The Chief Executive will submit a report (Document “BE”) which provides a summary of the Council’s overall achievements in the first six-months of the municipal year 2022-2023.  Alongside this is an overview of performance against the Council’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the first six-months of 2022-23. This overview focuses on measures where there has been new, comparable data since the full-year report provided at the July 2022 Executive Committee.

Recommended –

(1)       That the performance against the key performance indicators in           the 2021/25 Council Plan be noted.

(2)       That members comment on the Council’s performance over the           last six-months.

Overview & Scrutiny Area: Corporate

(Ruth Davison – 01274 432111)

The Chief Executive submitted a report (Document “BE”) which provided a summary of the Council’s overall achievements in the first six-months of the municipal year 2022-2023.  Alongside this was an overview of performance against the Council’s Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for the first six-months of 2022-23. This overview focussed on measures where there has been new, comparable data since the full-year report provided at the Executive meeting in July 2022.

The Head of Policy, Performance, Partnerships and Research gave a brief overview of the significant achievements to date and the exemplary work done around the cost of living crisis; housing standards and the Keighley Warm Spaces project.  The City of Culture announcement and resulting work continued to improve our cultural offer, and standing nationally and internationally, as well as bring in investment into the district.  The Kickstart Programme and the localities work in collaboration with our partners continued to make a difference to the lives of residents. The introduction of the voter ID scheme would have a disproportionate impact on young people which needed to be addressed.  Performance on the key performance indicators were set out in Document “BE”.

The Leader welcomed the report and stated that it gave us some foresight and a trajectory of where we are; she highlighted the overall good performance in most areas of the Council’s activities, despite the continuing impacts of the pandemic.

The Health and Wellbeing Portfolio Holder commended the staff in Adult Social Care for making a real difference to the lives of older people.  The work of managing the discharge of older people from hospital was alluded to and that by working closely with our health colleagues, good arrangements were in place in terms of the transition between hospital and home, and ensuring that the right level of support was in place upon discharge, and thus enabling more patients to remain in their own homes.

She also expressed her thanks to residents and the waste collection and recycling team for the increase in recycling rates and the positive impact this would have on the environment.

The Regeneration, Planning and Transport Portfolio Holder commended the work around homelessness and tackling rough sleepers, as well as the work done by the private sector housing team.

The number of people killed or seriously injured continued to pose a challenge and the work around Vision Zero with WYCA should see us making a difference to these casualty figures, however the Road Safety Team were doing some sterling work with schools in the district around road safety awareness and tackling the issue of traffic and parking around schools.

A opposition group Councillor was present at the meeting and sought clarity on a number of issues; whether landlords paid a contribution to the energy efficient homes scheme; the disparities in the number of warm spaces in the district; whether they were any plans to introduce electric gritter vehicles to the fleet and the holiday food programme roll out.

In response it was stated that in relation to the warm spaces and the disparity in the numbers, many in Bradford East took up the offer of food parcels as an alternative to the provision of warm spaces; in terms of the Holiday Food Programme the DFE were very prescriptive, going forward, and only those children on free school meals would be eligible for help outside term time, however there were many families, who did not meet the criteria but were still in desperate need, who had been helped in the past, but will no longer qualify.  Electric refuse vehicles had been rolled out and we will be looking how this can be extended to the remaining fleet and in relation to the energy efficient homes scheme an answer will be provided outside of this meeting.

A further opposition group Councillor ascertained that in relation to employment rates in the district what economic factors contributed to this rate; which areas of the economy showed growth/decline; of the jobs created how many were full or part time; any caveats to the annual population survey data and is the data set used in the analysis.  In response to the questions, the Head of Performance stated that there was granular data that sat behind the KPI’s and this information can be circulated outside of this meeting.  She stressed that it was important that the right data sets were used, and to this end we were looking at adding some additional KPIs to give a more rounded picture to the performance data.

The Leader stressed the need to maintain the core KPIs and not make too many changes, otherwise measuring performance over time could be lost.

Resolved –

(1)      That the performance against the key performance indicators in           the 2021/25 Council Plan be noted.

(2)      Members commented on the Council’s performance over the last         six-months.

ACTION: Chief Executive

Overview & Scrutiny Area: Corporate