Decision:
Cabinet RESOLVED to;
2.1 Note the Mayor’s Business Plan performance report (attached as Appendix A and B) with latest data available on 30 June 2024 (unless otherwise stated) regarding overall Council and partnership performance, and actions being taken to improve outputs.
2.2 To consider and approve the amended Housing Measures as detailed in attached Appendix C. Page 56
2.3 Note the enhanced escalation process, and latest position, for areas where performance requires improvement, as detailed in section 6 of this report.
Minutes:
The Executive Mayor introduced the Executive Mayor's Business Plan Performance Report for 2022-2026 which provided updates on key areas of work across the council.
Whilst there had been progress in areas such as regeneration, housing and the library service review, like many councils Croydon faced significant financial pressures. STAR Chambers had been held with all departments to identify savings and income opportunities. Recovery plans for homelessness, children’s placements and SEND transport were in progress to address the projected overspend.
Monthly meetings between the Executive Mayor and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield (URW) were ongoing. It was announced that permission had been granted for five retail and two food outlets to open on the North End frontage of the Allders building.
Deputy Executive Mayor and Cabinet Member for Homes, Councillor Lynne Hale advised housing continued to face significant challenges. Thanks were extended to staff for their efforts to realise the required improvements.
The cost of temporary accommodation was a pressure on the council's general fund and an issue across London Boroughs. The statutory homelessness figures for 2023/24 indicated unprecedented levels of residents seeking homelessness support from their local authority. Households with children in temporary accommodation increased by around 15% and in London households in temporary accommodation were most likely to be in nightly paid, self-contained accommodation or private sector accommodation.
In Croydon, the increased homelessness activity experienced through 2023/24 was continuing with an average of 400 new households requiring homes to support per month since the start of the financial year. Prevention work and controls put in place resulted had resulted in an average of 100 cases per month places into temporary accommodation, 25% of households seeking help. In addition to demand the average cost per night had risen from £56 per night to £64.19 per night. Demand was primarily being met through the nightly paid portfolio, which now represented 50% of the temporary accommodation stock.
Good progress was being made to reduce split households and any decision to place families in separate units was always carefully considered.
Croydon was not currently block booking hotels but the situation remained volatile.
The improvement plan put in place to address the challenges of the scale of outstanding repairs and a lack of investment in council homes was now starting to show some positive results. The contact centre had reduced repeat contacts and call wait times. Work was ongoing to improve repairs contractor performance and significant work had been undertaken to clear the backlog of overdue complaints and member enquiries.
Homelessness prevention figures continued to improve, since implementation of the new ways of working. However, increases in demand and the cost of nightly accommodation continued to impact another KPI's in this area. Housing supply was a constant focus to alleviate pressures.
Following discussion with the Housing Improvement Board and supported by the Executive Mayor and the Improvement Insurance Panel, the Housing Directorate had reviewed some of its performance measures and targets for 2024/25 providing more realistic targets based on sound data. The changes were detailed within Appendix C of the report and would better reflect targets and allow for benchmarking.
Cabinet Member for Children and Young People, Councillor Gatland thanked staff from across the service areas. They highlighted improvements to KPI M57 which whilst below target at 8.4% was the highest in 2 years and important not only for babies and families but also to flag any safeguarding concerns. KPI M58 had suffered due to the priority on newborns, an action plan was in place to work with and monitor the provider. KPI M20 regarding NEET 16 and 17 year olds had been steady and focussed work had been undertaken to ensure this continued. KPI M36 regarding children on a protection plan for 1 year on more, was a challenging area which was improving through focus across the department, by Heads of Service and Team managers.
Cabinet Member for Adult Social Care and Health, Councillor Hopley provided an update on the KPI's, more of which were now green. The rigor applied by the directorate to improve across the services was noted. The approach to promote take up of direct payments was expected in January and the contract to provide support for people with learning disabilities noted. Transformation work with Newtons was expected to have a positive impact across performance indicators. The challenges under the requirements to maintain a stringent budget were noted.
Deputy Cabinet Member for Contract Management, Councillor Robert Ward noted the Home Secretary's announcement of a plan to target violence against women and girls using a national strategy using advanced data analysis and algorithms and hoped Croydon would make an enthusiastic contribution.
Cabinet Member for Planning and Regeneration, Councillor Jeet Bains advised work to reduce the number of terminated planning applications and improve the speed of decision making continued and currently exceeded government targets for both major and minor applications. Numbers of on hand applications had been stabilised to around 650 and the enforcement case load continued to reduce. Regarding Town Centre Regeneration, ILTA remedy payments were approved by Cabinet in September 2024 and the Allders meanwhile use had secured planning permission and works had started on site.
Cabinet Member for Streets and Environment Councillor Scott Roche highlighted KPI M43 which indicated the continued delivery of an efficient fly tipping service across the borough. In July 2024, 98% of requests had been cleared within the required time frame. KPI M44 regarding the percentage of waste rejected as contaminated was marked as red however the situation was improving with a focus on the rounds with higher contamination levels which had been identified as those from communal collections on housing estates, often with shared waste containers. Work was ongoing with housing estate managing agents and ReLondon to manage this.
On KPI M46 regarding streets below grade and rectified within 24 hours, 419 service requests were received this month, Veolia responded to 100% of the requests with 97.94% addressed within the required time frame.
On KPI M47 regarding the percentage of household waste collected on time, the council received 2,123 reports of missed collections, which was less than 1% of the total collections undertaken. This placed Croydon's waste collection service in the top quartile within London.
Thanks were extended to the dedicated and hard-working staff across the council and at Veolia, as work continued to make improvements and progress the aim of repairing the broken windows effect in Croydon.
Cabinet Member for Finance, Councillor Jason Cummings noted the in-year £3.3 million improvement at Period 4 from Period 3 and advised the council tax in-year collection rate was getting closer to target figure and the non-domestic collection rate continued to exceed the target figure.
Leader of the Opposition, Councillor Stuart King was encouraged by the detailed housing update provided by Councillor Hale including the improvements in reducing the number of split households. It was noted that the amended homelessness and rough sleeping strategy had agreed for a KPI to monitor this area.
Leader of the Opposition, Councillor Stuart King highlighted there were 23 of 26 KPI's listed as partnership indicators without a specific target this potentially reduced accountability and suggested targets should be agreed with providers. Partnership data was in some cases out of date 1-2 years old.
The Executive Mayor advised the intention was to include a KPI on split households to monitor the rolling data. The importance of partnership working was noted and the approach would be to work with partners to consider setting targets.
Interim Deputy Chief Executive, Marie Snelling advised a number of indicators were based upon published data sets which in some cases were out of date however the council was required to use these in many cases.
Councillor Hale thanked Councillor King for their comments and noted the team’s hard work to keep larger families together.
Cabinet RESOLVED to;
2.1 Note the Mayor’s Business Plan performance report (attached as Appendix A and B) with latest data available on 30 June 2024 (unless otherwise stated) regarding overall Council and partnership performance, and actions being taken to improve outputs.
2.2 To consider and approve the amended Housing Measures as detailed in attached Appendix C. Page 56
2.3 Note the enhanced escalation process, and latest position, for areas where performance requires improvement, as detailed in section 6 of this report.
Supporting documents: