Agenda item

 

Report from the Executive Director of Corporate Services.

 

Recommendations:

 

That Cabinet:

 

1.    Note the overall position in relation to the Year Ahead Delivery Plan activities.

 

2.    Note the Quarter 2 data for the Council Plan performance measures.
 

3.    Note that a progress report covering the remainder of the year will be presented to Cabinet in July 2026.  

 

 

At the Chair’s invitation Councillor Read, the Leader of the Council (Leader) introduced the report, explaining that it was the six-monthly update on progress on the Council Plan and Year Ahead Delivery Plan.

 

The Leader set out the following headline points from the report:

·      Of the 89 Action Points set out in the Year Ahead Delivery Plan, nearly a quarter of those (21) had been completed, with 27% being delayed;

·      A reduced number of performance measures had been set out (27), and 20 of these were on target.

Council Plan Themes

Places are thriving, safe and clean

·      The Street Safe Team had been launched and the second part of recruitment had been commenced, with 9 out of 10 posts filled. Regular patrols of Wath, Dinnington, Swinton and Maltby had started taking place.

·      The Roadside Cleaning Team had been in place since October.

·      Construction on the Riverside Garden/Corporation Street public realm works had been underway since May 2025.

·      There had been delays to a private sector town centre housing development due to a complicated procurement process. That process had now concluded and tenders were being scored.

·      Work on the flood alleviation scheme at Whiston Brook was on target and due to be commenced within the next few weeks but there had been delays in progressing schemes at Eel Mires Dike in Laughton Common and Kilnhurst. The Eel Mires Dike scheme had experienced challenges with access to land and additional funding would be required. The Kilnhurst scheme would also require additional funding but the Leader confirmed that the Council remains committed to see these projects through to delivery.

An economy that works for everyone

·      The economic inactivity trailblazer/Pathways to Work scheme was up and running and the Social Value Action Plan had been completed.

·      The Templeborough Business Zone Scheme, which was a government funded scheme, had been a longer process than expected to due to complications regarding land owned by Magna. The Leader was hopeful that sign-off stage on this scheme would be reached shortly.

Children and young people achieve

·      The refurbished water splash park at Clifton Park had been reopened over the summer.

·      Building work at the new SEND Hub at the Eric Mann’s building was almost complete. The Rotherham Parents and Carers Forum had started to move in and offer activities from this building.

·      Progress on implementing Independent Travel Training for children was off target due to staffing issues at the end of 2025, but the Leader confirmed that those posts were now filled.

·      The commitment to the provisions of more Multi Use Games Areas (MUGAs) had experienced challenges due to the Football Federation delaying their funding round. Alternative sources of funding were being explored.

Residents live well

·      The specialised support service for people who had attempted suicide had been delivered.

·      Groundworks on new council homes at West Melton and Maltby were underway.

·      There were delays to the Rothercare analogue to digital switchover.

·      The roll-out of Strengths Based Working training had been partly delayed by the vacancy in the former post of Assistant Chief Executive. Work was underway with HR to improve recruitment processes and an advert had gone out to recruit for a permanent Head of Organisational Development (OD).

John Edwards, the Chief Executive, offered his support to the Leader’s summary and acknowledged the significant work that had been carried out by colleagues across the Council in delivering the Council Plan and in recognising those areas which required continued focus.

 

The Leader and the Chair invited members of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board (OSMB) to raise questions and queries on the points raised.

 

Councillor Blackham asked for an update on the Dinnington Market Scheme. The Leader explained that the compulsory purchase order that had been necessary to acquire the burnt-out buildings was complete and the Council was moving towards demolition within the next few weeks. Andrew Bramidge, Executive Director of Regeneration & Environment, confirmed that the Council was in the final stages of a tender process for a contractor to carry out the works. An open day had been held for local residents just before Christmas, to provide information.

 

In a supplementary question, Councillor Blackham asked if there was an estimated completion date for the project? The Executive Director of Regeneration & Environment stated that the project was expected to be a two-year programme, with completion anticipated in early 2028.

