To consider the report.

Andrew Durrant, Executive Director of Place Services, gave a short overview and some detail around the Q2 performance and data report on page 27 in the agenda pack. Andrew Durrant reminded Members that the new Corporate Plan was adopted on 23^rd November 2021 which set out the Council’s new strategic priorities for the next five years, from 2021 to 2026. The report covered the 2021/22 Q2 data and performance and progress in relation to the council’s interim strategy. The report also acknowledged the new performance reporting arrangements that were agreed by Cabinet on 16^th December 2021, that would take effect from 1 April 2022. Members had been given a presentation on 4 January 2022 that explained the new performance arrangements in detail, by the Monitoring Officer.

There were six out of seven measures either meeting or exceeding the targets and the last one was just short of meeting the target but within meeting the set tolerances. In terms of the recovery strategy, there had been a series of campaigns launched to provide reassurance to returning visitors. The Q2 period saw the return of some of the larger events that the borough was used to hosting such as the Royal Horse Show and Royal Ascot. Andrew Durrant also mentioned the footfall across the main towns continued to be encouraging. Some ongoing work for the environment and climate strategy, the council had been able to secure a further £165,000 of grants funding from the low carbon skills fund and this would enable heat decarbonization assessments and development plans across the majority of the council’s-built estates including schools, libraries, the Town hall and the Guildhall. The formation of a RBWM climate partnership had been approved to provide more visible leadership for communication, engagement and delivery of the borough-wide environment and climate strategy. The next phase of embedding community response was launched in Maidenhead as part of the transformation strategy and the Maidenhead project had started to develop partnerships to address some of the health inequalities affecting disadvantaged communities. Quarter two also saw the launch of the engagement HQ platform for community engagement and empowerment. Also, the engagement with community and cultural groups had been established with a series of health and well being workshops. The Tivoli performance was commented on and Andrew Durrant would follow up on the outstanding actions.

Councillor Del Campo commented that all the figures looked good except the Tivoli performance. The headline performance figure for recycling, especially over Christmas, did not reflect the difficulties that residents had, with three-week bin collections and assisted collections. The Executive Director commented that there had been a low level of issues in relation to waste collection. The change had gone very well but there had been some things that could have been done better. It was suggested that a detailed report on the transfer be presented to the Panel at a future meeting to understand what was done, how it was done and see if it could be done better next time.

ACTION: Report to a futurePanel meeting after a few months of the changes

Councillor Del Campo asked if the assisted collections could be looked into and fixed as soon as possible as these were for vulnerable residents.

The Chairman commented that SERCO had done very well considering it was a four-day bank holiday after a long time.

Councillor Del Campo asked about what work had been done with businesses in the borough to reduce the amount of plastic and non-recyclable waste that was generated. Councillor Stimson commented that soft plastics could be taken back to some supermarkets. A list was in the process of being developed by the team of ‘what could be taken where’ for residents.

Councillor Del Campo asked if the new performance system would give the Panel, a real-time snapshot of what was going on and Andrew Durrant confirmed that it would give real-time information to extract for the here and now rather than being a historical view back. The performance management team were currently looking at the best way to bring these reports to the Overview and Scrutiny Panels. Councillor Rayner confirmed what Andrew Durrant had said and commented that it was more useful to deal with the matters in a more timely manner.

Councillor Price asked about the engagement of the biodiversity action plan with key stakeholders and asked why Members had not been considered to be key stakeholders. Councillor Price had tried to get a briefing, but this had still not taken place. Councillor Price asked why councillors were being excluded. Councillor Stimson gave an update that the borough was at the stage where they had been working with Wild Maidenhead, Wild Cookham and Wild Eton Wick. The project was being half run by experts and the other half by expert officers. The action plan was now with the Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxford Wildlife Group & Trust.

ACTION: Councillor Stimson to give further update to Councillor Price after meeting with Andrew Durrant.

Councillor Price asked about the recovery strategy and that she had suggested that the implications of long covid be covered on the borough’s population and residents since there were currently two percent of residents that we knew very little about and had not been mentioned in the strategy. Councillor Price still felt that these should be included.

Councillor Price referred to the report on page 41 and the reference to the quarterly Cabinet Transformation Sub Committee which had not met on a regular basis. It also mentioned that Dedworth library would establish a partnership for librarians to extend into Windsor but this had come to a standstill because of staffing issues and trying to find a head librarian in Dedworth so this had still not progressed from six months ago. Councillor Price continued that page 41 referred to the BAME community but there was no reference to Windsor or the Windsor Muslim Association who always got left out of everything. Councillor Price commented that being a learning organisation, there never seemed to be discussion on added value or lessons learnt from failures or from things that had not worked and how things could be improved for the next time.