East Midlands Performance Management Network Meeting

Friday 3rd July 2015 10:00 – 12:00

Bassetlaw District Council

Queen’s Building, Potter Street, Worksop. S80 2AH

Attendees

Bassetlaw District Council / Stephen Brown
Bassetlaw District Council / Vanessa Cookson
Bassetlaw District Council / Andrew Brammall
Breckland Council and South Holland Council / Charlotte Paine
Broxtowe Borough Council / Colin Lewis
Chesterfield Borough Council / Donna Reddish
Derbyshire County Council / Matthew Walters
Erewash Borough Council / Martin Durkin
Gedling Borough Council / Alan Green
Lincoln City Council / Pat Jukes
Lincolnshire County Council / Jasmine Sodhi,
North East Derbyshire District Council / Amar Bashir
North Kesteven District Council / Esther Watt
Rutland Borough Council / Jason Haynes
LGA - LG Inform / Jonathan Evans

Apologies

Amber Valley Borough / Sarah Nobbs
Bassetlaw District Council / Joanne Wilson
Blaby District Council / Jacqui Clarke
Blaby District Council / Alison Moran
Boston Borough Council / Suzanne Rolfe
Charnwood Borough Council / Suzanne Kinder
Cherwell District Council / Louise Tustian
Derby City Council / Heather Greenan
Derby City Council / Natalie Tuckwell
Derbyshire Dales District Council / Mike Hase
East Northamptonshire District Council / Samantha Jeffrey
East Northamptonshire District Council / Angela Hook
Gedling Borough Council / Anita Jackson
High Peak & Staffordshire Moorlands / Vanessa Higgins
High Peak & Staffordshire Moorlands / Julie Nankivell
Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council / Cal Bellavia
Leicester City Council / Adam Archer
Lincoln City Council / Heather Grover
Lincolnshire County Council / George Spiteri
Mansfield District Council / David Evans
Melton Borough Council / Stewart Tiltman
North Kesteven District Council / Michelle Carrington
Northamptonshire County Council / Richard Corless
Nottingham City Council / Chris Common
Nottingham City Council / Chris Lowry
Nottinghamshire County Council / Colin Shepherd
Nottinghamshire County Council / Jackie Pinkett
Oadby & Wigston Borough Council / Anne Court
Rushcliffe Borough Council / Ian Meader
South Holland District Council / Jessica Woodhouse
South Kesteven District Council / Samantha Selby
Warwickshire County Council / Tricia Morrison
Warwickshire County Council / Elizabeth Abbott
Wellingborough Borough Council / Carolyne Aldridge

Notes

Welcome and introductions

Welcome and introductions from Jasmine, Chair of the network.

Notes from last meeting

The notes of the last meeting were agreed.

There was a change to the order of the Agenda.

LG Inform

Jasmine thanked Jonathan Evans from the Local Government Association for coming to demonstrate the LG Inform tool.

Jonathan explained that 97% of Councils were registered to use LG Inform. The tool has now been developed so that it is compatible for tablets. This provided an opportunity to clean up the front page. He explained that there had been a change in suppliers, which had proven beneficial in terms of development of the tool.

LG Inform can be viewed by the public but is not promoted. The information used is published data from Government sources such as DCLG. The front page shows a dashboard with six headline performance indicators for England. The search facility allows the user to type in an area or postcode and the dashboard reflects that authority’s performance. This data can be compared on national, regional or local levels. There are also headline reports which can be accessed with information for the area selected. Those with a local government email address can sign in and modify reports, information can be exported to go into their own reports and reports can be shared on varying levels including publicly. The LGA provide free training sessions across the country, these can be booked by contacting LG Inform. Jonathan encouraged everyone to go on to the site and try out the tool now that it has been developed.

