Minutes for Corporate Policy and Performance Committee meeting, Nov 5 2009, 2.00PM official page

The Convener welcomed Councillor Donnelly to the meeting, noting that he had replaced Councillor Kiddie as a member of the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee. 

The Committee resolved:-

to concur with the remarks of the Convener. 

The Committee had before it the minute of its previous meeting of 10^th September, 2009.  

The Committee resolved:-

to approve the minute as a correct record.

The Committee had before it a statement of committee business prepared by the Head of Democratic Services.   The Convener advised that the City Solicitor, in her role as Monitoring Officer, would provide updates on items 3 (Monitoring Officer Report – PIDA), 7 (Mackie Hall), 9 (Domestic Central Heating Replacements) and 11 (Greenbank Crescent, East Tullos) at the end of the meeting.   It was noted that if Members wished to ask any detailed questions on the investigations, the item may be heard with the press and public excluded from the meeting, in terms of Section 50(B)(4) of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973.  

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         in relation to item 2 (Corporate Governance), to note that further reports on Standing Orders, Financial Regulations and Management Structures would be put before Council at its meeting on 18^th November, 2009, and that a further report would be submitted to Council in December, followed by a Corporate Governance report to the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee in January, 2010;

(ii)        in relation to item 6 (Shared Revenues and Benefit Services), to note that a report would be submitted to the December meeting of the Committee to advise Members of the level of involvement the Council should have in the initiative; 

(iii)       in relation to item 10 (Catering Services Review), to note that the lead consultants were making every effort to meet the December deadline for the report, and to request that officers investigate and advise all Members who had taken the decision to move catering staff back into Summerhill Centre and why, as this contradicted the previous decision made by Council to remove catering from the facility; 

(iv)       in relation to item 14(i) (Review of Sub-Committees and Working Groups), (a) to note that officers had undertaken an initial review of the Disability Advisory Group (DAG) and that a draft proposal had been prepared for discussion with the DAG members at their meeting on 26^th November, 2009;  (b) that officers would meet with members of wider Disability Groups to discuss the proposal over November, 2009;  (c) that a report, detailing the proposed changes to the Group and the process for any further involvement required would go before the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee on 8^th December, 2009, with officers providing a verbal update at that meeting on the outcome of discussions at the DAG meeting;  and (d) to note that the DAG minutes would come before the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee for information;

(v)        in relation to item 14(ii) (Review of Sub-Committees and Working Groups), to note that the Director of Social Care and Wellbeing was in the process of liaising with members of the Voluntary Sector to discuss their views on the remit of the Voluntary Sector Liaison Group and that a full report on the matter would be submitted to the meeting of the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee on 8^th December, 2009;

(vi)       in relation to item 16(i) (Circulation of the Anti-Poverty Strategy to the Disability Advisory Group), to note that the Strategy would be put before the Disability Advisory Group at its meeting on 26^th November, 2009;

(vii)      in relation to item 16(ii) (amended wording in connection with the provision of free school meals), to note that the wording had been changed and to request that officers circulate the amended wording to Members;  and

(viii)     in relation to item 17(i), to note that the report on initiatives to improve the discharging of Corporate Parenting responsibilities would be submitted to Council on 24^th March, 2010.  

The Committee had before it a motions list prepared by the Head of Democratic Services.

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         in relation to Motion 1 (Councillor Boulton – Scrapping of Car Park Charges at NHS hospitals), to note that officers had written to NHS Grampian in respect of the enforcement of parking provision in the Foresterhill site, but to request that the letter be re-sent to NHS Grampian and copied to Members, as no response had been received thus far;  and

(ii)        to remove Motion 4 (Councillor Kiddie – Anti-Poverty Strategy) from the motions list as the Strategy had now been produced and the outstanding actions were to be tracked through the business statements of the Service Committees.

The Committee had before it a report by the Director of Corporate Governance which presented the outturn performance and analysis for the Statutory Performance Indicators (SPIs) for the period 2008/2009.  

The report advised that the Council’s External Auditor, Henderson Loggie, had audited the Council’s SPIs for 2008/09 to assess whether each indicator was reliable or unreliable, with the outcome of the audit being reported to Audit Scotland.   The SPIs for each Scottish Council would be published by Audit Scotland in December, 2009, with a ranking produced for each indicator to calculate the Scottish average.   It was noted that a follow-up report would be published in early 2010, which detailed how Aberdeen City Council’s performance compared to the national average. 

