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ITEM EX6

EXECUTIVE – 18 MAY 2004

RAISING OUR PERFORMANCE 2

Report by the Chief Executive

Introduction

  1. Raising our Performance 2 is the County Council’s improvement plan. Its focus is internal, its main audience being the Council’s managers and councillors. It sets out to improve the effectiveness of the organisation, recognising that this underpins the quality of service delivery. It updates the original Raising our Performance document and refocuses efforts for the period 2003-2005. It was endorsed by the Executive in October 2003.

  2. The document acknowledges the considerable progress made by the Council in the period 2001- 2003 and focuses attention on the challenges that still need to be addressed. It contains actions to maintain the momentum of improvement and an implementation plan to help manage and monitor progress.

  3. This is the first progress report to the Executive on the implementation of Raising our Performance 2. The County Council Management Team (CCMT) is monitoring implementation quarterly, and progress reports are being submitted twice a year to the Executive.

  4. A programme management approach is being applied to implementation. I am the project sponsor, Susan Roberts the project manager and CCMT acts as the steering group. Business Managers act as managers for each of the six workstreams, and named Heads of Service are responsible for leading work on individual actions. This is an important and complex project, and I am pleased to say that it is being strongly supported by managers across the Council.

  5. The implementation plan contains short, medium and longer term actions. The detailed monitoring analysis at Annex 1 (download as .doc file) reports actions and progress against each of these. The monitoring document is intended to be a living document that changes over time. So it records in bold type any variations that may become necessary, for example in timescales, actions or success criteria.

  6. The report shows that good progress is being made in achieving the substance of almost all of the actions. Overall this is an encouraging first report. I draw attention below to some areas worthy of particular comment or where further action has proved necessary.

    7. Commentary

  7. Section 8 of the Implementation Plan involves a fresh approach to Human Resources (HR). Initially this action was slow in getting underway because of delays in recruiting to the post of Head of HR. However, good progress has been made in developing an HR strategy to help us meet the needs of both the Council and its employees, and this will be submitted to the Executive for its endorsement on 20 July 2004. Meanwhile Steve Munn began his appointment as Head of HR on 26 April.

  8. The Council’s corporate application for Investors in People accreditation in January 2004 was not successful. Although all of its major services have individually won accreditation, the Council was advised that it needed to develop a more corporate approach to employee development and improve manager effectiveness. Further work is underway to address this issue.

  9. Raising our Performance 2 places considerable emphasis on financial and performance management. These are both reliant on effective information systems, but it is clear that there are long-standing systems weaknesses in the Council. Section 9 of the Implementation Plan commits the Council to improving MIS functionality, and an external review is being commissioned to aid this.

  10. Section 13 refers to implementation of the Financial Strategy, which includes commitments to increase the Council’s balances, improve financial control and achieve efficiency savings. Action was successfully taken in the budget for 2004/05 to increase the Council’s balances. However, although the overall budget outturn for 2003/04 is on track, some weaknesses in accounting procedures and income generation affecting Social & Health Care have become apparent. Action is being taken to rectify these, and an additional success criterion has been included in the implementation plan.

  11. Several of the success criteria for the actions are measured through the Comprehensive Performance Assessment. The Audit Commission has now confirmed that it will carry out another independent Corporate Assessment of the way the Council is run in October 2004, for the first time since May 2002 when the system was first introduced. The re-assessment will coincide and be integrated with an inspection of our performance as the Local Education Authority. The Council has qualified for this re-assessment by virtue of the improvements recorded in its services. Recent reports by the Audit Commission suggest that our assessment will find significant improvement.

    12. RECOMMENDATIONS

  12. The Executive is RECOMMENDED to endorse the progress being made in implementing the Council’s improvement plan.

 

RICHARD SHAW
Chief Executive

Background papers: Nil

Contact Officer: Susan Roberts, Tel: (01865) 815425

May 2004

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