Agenda and draft minutes

There were no declarations of interest.

The Minutes of the meeting held on Tuesday 25 September 2018 were accepted as a true record. An update was included respect of the actions required as follows:

·         Further information be provided to members of Performance Management Board on the amount of surplus made by Rushcliffe Borough Council for off street parking and by Nottinghamshire County Council for on street parking – information was sent to the Board on 26 September 2018.

·         Three incidences of planning enforcement in East Leake were to be investigated and the Board provided with further information regarding the legal implications of making planning enforcements public. In addition, planning enforcement was to be included in the 2019 new councillor induction programme. Officers reported that it is not possible to make public information regarding current planning enforcement cases and that planning enforcement has been included in the new councillor induction programme.

·         In terms of performance monitoring, the Board would like a breakdown of applicants waiting to be rehoused by Choice Based Lettings, and for consideration to be given to the setting of targets where there are currently none. Officers reported that the CBL data could not be broken down into meaningful information and more attention would be paid to target setting during the service planning process for 2019/20 to ensure as few gaps as possible exist next year.

Councillor Walker asked a follow up question about the publication of planning enforcement information. As the comment from officers stated that making this information public would compromise current enforcement cases was there any reason not to publish enforcement information after cases had been concluded. The Executive Manager –Transformation agreed to speak to colleagues in the Planning team and feedback to the Board. 

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Report of the Executive Manager – Neighbourhoods.

The Service Manager – Neighbourhoods provided a report on the Parkwood Leisure Contract for the reporting period August 2017 to July 2018 and noted the following highlights:

·         Growth in both gym and swim memberships

·         Increase of 147,926 visits on previous year

·         Launch of Parkwood Radio and new fitness / booking app

·         Investment in virtual classes to increase availability

·         Customer satisfaction rating of 93%

The Service Manager – Neighbourhoods introduced Alex Godfrey and Luke Colaluca from Parkwood Community Leisure who delivered a presentation to the Board summarising the performance of the contact across four leisure centres – Rushcliffe Arena, Bingham, Cotgrave and Keyworth.

In summary, the Board was informed about the growth in leisure centre users and the range of clubs, classes and activities they could participate in over the four sites; the low attrition rate of the Rushcliffe contract (4.22%) in comparison to the company average of 6%; and the increase in community activities such as blood donation sessions, markets and conferences. To meet increasing demand Rushcliffe Arena was now opening at 6am each morning. In addition, leisure centre staff had noticed a migration from Keyworth and Cotgrave in particular over the course of the year to the Arena with people presumably making use of the more modern facilities or the central location of the site.

Despite targeted marketing campaigns, trial sessions and a close working relationship with the bowls club, membership has dropped again from over 250 before the refurbishment of the Arena to 149 members in this reporting period. To counter this underutilisation, specialist matting has been purchased to protect the flooring and enable the space to be utilised for other activities.

Planned improvements included developing a swimming lesson growth strategy to retain a greater proportion of children learning to swim as they moved through the different grading levels, more advanced methods of access control to facilities such as finger print scanning, and the achievement of ISO 45001 Health and Safety accreditation.

The Chairman thanked the representatives of Parkwood Leisure for their comprehensive presentation and asked why the usage figures presented in the report for 2017/18 were identical to those from 2013/14. The Board was informed that this was a result of Rushcliffe Leisure Centre closing and being removed from the contract.

The Board asked several specific questions regarding whether the measure relating to the number of young people accessing services was particularly useful and questioned whether a more informative measure would be to look at the difference accessing services had made to their lives. The Regional Director explained that it was not possible for the leisure provider to measure the impact engagement in leisure services has on a young person’s life as their contact with the leisure provider was only a small part of their overall journey.

Questions were also asked about the timing of water safety sessions. The General Manager clarified that the leisure centre staff talked to children as part of normal school assemblies in the run up to the summer school holidays thus making  ...  view the full minutes text for item 16.

The report of the Executive Manager – Neighbourhoods

The Environmental Health Manager delivered a presentation on the Council’s Environmental Health Service and its various enforcement functions including environmental protection, community safety, food safety, health and safety at work, and private sector housing – and  the Council’s licensing function but which was reported to a separate committee.

It was noted that the enforcement work undertaken by the Environmental Health team operated underneath the Council’s corporate enforcement policy and was guided by national guidelines and statutes as well as locally perceived risk to the public. These functions fall into statutory (food safety, nuisance complaints, health and safety at work, HMOs, and air quality) and discretionary services (enviro-crime, empty homes, some elements of community safety). The Board were informed that the majority of the work undertaken by the team was based around advice and education, enforcement was usually a last resort.

            The Environmental Health Manager reported on a number of successful flytipping prosecutions recently but reminded the Board that to prosecute there must be clear linking evidence such as video footage or identifiable documents in the flytipped material. There had also been successful fixed penalty notices issued for graffiti and flyposting. This prompted a question about the value of a fixed penalty notice which was duly answered.