The Audit Scotland report showed that the Council’s performance had improved in 36 SPIs but had declined in 20 from the 2007/08 position.   Appended to the report were lists detailing where performance had improved and declined.   The report advised that where SPIs had multiple reported elements, this could occasionally distort the apparent overall net improvement and therefore, detail on each SPI was also appended to the report to provide a more balanced picture of overall performance.  

It was noted that two of the Council’s SPIs were found by the External Auditor to be unreliable, namely Adult Respite and Sickness Absence.   The report advised that the process to accurately record the number of hours of adult respite care provided related to the use of the Carefirst care application, and the SPI for Adult Respite would be withdrawn as a compulsory SPI from 2009/10.   In relation to the Sickness Absence SPI, it was noted that the unreliability of the indicator was probably caused by the accuracy of information held in the PSe Human Resources application.   The report advised that this would be addressed and the SPI would therefore be reliable for the 2009/10 year.  

The report recommended:-

(a)       that the Committee note the outturn performance and analysis on the 2008/09 Statutory Performance Indicators; 

(b)       that the Committee note that a further report would be prepared following the December publication of SPI rankings against other Councils;  and

(c)        that the Committee note that, as part of the Council’s performance management system, each Service would report to the relevant committees of the Council showing performance against Statutory Performance Indicators, including recommendations for actions for further improvement.  

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         in relation to Adult Respite, to note that this indicator had previously been found to be unreliable, but due to the implementation of a new voucher system, levels of respite could now be easily audited and measured, and although Adult Respite would be withdrawn as a compulsory SPI in 2009/10, the Council would continue to monitor performance internally; 

(ii)        in relation to CC3a (the number of visits to/usages of Council funded or part-funded museums), to request that officers clarify to all Members what was meant by a “virtual visit” to a museum;

(iii)       in relation to CM1a (average number of working days per employee lost through sickness absence for local government employees and craft workers), to note that (a) the figure for Aberdeen City Council was higher than average, (b) the Corporate Management Team were looking at ways to improve performance in this area, (c) that policies were already in place to tackle the issue, including a “back to work” interview with staff who had been on sick leave;  and (d) that service specific sickness absence information would be reported to each Service Committee;

(iv)       in relation to WM4 (cleanliness index achieved following inspection), to commend the good work carried out by the street orderly in the Bridge of Don area and to recommend that if possible, a nomination be submitted via the local Community Council for the worker in question to attend a Royal Garden Party at Holyrood Palace;  and

(v)        to otherwise approve the recommendations contained in the report.

The Committee had before it a report by the Director of Corporate Governance which presented the Council’s annual performance report for the 2008/09 year.  

The report advised that in previous years, the annual report had been published on the Council’s website, distributed to public offices as an A4 report and issued to 111,000 households as an insert in the annual Council Tax statement.  Appended to the report was the seventh annual public performance report for Aberdeen City Council.

There followed some discussion by the Committee of the statistics included in the report.  

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         in relation to “An Active City”, to request that officers remove the word “former” in the reference to the “former Chris Anderson Stadium”;

(ii)        in relation to “An Active City”, to request that officers clarify the figures detailed for admissions to sports facilities and swimming pools in the performance report to all Members, as they differed from the figures detailed in the previous item, the Statutory Performance Indicators report;

(iii)       to request that officers include information on the Council’s Anti-Poverty Strategy in next year’s annual performance report; 

(iv)       to thank officers for the work which had gone into producing the report; 

(v)        to note that the report would be published on the Council’s website and would be sent out with the Council Tax statement in early 2010;  and

(vi)       to otherwise approve the report for publication.  

With reference to Article 3 of the minute of the meeting of the Continuous Improvement Committee of 21^st April, 2009, the Committee had before it a report by the Director of Corporate Governance which detailed the various customer satisfaction exercises which had been undertaken by services under the Corporate Governance directorate in the last 12 months.  The information provided included any improvement which had been put in place as a result of the feedback received, and detailed any activity planned by Services for the next twelve months. 

