Agenda item

Report of the Chief Executive.

Cllr Richard Clewer, Leader of the Council and Cabinet Member Military-Civilian Integration, Health and Wellbeing, Economic Development, Arts, Heritage, and Tourism presented a report providing updates on the progress against stated missions in the Council’s Business Plan.

The Leader explained that the report provided measures of performance using data available at the end of Q4 and risks as they are at the time the report was produced. He welcomed the improvements to the number of visits to council-run leisure centres and libraries, and the reduction in the number of housholds in temporary accommodation.

Cllr Laura Mayes, Deputy Leader of the Council and Cabinet member for Children’s Services, Education and Skills reported that school performance was an area of focus with data being scrutinised to improve performance levels.  

Cllr Graham Wright, Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board, reported that the Committee would be considering the report in detail at their meeting on 29 July 2024.

Cllr Ian Thorn, Leader of the Liberal Democrat Group commented on education performance including the educational gap for phonics and Key Stage 4, capacity issues for the social care market and management of housing development. In response, Cabinet members explained that for some of the education performance figures caution should continue to be applied when making comparisons, they confirmed that the figures are a work in progress and performance is monitored and under constant review, the social care market continues to be monitored with possible interventions and piloting of alternative support options, and details of the mitigation actions in relation to the failure to manage housing development risk were detailed in appendix 2 to the report.

Other comments and issues raised during the discussions included the delivery of affordable housing, the number of Section 106 renegotiations over the last couple of years, how far into the lifetime of the current Local plan, communication to increase voter turnout for Neighbourhood Plan Referendums and other referendums, flyposting, the difficulty in assessing the metrics for reported P1 potholes in an ever-changing environment and to consider changing the metric used to measure the percentage of roads resurfaced to that used by oflog. In response, Cabinet Members explained that the delivery of 650 affordable homes per financial year is a broad figure set over an 18 year period and it was noted that a current downturn in the housing market impacted the delivery from housebuilders, the demand for social housing remained high and the small increase in the total number of households on the housing register represented a success when compared to national figures, a written response would be provided for the comments on Section 106 renegotiations and detail about how far into the lifetime of the Local Plan, residents are informed when there is a need to vote on a Neighbourhood Plan and maybe local members need to encourage local residents to take up their right to vote on this issue, a discussion on flyposting can be held outside of the Cabinet meeting with the appropriate Cabinet Member, the schedule of roads to be resurfaced needs to be realistic, the Environment Select Committee would need to be involved in discussions about changes in metrics it considers in future detailed reports, and a review would be undertaken on the data points to ensure information is relevant for future Performance and Risk reports.

Resolved:

To note and agree:

1.    Performance against the selected measures mapped to the Council’s strategic priorities.

2.    The Strategic Risk Summary.

Reason for Decision:

To provide Cabinet with a quarterly update on measures used to monitor progress against the 10 missions laid out in Wiltshire Council’s Business Plan 2022-32.

The Strategic Risk Summary captures and monitors significant risks facing the Council, in relation to in-service risks facing individual areas and in managing its business across the authority.

This is supported by, and in compliance with, the Council’s Corporate Performance and Risk Policy.