strong response with over 97% in target and matched feedback from residents, however, the overall concern for flytipping still remained high. A new force of policy was to be produced and enforced in the future. The percentage of waste rejected as contamination by Croydon’s processing facility had seen an increase in volume in the recycling waste rejected and redirected for further processing. The service would be seeking assistance from landlords and managing agents to address contamination and increase the quality of recycling. The household waste recycling rate saw an increase of rejection rate which had a corresponding impact on the recycling rate along with the seasonal variation in the amount of garden waste collected and recycled. In relation to street cleansing and the percentage of street below grade rectified within 24hrs, this was at 93%. Lastly with the percentage of household waste collected on time, this had remained at a high level at 99% within target.

The Cabinet Member for Finance, Councillor Jason Cummings, shared with Cabinet that the council balanced its books and the net budget recorded was zero, and was positive with the direction of the finance sector.

The Leader of the Opposition, Councillor Stuart King, had a question on the KPIs and asked whether there were concerns that 30 of the 84 KPIs portrayed no target at all, and where no target had been set, this proposed a risk and therefore not monitored. Further, with the 54 KPIs with a target set, 50% of those KPIs were red and 38 KPIs had performance not improving.

The Executive Mayor responded that the KPIs were a new process the council took to monitor each service area in greater detail, and to benchmark. The performance seen reflected on where the council currently stood following the trajectory of improvement from being under special measures. Trust with residents and working with services would provide a better journey for improvement.

The Director of Quality Performance, David Courcoux clarified that the vast majority of the indicators that did not have targets were categorised within the appendices as partnership KPIs (i.e. where the council did not have direct control over). The indicators that related to the council and measured organisational performance would have targets. 

The Executive Mayor in Cabinet RESOLVED: To

Note the Mayors Business Plan performance report (Appendix A and B) with latest data available on 30 November 2023 (unless otherwise stated) regarding overall council and partnership performance, and actions being taken to improve outputs.

Note the Mayors Business Plan performance report (Appendix A and B) with latest data available on 30 November 2023 (unless otherwise stated) regarding overall council and partnership performance, and actions being taken to improve outputs.