 

Councillor Monk enquired why the Family Hub sign up rate had dropped quite significantly during Q2 and whether information was available as to which wards were particularly struggling to meet these figures. Councillor Monk also asked for more information on what work had been done by midwives and health teams and how capacity within those teams had been managed.

 

In response, the Leader commented that there was an annual pattern where sign up to Family Hubs increased at certain times of the year and then dropped. There was no obvious reason for this but the Leader provided reassurance that the sign up level of 80% was good compared to other local authorities. The Leader pointed out that there would also be a number of families who were accessing services but were not necessarily registered with Family Hubs. Discussions were ongoing as to whether registration to Family Hubs should be mandatory, or whether this could potentially put people off.

 

Nicola Curley, the Executive Director of Children & Young People’s Services, acknowledged that Family Hub sign up was an ongoing issue and that there was a demographic difference in sign up which was being actively investigated. Service did have some in-roads into those communities within the borough that were less likely to take up the Family Hub offer and would continue to work with these. It was suggested that the problem areas may be those that were further away from the physical Hub buildings but there were outreach services in place for residents that found it more difficult to get to a centre.

 

The Executive Director of Children & Young People’s Services also pointed out the Council was very successful in take-up of places at Nursery and Early Years settings and sometimes, parents would choose one over the other. The Family Hub Programme and had received an additional year’s funding, which was coming to an end in March 2026. There would be an end of programme report to Cabinet in March and then there would be ongoing permanent funding for a new programme going forward. Within this new programme, service would try and pick up on registration issues. The target was set at a very high level and the Council was doing well, but would like to do better.

 

In a supplementary question, Councillor Monk asked if any detail could be provided on what work with midwifery services looked like. The Executive Director of Children & Young People’s Services commented that they would obtain this information from colleagues in Public Health and would provide it to OSMB outside of the meeting.

 

Councillor McKiernan asked for more information on the reported quality assurance issues with regard to the Housing Stock Condition Surveys. Would the surveys that had already been completed have to be redone and what knock-on effect would this have to the whole process?

 

In response, the Leader explained that the Council had stopped carrying out full stock condition surveys of council housing around 10 years ago. It was now clear that the Housing Regulator expected local authority housing providers to carry out a full set of stock condition surveys so over the last year, service had increased capacity to carry these out by taking on some additional in-house staff and commissioning an external contractor to assist. There had been a period of “bedding in” with staff and contractors to ensure that the quality of the surveys conducted was sufficient in order to progress the necessary repairs and maintenance activity. That had in turn, led to some delays on delivery. Conversations were ongoing between service and the contractor and the Council was looking at creating some more in-house capacity to get the process back on target.

 

In a supplementary question, Councillor McKiernan asked whether the current information that the Housing team had could be relied ipon due to the quality issues. The Leader clarified that the surveys that had been completed in the last 12 months were of sufficient quality, but that the Council did not yet have completed surveys for the remainder of its council housing stock. There was, howecer, was a lot of other information available, such as gas and electrical safety inspections, that would provide useful information about that stock.

 

Councillor Tinsley asked about the proposed Rothercare analogue to digital changeover and whether tenants who were due the changeover were being prioritised in terms of need. Ian Spicer, Executive Director of Adult Care, Housing and Public Health, explained that the key reason why service was behind target for Q3 on this changeover was because the national provider that the Council had contracted with went into liquidation. The Council had utilised some of its own staff and contracts with Medequip and other providers to make progress on catching up. It was hoped that the changeover would be completed by the end of February 2026, pending any particular access issues to properties. National switchover was due to take place in January 2027 so the Council was ahead of that deadline. All new customers on Rothercare were part of a new roll-out and anyone who urgently required new equipment would be prioritised.

 

The Leader further commented that there were only two national providers of digital telecare and in this period of time where the whole country needed to switch over before the national deadline, one of them had gone out of business, which had created huge challenges.

