Agenda item

Report attached.

Members considered a report of Councillor Munsif Dad, Leader of the Council, updating the Cabinet on the latest performance management review and seeking approval to the new corporate performance monitoring procedure.  The Leader provided a brief introduction to the report.

Approval of the report was not considered to be a key decision.

Reasons for Decision

After discussions with elected members (Scrutiny Committee September 2022), Service Managers (September 2023) and the Council’s Management Team (November 2023), the Policy Team had carried out a review of the current performance mechanism to help identify and understand ‘what does good performance management look like?’  The review had been presented to Scrutiny Committee on the 16^th July 2024 and had elicited a number of suggestions now included within the Cabinet report.

One of the key aspects of good performance monitoring was being able to identify warning signs of failure.  The government was encouraging Local Government to produce performance metrics that focused on efficiency, productivity, sustainability, transparency and accountability, aiming to produce effective and meaningful data.

What was evident was that effective performance management meant collecting measurable effective data with a purpose based on the following points:

1.      Measurable - define purpose and targets;

2.      Help drive service improvement & delivery;

3.      Help the organisation become more efficient and productive;

4.      Provide value for money;

5.      Easy to compile not labour intensive;

6.      Digital transformation;

7.      Quality of data not quantity;

8.      Accessible either via the website or regular reports;

9.      Identifies warning signs of failure (Oflog*); and

10.   Transparent and accountable (Oflog*).

*Note: Office for Local Government

Hyndburn’s Service Managers were encouraged to review their performance information (KPIs) on a regular basis and identify how they could improve service delivery, efficiency, productivity and value for money (feedback to management team and produce annual service plans).  Additionally, performance information should have measurable objectives, be able to track progress effectively, be purposeful, easy to collect and accessible with quantifiable, meaningful targets.

The Council followed a Performance Management Framework (set out in the report at Appendix 2), that helped it to communicate and track progress against its objectives and priorities. The aim was for the key performance indicators to cascade down to service delivery, allowing the Council to report its performance to help individuals understand their contribution to higher-level objectives.  It was essential that the authority effectively monitored performance against its objectives, as laid out in the Council’s Performance Management Framework.  This allowed the Council to:

• understand how it was progressing against its corporate performance measures;
• shape service performance improvement;
• inform decision-making;
• inform its strategies and ensure it focused its resources where they were most needed; and
• empower local people and be accountable and transparent for its performance.

If no real purpose was gained from the collection of performance information, it was considered as an inefficiency and non-productive.

As part of the latest review, the Council had tried to understand how it used data to inform and make better decisions (for example, through service improvement, funding bids, identifying key priorities for the Borough), considering a variety of audiences and looking at what made good performance.  As a result, the following recommendations had been put forward comprising three different types of performance information (Tiers 1 to 3):

·      Tier 1 – Council headline key performance indicators (KPIs)

o    Those key Council indicators where the Council had direct involvement within the outcome (such as Council Tax Collection Rates, Number of New Homes);

o    Limited to 40 KPIs to focus on main priorities;

o    Yearly comparisons to identify change;

o    DoT (Direction of Travel) symbol used to indicate performance improvement or decline

o    Benchmarking information to compare performance with peer authorities and national averages;

o    Annually updated and displayed on the Council’s website with commentary for context.

(The list of Council KPIs was provided as an Appendix 1a to the report)

·      Tier 2 – Hyndburn wide indicators

o    Those Borough wide KPIs where the Council had indirect involvement in the outcome, but which were still significant and important (such as population growth, child poverty, wage levels etc);

o    Benchmarking information to compare performance with peer authorities and national averages;

o    DoT (Direction of Travel) symbol used to indicate change.

(The list of Hyndburn wide KPIs was provide as Appendix 1b to the report)

·      Tier 3 – Corporate Strategy Outcomes

o    Updated annually providing progress on Corporate Strategy actions and outcomes;

o    Presented to Scrutiny Committee on an annual basis.

It was important to note that the Council produced a variety of performance information that accompanied reports and strategies that were submitted to Cabinet and Full Council as part of the evidence gathering process to help inform the decision making process.  As highlighted in the Performance Management Framework (Appendix 2), all teams would have annual Service Plans that would include Service Level KPIs to drive efficiency and service improvements.

It was also important that the new mechanism was flexible, so that any changes to local priorities or national data collection requirements could be accommodated.

To assist with accountability and transparency, all 3 Tiers of information would be published on the Council’s website and compiled into an Annual Report (including the Council’s key achievements) and presented to Scrutiny Committee on an annual basis.

The purpose of the new performance monitoring mechanism was not to achieve a rating or ranking on a Local Authority scoreboard, but to drive improvement and identify warning signs of failure by monitoring performance data through Service Managers updates to CMT and produce an annual performance report for Scrutiny Committee (December 2024) and Cabinet.

There were no alternative options for consideration or reasons

Resolved                                    -    That the Cabinet:

(1)     Supports the proposed new approach to performance management as set out at Section 4.1 of the report;

(2)     Supports the production of an annual performance report for presentation to the Cabinet and the Resources Overview & Scrutiny Committee.