Issue - meetings

Purpose of report:

Performance Monitoring. The report provides a thematic overview of the performance of the ETI Directorate giving the Select Committee up-to-date information.

Witnesses:

Natalie Bramhall, Cabinet Member for Environment & Climate Change

Matt Furniss, Cabinet Member for Transport

Katie Stewart, Executive Director – Environment, Transport & Infrastructure

Carolyn McKenzie, Director - Environment

Jo Diggens, Business Improvement & Quality Assurance Team Leader

Michelle Rowland, Business Intelligence Team Leader

Key points raised during the discussion:

1. The Executive Director introduced the report and explained that performance monitoring was an area of continuing development across the Council.Targets were due to be challenged and scrutinisedby CLT and Cabinet Members to ensure that they were both realistic and ambitious. The Directorate had endeavoured to set stretch targets that were attainable in order to show improvement or decline in performance.

Meeting paused at 10:02 owing to webcasting problems

Meeting recommenced at 10:04

2. A Member questioned the relative value of the performance data in assessing the Directorate’s performance given the circumstances faced in 2020/21 as compared with previous years. The Executive Director stated that it was still important to continue performance monitoring during the pandemic as the Directorate was expected to run its essential services. Covid-19 had impacted some indicators (waste services, for example) however a number of missed targets (such as flood risk) were reflective of the position and progress of the Directorate and the timing of capital investment. Some of the indicators were to be reviewed because of the continuing impacts of Covid-19.

3. A Member asked whether there could be a consistent mix of indicators (financial, quantitative and qualitative) for each theme. The Executive Director acknowledged that the Directorate needed to achieve a greater balance of indicators in future performance reports.

4. The Chairman noted that a number of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) expected in January 2021 were not yet available and asked when they would be delivered. The Business Improvement and Quality Assurance Team Leader responded that the pending indicators needed to undergo validation before they were shared widely. Some indicators were new and subject to ongoing work to ensure that the data collected was robust and accurate. The Directorate were hoping to deliver all outstanding performance results within the month.

5. A Member noted that there were few climate change targets included in the report. The Executive Director informed the Select Committee that these indicators were not yet established because it was important to ensure that they were meaningful and measurable. The Select Committee would return to this at its March 2021 meeting when scrutinising the Climate Change delivery plan.

6. A Member asked whether the Council would be undertaking a coordination role with districts and borough councils to tackle climate change. The Executive Director confirmed that the Council’s Climate Change Strategy and Delivery Plan assumed a coordination role for the Council. The Delivery Plan looked at a range of partnership-wide actions.

7. A Member requested that future performance reports differentiate clearly between organisation climate change targets for Surrey County Council (for example, getting to net zero by 2030) and Surrey-wide climate change targets. Further to this the Director confirmed that there would be performance monitoring of the wider partnership and the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5