LG Inform also has a free Benchmarking tool. It is with thanks to the involvement of the East Midlands Performance Management Network in working with us to develop a basket of PIs we could collect local data. Originally around 30 PIs were suggested following consultation we agreed on five PIs:

·  Percentage of household waste sent for reuse, recycling and composting – quarterly

·  Kg of residual waste per household – quarterly

·  Average number of working days lost due to sickness absence per FTE (full-time equivalent) employee (including schools) - quarterly

·  Average number of working days lost due to sickness absence per FTE (full-time equivalent) employee (excluding schools) - quarterly

·  Number of formal complaints received - quarterly

·  This provides more up to date data. For example Defra take up to 8 months to publish quarterly figures.

There are other benchmarking tools some are expensive; our aim was to provide something that was robust but cheap. We initially needed 30 authorities to be involved to make it viable, we had 140 in the first year. Currently 150 authorities are taking part in providing data. 22 authorities didn’t participate in Quarter 4 because it was year-end. Some councils backfill data where they can’t produce the data by the deadline. We are currently consulting on additional PIs for 2015/16. The benchmarking data is only available to registered users and it is on condition that other authorities’ data is not published but the information can be used if anonymised.

There will be a consultation on the process, to see what people think about the tool and its use.

Action: Jonathan to circulate details of LG Inform training sessions

Questions and Discussion

·  Broadening the range of indicators in the future

·  Data cleansing - around a third of the data is queried, considering publishing the data in a new way so that participating authorities can check the data and the quality of data themselves.

·  The possibility of CIPFA working more closely with LG Inform.

Channel Shift – Bassetlaw District Council’s Approach

Jasmine thanked Andrew Brammall from Bassetlaw District Council for giving a presentation to the network on Bassetlaw’s approach to Digital by Default.

Andrew Brammall’s presentation covered:

o  The vision for Digital by Default was that the service was so good people preferred to use it while ensuring that those who are not able to go online are given the support they need to do so.

o  The definition of Digital by Default. – provision of an end to end process

o  Designed for mobile devices

o  Development of Digital by Default standards

o  Avoiding Digital by deception so that processes are fully digital and not just made to look like it.

o  Identifying processes with the greatest impact – 80% of person to person transactions

o  Corporate support is key to success – Corporate led project

Action: Jasmine to circulate presentation slides

Questions and Discussion

·  Timescales/resources - 12 months to develop once funding was in place with 1.5 FTE plus service areas when necessary.

·  Open Data Site and the impact on the number of Freedom of Information requests. No reduction in the number of FOIs but a reduction in time responding as customers are now signposted to the Open Data site. The transparency code has meant that 20 Parish Councils use our Open data site to publish their data.

·  All channels remain open as a contingency plan.

·  Next step is Digital District encouraging business and schools to go digital.

·  Performance measured by KPIs measuring staff time, benchmarking to check we have made the reduction. Staff savings made through service review.

·  Savings a prominent driver, savings £1.2m, investment £132k, most savings made in Benefit applications, and changes in circumstances.

·  Corporate support key to culture change. Full support from the Chief Executive and Leader. The governance was written within the project.

Action: Jasmine to circulate contact details for lead officer on Digital by Default

Round Table Discussion

Derbyshire County Council

·  New performance system going to be installed. We would welcome any thoughts on performance reporting around the corporate challenging process. We currently have strong, good, steady and concern. What are others using? Email suggestions to Matthew Walters at Derbyshire County Council

South Holland District Council

·  LG Inform was used to produce Members pack with ward level detail.

North Kesteven District Council

·  Exploring options of a performance management system that report risk, some systems seem like risk is an add on and don’t work well. There was a discussion about different systems

Topics for future meetings

·  Different performance management systems

·  Equalities monitoring

·  LG Inform – Performance Scrutiny, Portfolio Report and contextual data

LG Inform

·  Asked for comments on the possibility of authorities uploading their own data.

·  Councils responding to the Census Consultation please email your comments to LG Inform to be included in the LGA response.

Future Meeting Dates

·  16 October 2015 - Harborough District Council, The Symington Building, Adam and Eve Street, Market Harborough, Leicestershire LE16 7AG

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