It was noted that there were 818 food premises in the Borough and inspections were based on risk. A Councillor mentioned a television programme he had seen recently where food premises were falsifying their certificates. The Environmental Health Manager stated that this would be an issue of fraud and would be investigated by the police. He explained that the public was encouraged to check ratings online where the Council controlled the certificates but that he had not heard of any instance of this taking place within the Borough. The Environmental Health Manager told the Board that the Food Hygiene Inspection Scheme was not mandatory but that there were calls within his profession to make it such. The Chairman asked for an action to be recorded requesting officers to draft a letter on behalf of the Board adding their support to the campaign to make food inspections mandatory.

The Environmental Health Manager informed the Board about the Primary Authority scheme and explained how this worked. Rushcliffe was now the Primary Authority for Boots and Jury’s Inn nationwide meaning that these companies could access assured independent advice for incidents of food safety and health and safety wherever they happen in the country.

A question was asked regarding the Council’s role in ensuring correct food labelling with respect to food allergies and was told that this was the responsibility of the trading standards team at the County Council. The Board were concerned that the number of fixed penalty notices issued for dog fouling and was not higher given the extent of the problem within the Borough. The Environmental Health Manager explained that two members of the team covered both dog and pest control and that in the case of dog fouling it was very difficult to catch  ...  view the full minutes text for item 17.

The report of the Executive Manager – Transformation and Operations.

The Strategic Human Resources Manager presented the Diversity Annual Report which set out the Council’s performance against the objectives in the Single Equality Scheme during 2017/18. The information contained in the officer’s report compared the demographic information for the Borough and the latest census information, with that of the workforce. Data on the demographics of the Borough as well as Workforce Equality information were included as appendices to the officer’s report.

The Strategic Human Resources Manager noted that as a public sector employer the Council was expected to be an exemplar in this area. However, as reported in previous years the Council’s workforce does not reflect the ethnicity of the Borough though there were policies in place to encourage applications from underrepresented groups as vacancies are advertised. In addition, the age profile of council staff was in line with other local authorities but Rushcliffe had seen an increase in the number of under 25s due to our growing apprenticeship scheme which encouraged young people into employment. The number of disabled employees was static and the Human Resources Manager reminded the Board that the Council was a Disability Confident Employer. She informed the Board about a scheme the Council had participated in over the last two years with Leonard Cheshire Homes to provide 100 days of work experience to a disabled graduate to develop their employability skills.

Councillor Edwards expressed pleasure at the range of training courses under taken by staff at the Council and wondered what follow-up sessions or monitoring was done to establish the impact of having attended the training. The Human Resources Manager outlined the annual appraisal process for staff and how this is monitored throughout the year with six to eight weekly one-to-one sessions. The Human Resources Manager talked the Board through the Council’s Gender Pay Gap Statement and in response to questions by the Board, she agreed to provide further information and explanation with regard to the breakdown of beneficiaries of bonuses and how gender affects these, and the breakdown of the workforce by gender and type of role – manual or office based.

It was resolved that the Equality Annual report 2017/18 be endorsed.

Report of the Executive Manager – Transformation and Operations.

The Services Manager – Finance and Corporate Services provided a report which summarised the Council’s performance for Quarter 2 of 2018/19, containing tasks from the Corporate Strategy 2016-20, and the Corporate Performance Indicators. The Corporate Scorecard which included full information on performance was included as an appendix to the officer’s report. The progress of the exceptions reported in Quarter 1 was also reported.

Two performance highlights had been identified: LINS24 – Number of affordable homes delivered – where the target for the year had already been reached; and LITR13 – Level of income generated through letting property owned by the Council but not occupied by the Council – where occupation remained high and income had therefore been maximised by reduction in void periods.

There was one new performance exception in quarter 2: LIFCS43 Percentage of Community Support Grant allocation spent to date – the percentage spend was lower than usual for quarter 2 at 16.51%. The scheme had been promoted to Councillors and they have also been advised of the early closing date for applications on 28 February 2019.

Members of the Board expressed concern about the number of performance measures they were being asked to consider on a quarterly basis and requested that a separate sub-group be set up to consider how to monitor the performance of the Council and its delivery of the new Corporate Strategy in advance of the start of the next financial year. The Executive Manager agreed to discuss this with the Chairman outside of the meeting.

It was RESOLVED that:

a)         the progress of the Corporate Strategy and the progress of exceptions identified in the year to date be noted.

b)         The Chairman and the Executive Manager – Transformation consider setting up a working group to review performance indicators.

Report of the Executive Manager – Finance and Corporate Services.

The Board considered its Work Programme. The Executive Manager – Operations and Transformation reminded Councillors that the work programme was not inflexible and should they have topics for consideration then these should be drawn to her attention or that of the Chairman.

It was RESOLVED that

a)    the Work Programme be accepted.

5 March 2019

·         Glendale Golf Annual Update

·         Streetwise Environmental Ltd Annual Update

·         Performance Monitoring Q3 2018/19

·         Work Programme