The report advised that the Council would in future be assessed on its customer focus, with particular emphasis on the Council’s culture of customer focus and responsiveness;  its ability to demonstrate a commitment to gathering feedback from customers;  and the processes in place to ensure that feedback was used to inform service planning and therefore improve customer service.  It was noted that the Council had to become proactive in gathering feedback on a wide range of issues in order to meet the requirement to demonstrate continuous improvement.  Detailed within the report were updates from each Service on any customer satisfaction exercises undertaken. 

The Committee resolved:-

to note the content of the report.

The Committee had before it a report by the Director of Corporate Governance which sought approval for the Single Equality Scheme for 2009-2012. 

The report advised that Aberdeen City Council had a statutory duty, under the Equalities and Human Rights legislation, to produce disability, gender and race equality schemes.  The Council also had to revise and publish its Disability Equality Scheme by 4^th December, 2009.  It was noted that the Council had previously published Gender Equality and Race Equality Schemes in June, 2007 and November, 2008 respectively.  Thereafter, the Council had decided to develop a Single Equality Scheme which would cover the existing statutory schemes, as well as including detail and action plans encompassing age;  faith, religion and belief;  and sexual orientation. 

The report then detailed how the Council would meet the general and specific duties for the individual schemes under the respective acts, and advised that the publication of the Single Equality Scheme would mean that the Council would be accountable for its proposals to meet these duties.  The Scheme detailed how the Council planned to ensure that these duties were met, and noted that progress reports on these actions would be submitted annually to the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee. 

The report recommended:-

(a)       that the Committee note the progress made during the life of the Disability Equality Scheme; 

(b)       that the Committee approve the Single Equality Scheme 2009-2012 and its publication by 4^th December, 2009;  and

(c)        that Directors and Heads of Service be instructed to implement the actions within the Action Plan.

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         to note that officers would continue to refresh and sharpen the figures contained in the report, particularly in relation to migrant workers in the city, to ensure that the situation in Aberdeen was reflected as accurately as possible;

(ii)        to commend the officers on their hard work to produce the scheme;  and

(iii)       to otherwise approve the recommendations contained in the report.

At this juncture, the City Solicitor, in her role as the Council’s Monitoring Officer, advised that she could update the matters under investigation from the Committee Business Statement in public session, however if members wished to ask detailed questions on any of the investigations, then the Committee would be required to exclude the press and public from the meeting.  Members advised that they wished to ask further questions of the Monitoring Officer and the Committee therefore took the following item in confidence.

            EXEMPT INFORMATION

            The Committee resolved in terms of Section 50(B)(4) of the Local Government (Scotland) Act 1973 to exclude the press and public from the meeting during consideration of the following item of business so as to avoid disclosure of exempt information of the class described in the following paragraphs of part 1 of Schedule 7(A) to the Act:-  items 3, 7 and 11 on the Committee Business Statement (paragraph 1);  and item 9 on the Committee Business Statement (paragraph 12).

The City Solicitor, in her role as the Council’s Monitoring Officer, then updated the Committee on the various outstanding matters under investigation as detailed on the Committee Business Statement.

The Committee resolved:-

(i)         to note the update provided by the City Solicitor in relation to the outstanding items on the Business Statement; 

(ii)        in relation to item 3 (Monitoring Officer Report – PIDA), to note that the City Solicitor was currently reviewing the whistleblowing policy and, as part of the review, would be providing examples of cases from other authorities to staff to assist them in clarifying when a complaint could be classified as falling under the whistleblowing policy;  that officers would also circulate a questionnaire to staff on the whistleblowing policy;  and that a report on the policy would be put before the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee at its meeting on 21^st January, 2010;

(iii)       in relation to item 7 (Mackie Hall), to note that a report would be put before the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee at either the 8^th December, 2009, or 21^st January, 2010 meeting; 

(iv)       in relation to item 9 (Domestic Central Heating Replacements), to note that a report on this matter would go before the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee at its meeting on 8^th December, 2009;  and

(v)        in relation to item 11 (Greenbank Crescent, East Tullos), to note that the City Solicitor was awaiting a written statement from the investigating officer, and that an update would be provided to the meeting of the Corporate Policy and Performance Committee on 8^th December, 2009.

- JENNIFER STEWART, Convener.