Agenda item

The Overview and Scrutiny Board to receive a demonstration of the new Performance Dashboard and consider how this can be utilised by the Board as an ongoing tool to drive impactful scrutiny. This item includes the Cabinet report which provides the Quarter 1 monitoring report as an example.

The Leader introduced the item which included a report, a copy of which had been circulated to each Member and a copy of which appears as Appendix 'B' to these Minutes in the Minute Book. The Director of Marketing Communications and Policy provided further information to the Committee on the utilisation of the performance dashboard within a presentation attached as an Appendix to these minutes.  The Board was informed that BCP Council adopted the corporate strategy, ‘A Shared Vision for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole 2024-28’ in May 2024. A set of measures of progress for achieving the vision, priorities and ambitions were incorporated. The first quarterly performance monitoring report for the Vision, presenting an update on the progress measures was outlined to the Board. The Board was advised that the vision could also be monitored through a new performance dashboard which was available on the Council’s website providing up-to-date real time information on the progress measures. The Board received a presentation and demonstration of the dashboard through the website. In the following discussion number of points were raised including:

·     Violent crime and sexual assaults were combined on the monitoring tracker and the Board asked if these could be separated out.

·     It was noted that the measure for Anti-Social Behaviour monitoring was by reports to the police. A Councillor advised that it appeared to be nearly impossible to report at the moment and asked if there was another measure which could be used.

·     In response to a query the Board was advised that the development of the performance dashboard had considered what other authorities already had. Research with the LGA had taken place and the service had looked into those Councils’ which were highlighted as having best practice.

·     The Board asked if BCP could sell to other authorities. It was reported that this had been considered and would be investigated further.

·     The organisation was using Power BI, this was positive, and it was really good to be transparent with the public moving forward. However, it was important to ensure that with the information being publicly accessible that it was presented in an appropriate way. For example, the target for more Fixed Penalty Notice and the potential public perception of these statistics.

·     Consideration should be given to replacing the target regarding waste diverted from landfill with a more appropriate target on recycling.

·     It was also suggested that a target around wealth inequality should be considered.

·     The Board questioned whether it had been tested for accessibility by the public or if it was going through an appropriate test group. It was noted that it was already live, but it was not thought to have gone through the suggested testing as yet.

·     The Board asked about the frequency of updates to the data. It was explained that data came from the scorecard which was updated daily. At present this was manually entered but the ambition was to have it be able to link into systems data.

·     The Board asked about the ease of changing the measurements which were being used. It was noted that a lot of the underlying data would probably stay the same but would be evaluated through a different lens. Amendments could be made relatively easily but it would also depend on how the data was being store by services.

·     It was suggested that the targets on footfall should be measured on a yearly basis for the quarter rather than consecutive quarters as this would be a more sensible measure as not season dependent. The Leader confirmed that footfall was up in June year on year.

·     In response to a query around the target for rough sleeping being to maintain the current position rather than to bring the numbers down, the Leader advised that she would look into this further to find out what action was being taken and bring back a fuller response on this issue.

·     In response to a query on the Planning Improvement Board it was confirmed that this would not be closed down until the backlog was cleared. Planning updates would be brought through Scrutiny.

·     An issue was raised regarding ensuring all targets were in Plain English – The particular issue at Item 14, had already been noticed and the service was being worked with to improve this, but it needed to be balanced with the need to ensure that services with their expertise understand the target as well.

·     Some of the measures appeared to be predictable and inward looking. The measures should be about what people were not happy with, e.g. street cleaning was a measure, but pothole repair was not, neither was cleaning up of Graffiti and clear up of litter and overall cleanliness.

·     In response to a query, the Board was informed that some of the measures were from LG Inform, which was a benchmarking tool which could be used to see how BCP Council’s performance meets with others’ performance.

·     Action: 1. The Chairman welcomed any feedback from the Board on the dashboard to be passed to the Performance Team and Democratic Services. 2. The Performance Team would feedback to the relevant service areas the issues raised by the Board

·     The Chairman thanked officers for the demonstration and asked the Board to consider a whether there should be a rapporteur to monitor the performance scorecard.

The Board RESOLVED that:

1.     The Board recognises the value of the newly introduced Dashboard, in terms of providing a mechanism for monitoring the progress of the council against its corporate plan ambitions, and in providing a horizon scanning tool to inform overview and scrutiny work planning.

2.     The Board notes that the live Dashboard will be available for all councillors to review on the council’s public website, and that Board members will actively undertake their own independent monitoring. 

3.     The Board will circulate quarterly performance monitoring reports as ‘for information’ items on its agendas, for matters to be raised by exception. 

4.     The Board will take account of the Dashboard when undertaking annual work planning activity.

5.     Officers be requested to work with all O&S committees to implement similar arrangements as those agreed by the Board, in order to utilise the Dashboard across the function to drive evidence led scrutiny.

The meeting adjourned at 8:16pm and resumed at 8:24pm.