 

Councillor Yasseen commented on the change of structure of the Council Plan report and felt that it was overall lighter on outcomes and that the measures were different to what had been used previously.

 

The Leader confirmed that the measures had been changed, following feedback from OSMB earlier in the year, and the number of outcomes had been reduced. When the new Council Plan had been brought to OSMB a few months ago, there was discussion about having a tighter set of measures, with longer-term measures expanded upon within the narrative of the report. The structure of the report was the same as previously but there had been the addition of the Appendix 2 summary, which had been requested by OSMB.

 

In a follow up question, Councillor Yasseen commented that throughout the report, there were a number of areas where targets hadn’t been met due to a lack of senior officers being in post and questioned whether this lack of recruitment of senior officers was a concern. Could the wider teams in place still deliver on the actions without a strategic leader in place?

 

In response, the Leader explained that in areas were there was a Head of Service in place (such as Neighbourhoods), that Head of Service could not be expected to lead on a strategic plan whilst there was no Executive Director in post. The Leader assured members that in such situations, the work of the wider team would continue as normal but under caretaker management. In the absence of a strategic lead, plans would be delayed until someone was in place to take that work forward. The Leader and the Chief Executive would be interviewing candidates for an interim post for the former Assistant Chief Executive’s role (now Executive Director or Policy, Strategy and Engagement) and would hope to have someone appointed shortly, pending permanent recruitment.

 

Councillor Steele asked why the rate of new admissions to residential care homes for older people was significantly over the Better Care Fund (BCF) official target for Q2 and whether this was likely to be an emerging upward trend or were there specific pressures at the current time that had led to this increase?

 

In response, the Executive Director of Adult Care, Housing and Public Health explained that there was an anomaly each year where decisions and pay processes take a while to get onto systems. Last year, service didn’t reach target but was very close to it and it was hoped that service would be closer to target in this area by the end of the year. There was an increasing demand for adult care, and residential care in particular. People were living longer but with more need, acuity and complexity so challenges would remain in providing the required levels of care and support. Service would continue to work on providing community alternatives to care to enable people to live full lives.

 

Councillor A Carter asked a question in relation to the delays in recruitment discussed earlier. What impact did these delays have on the cost and delivery of services day to day versus the cost savings from not having these senior leaders in post?

 

The Leader explained that with regard to the vacant former Assistant Chief Executive’s post, the new Chief Executive had wished to take some time to assess the best way for services to be organised going forward. A Staffing Committee meeting had been held in December and the subsequent report would be presented at Full Council. Some deliberate changes were being made but members should not confuse that with a cost saving exercise, which was not the case in this instance. The ongoing vacancy in this post had allowed a reassessment of longer-term goals in this area of the Council and whether strategic leadership was focused on the right areas. Day to day services had not been negatively impacted by this vacancy.

 

The Chief Executive emphasised that any negative impact on service delivery had been avoided during this period due to excellent temporary leadership by colleagues. Following discussions with the Leader, the Chief Executive felt it was appropriate to focus work in this area on policy, strategy and engagement and had therefore reworked the post to reflect that, whilst moving the OD and HR functions to sit under the new combined Corporate Services Directorate. The Chief Executive explained that a key goal of this reorganisation was to make the most of available data and information about the borough in order to focus policy approach and strategic implementation on the areas that could have the most impact.

 

In a follow-on question, the Chair asked how the Chief Executive viewed engagement with the South Yorkshire Mayoral Combined Authority (SYMCA) working as policies changed and developed? The Chief Executive commented that there was a lot of engagement with SYMCA at a number of levels across the Council. Continuing with this engagement would be significant going forward as national policies continued to develop regarding devolution to the Mayoral Combined Authorities. It was important that part of the new Executive Director of Policy, Strategy and Engagement role focused on engagement with SYMCA and with partnerships across the borough.

