Agenda item

Mark Gannon, Transformation & Strategic Partnerships Manager, presented the submitted report which summarised RBT’s performance against contractual measures and key service delivery issues for March and April 2010, across the areas of Customer Access, Human Resources and Payroll, ICT, Procurement and Revenue and Benefits.

Key points for this period included:-

Customer Access

-              All strategic measures for the workstream measured in 2009/10 had been achieved.  Changes to how customer perception was measured was being put into place to ensure it was monitored on an ongoing and sustainable basis.

-              A target of 60% by March, 2011, had been set for a new measure around efficiency and effectiveness

-              All operational measures were achieved

-              Registration Service awarded with new governance status with effect from 1^st June, 2010

-              Revised opening date of 21^st June, 2010 for Aston Customer Service Centre

-              4 complaints received in March – all not upheld

-              5 complaints received in April – 1 was withdrawn, 1 found to be inconclusive, 2 outstanding and 1 upheld

Human Resources and Payroll

-               Of the 5 strategic measures, the 4 that had targets set for 2009/10 had all achieved them.  The remaining 1 related to customer perception with a baselining exercise being carried forward from 2008/09.  This work has now been carried out but and positive response had been received that was now being moderated by the Client team

-               All operational measures achieve during March and April

-               Thurcroft Infant School successfully transfer from an external supplied to RMBC payroll

-               Reports from Abacus on outputs from the Recruitment Management System had been delivered, tested although these had not yet been transferred to the live environment

-               School Workforce Census amended and had resulted in additional development work to provide the required information

-               General Teaching Council payments and deductions to teachers took place in April

-               Successful undertaking of April increments, re-banding of Local Government pension contributions and year end processes

-               New Talent Pool process now commenced

-               Work to reduce the historical backlog of South Yorkshire Pensions Authority notifications was progressing satisfactorily.

ICT

-              All 5 strategic measures targets achieved

-              All targets shown as achieved in March and April with the exception of ICT06 (Complex Change Requests completed to agreed specification).  Now agreement had been reached on the scope of measure CCS1 report would commence as soon as possible

-              The 3 new Elected Members issued with latops etc. less than 1 day after the election result.  2 IT induction sessions with them to explain the technology available to them

-              In 2009/10 the refresh programme had delivered:-

o             1,227 laptops

o             42 desktops

o             8 docking stations

o             15 monitors

o             230 keyboards

o             19 mice

-              Document Records Management Group formed to ensure that where possible all data was stored electronically and available to staff working flexibly before the move into the new Council building

-              An official complaint was received surrounding the Identity Lifecycle Management project which had experienced delays.  RBT upheld the complaint and committed to a delivery dated of 19^th July, 2010, and a review of the change management process

Procurement

-              Of the 5 strategic measures, 4 had achieved their targets.  The remaining strategic target related to savings and had an upper quartile target.  Comparative data was not yet available for other authorities so the outturn position would not be known until later in the year

-              All performance targets achieved in March and April with the exception of PO6 (catalogue orders) which achieved 16.12% and 13.72% in March and April respectively against a target of 19%. Historically this measure failed at this time of the year due to the large volume of open orders which were processed in the month in preparation for the new financial year

-              Former BVP18 achieved an outturn position of 94.65%.  Whilst the target of 97.5% was not met, it was a considerable improvement on 2008/09 performance of 92%.  A challenging but realistic target of 96% had been agreed for 2010/11

-              Procurement savings for the month of March were £253,751

Revenues and Benefits

-              Of the 5 strategic measures, 4 had targets to achieve upper quartile performance.  Due to comparative data not being available, the outturn position would not be known until late July.  The remaining strategic measure related to customer perception which had not been formally measured in 2010.  Quarterly surveys would begin in June

-              All targets were achieved in 2009/10 with the exception of RB02 (%NNDR collected), RB05 (Cumulative Council Tax Arrears as compared to Council Tax Year End Total Collectable Debt)

-              RB02 - NNDR collection rate target for 2009/10 was 98.5% and achieved 98.30%

-              RB05 – achieved performance of 5.62% against a target of 4.8% - smaller is better indicator

-              RB06 – achieved performance of 0.34% against a target of 0.27% - smaller is better indicator

-              Council Tax Collection Rate at the end of March was 97.10% against a target of 97.0%.  At the end of April the rate stood at 10.3% which was 0.07% down on the same position in 2009/10.  The target for 2010/11 continued to be that RBT achieve a rate which placed Rotherham in the upper performance quartile for Metropolitan District Councils

-              The total number of Council Tax Liability Orders referred to the bailiff in the financial year up to the end of April, 2010, was 121, 2 of which were listed as vulnerable

-              Average number of days taken to action a Council Tax Change of Circumstance was 16.30 days at the end of April, 2010.  The Service aimed to achieve 14 days.  The underperformance was attributed to the large volume of work outstanding in the area as a result of year end priorities for collection purposes

-              NNDR collection rate stood at 15.59% at the end of April, 0.81% improved on the same point in 2009/10

-              20 Business Rates Liability Orders had been referred to the bailiff in the current financial year up to the end of April, 2010

-              As at the end of April, 2010, there were 284 live cases on the NNDR Deferral Scheme, allowing deferral of £461,320.22

-              The average time taken to process HB/CTB New Claims and Change Events had improved to 11.73 days as at April, 2010

-              Work was progressing on the Business Process Re-engineering with the recruitment and selection phase now complete and all affected staff advised of their new substantive posts within the organisation.  Focus was now on ensuring delivery of the IT project dependencies with ICT resource allocated to the project

Discussion also took place on:-

o              Work taking place regarding the HR information provided via the Council’s intranet and seeking to make it much more user friendly and to encourage more self-service solutions rather than telephone or face to face solutions.

o              Online recruitment system access reported indicating almost 1 million hits on the jobs pages since the RMS had been introduced and now applications processed on-line.

o              Refresh Programme of ICT equipment

o              Server update issues.

Resolved:-   That RBT’s performance against contractual measures and key service delivery issues for March and April, 2010, including the year end position for the financial year 2009/10 be noted.