Agenda item

To consider a report on corporate performance information for quarter four that was presented to Cabinet at its meeting on 30 July 2014 (attached).

The Committee considered two reports setting out the performance of the Council’s Corporate Performance Indicators for Quarter 4 2013/14 and for the year 2013/14 as a whole.

The reports identified where the Council was performing well and not so well. Where the Council was not performing so well a corrective action box had been included in the report highlighting what action the Council was taking to address poor performance where appropriate.

The Council’s Interim Corporate Policy & Community Manager gave Members an overview of the two reports.

During the debate members raised issues relating to several areas of the reports, included in these were:

CS1 - Percentage of Council Tax collected. Members wished to know what actions were being taken to collect the outstanding 2.86% that was not currently being collected.

CS7 - Percentage of Corporate Complaints completed within ten days. Members questioned as to why the performance was some way short of the target that had been set. In response officers advised that the figures included complaints that had been made against Homes and Housing who had recently re-integrated back within the Council which had led to some IT and logistics problems which if left out of the reporting would have seen the performance rise to a figure in line with the set target. Members asked that details of what actions were being taken to address the problem were being taken and asked that this information be reported back to the Committee at its next meeting. Members also felt it would be prudent for the Head of Service to be invited to the Committee’s next meeting to explain the actions being taken to address the problems. Members agreed that there were some anomalies in the reporting system that allowed responses to Corporate Complaints to reset the clock as opposed to showing the total length of time the complaint had been in existence for.

Sickness Absence - Members agreed that the absence figures needed to be broken down into service clusters to show which Service Areas were performing poorly. Following a question from Members, officers confirmed that staff working for oneSource sickness absences were included in the figures as they still remained employees of Havering.

Officers advised that managers were taken an active role in the management of sickness absence which included working proactively with the Council’s Occupational Health provider. Two Managing Attendance Clinics had taken place, in March and May of this year, which had addressed problems with long term absences and had led to a number of staff either retiring through ill health or returning to work.

Members were advised that the Council used The Bradford Factor which was a common human resource management tool as a means of measuring worker absenteeism. The theory was that short, frequent, and unplanned absences were more disruptive than longer absences. The Factor was developed as a way of highlighting the disproportionate level of disruption on an organisation's performance that could be caused by short-term absence compared to single instances of prolonged absence. The Factor was originally designed for use as part of the overall investigation and management of absenteeism.

In reply to a question from a Member, staff confirmed that Customer Services, StreetCare and Grounds Maintenance were Service Areas that suffered mainly from elevated levels of sickness absence.

Officers confirmed that “convenience sickness”, where employees took days off either side of weekends, was carefully monitored and dealt with and that return to work interviews were carried out differently for short term regular absences compared to one off long term absences.

In reply to a question, officers confirmed that the target level set of ten days per employee was a corporate policy decision.

Members agreed that it would be useful to have sight of a copy of the Council’s sickness policy at the next meeting and in the meantime be forwarded a link to the policy on the intranet. https://intranet.havering.gov.uk/index.aspx?articleid=11622#att

Officers confirmed that there had been a decrease in the figures for the first quarter of 2014/15 which led Members to question why the earlier figures were being considered so late in the year. Officers explained that the first quarter figures for 2014/15 had not yet been before Cabinet. The consensus between Members was that there perhaps needed to be a change in reporting protocol to allow the reports to be considered by the OSCs at an earlier opportunity.

Members also suggested that it may be prudent in the future to scrutinise how the targets were set and not just accept that the targets were being met.

It was agreed that two Topic Groups be established to look at the following subjects:

Collection of Council Tax and NNDR (Debt Recovery)

Sickness Absence Monitoring

Councillors Crowder (Philippa), Crowder (John), Kelly and Williamson agreed to form the Debt Recovery Topic Group membership.

Councillors Barrett and Mugglestone agreed to form the Sickness absence Monitoring Topic Group and asked that an invitation be sent to Councillor Misir to ask if he would be interested in being the third member of the group.

Members reviewed and noted the contents of both reports.