 

Councillor Yasseen returned to her earlier question regarding the change of reporting structure in respect of the the Council Plan, and compared this report to the position on the previous Council Plan at Q4. In the previous Council Plan, there had been 68 performance indicators with 54% on target. In this report, there were 27 indicators with 74% on target. Councillor Yasseen questioned whether the reduced number of measures withing this report provided a clear enough overview of where improvements were needed. The Leader reminded members that the LGA peer review which had taken place a couple of years previously had also challenged the Council to measure itself on outcomes rather than outputs. As a result, the Council had tried to have a smaller set of measures which are more closely related to what the Council can actually influence.

 

In an additional question, Councillor Yasseen asked why the recycling performance target of 45% had not been changed. Part of the reason why the Council was performing well in recycling was because the figures included household recycling, kerbside recycling and recycling at household waste centres, which hadn’t been included before. The Leader, supported by the Executive Director of Regeneration & Environment, confirmed that the inclusion of the recycling at household waste centres was due to a national reporting requirement as the government didn’t make a distinction between the different methods of recycling. Performance was measured against all items of waste that get recycled within the borough.

 

Councillor Allen asked, with regard to the newly implemented Street Safe Team, whether some of the “examples of tangible results” referred to at page 54 the agenda pack could provided. In response, the Leader commented that whilst it was still early days, the impact of the support could already been seen, for example, support had been provided to: South Yorkshire Police, with an arrest in the town centre; a victim of domestic violence who was taken to a place of safety; and a rough sleeper who was directed to support from Housing Services. There was already strong evidence of the practical support that the Street Safe Team were providing and the Council would think of the best way to report on this.

 

In a further question, Councillor Allen referred back to the structure of the Council Plan and commented that it had been previously requested that a more easily consumable, public version of the Council Plan was produced. Councillor Allen enquired whether work was underway to make this available.

 

In response, the Leader confirmed that work on a simpler, leaflet-style version of the Council Plan was ongoing. The Communications team was also working on picking out bite-sized nuggets of information that could be shared on social media.

 

Councillor Steele asked a question regarding the response times to calls to the call centre and complaints. An increase in calls regarding garden waste could have been anticipated so why had no additional resource been provided to deal with this? The Leader commented that the majority of complaints were not about the choice to cancel the collection of garden waste but more about the patchy service leading up to this, which had led to the increase in calls. The Leader expressed the opinion that service could not have anticipated this and increased resource accordingly. Service priority had been on increasing staffing resource to complete collections. The performance level in responding to complaints was good given the level of the increase. There was more of a challenge currently with Housing Services responding to complaints in a timely way but work was ongoing to ensure that the response time to Housing complaints was improved.

 

Councillor McKiernan asked for further information on the issues with Northern Powergrid that are referred to throughout the report.  The Executive Director of Regeneration & Environment commented that delays due to issues with utilities companies were commonplace across regeneration activity. For example, the redevelopment of the café at Rother Valley Country Park had been completed but the opening had been delayed due to delays with Northern Powergrid connecting the substation. Utility companies often did not work to the same timescales as local councils and this, unfortunately, was a factor out of the Council’s control.

 

In a supplementary question, Councillor McKiernan asked whether the Council was communicating effectively with utilities companies that these delays were causing the Council significant problems? The Executive Director of Regeneration & Environment confirmed that there was an ongoing dialogue but that utilities companies experienced pressures from across the region, not just from Rotherham MBC.

Councillor Keenan asked whether the reported contract management issues for drugs and alcohol rehabilitation had been resolved? The Executive Director of Adult Care, Housing and Public Health expressed disappointment that numbers in this regard were not where they were anticipated to be and confirmed that the issues were being addressed via ongoing discussions with the contractor for the drugs and alcohol service. It was hoped that more people would come forward to be prepared to go into residential placement for rehabilitation in due course.

 

The Chair thanked the Leader and officers for their input and responses.

 

Resolved: - That the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board supported the recommendations that Cabinet:

1.    Note the overall position in relation to the Year Ahead Delivery Plan activities;

2.    Note the Quarter 2 data for the Council Plan performance measures; and

3.    Note that a progress report covering the remainder of the year will be presented to Cabinet in July 2026.