To comment on the Cabinet report.

Russell O’Keefe, Executive Director, presented the report to Panel and Members noted the following key points:

Ø  The report set out the performance of the Council for 2017/18.

Ø  The report set out how the Council has been doing against 25 key performance measures.

Ø  The report was due to go to both Cabinet and Full Council.

Ø  The covering report stated the key projects such as AfC, Optalis, the joint venture with Countryside, the Maidenhead Golf Club site, School Expansion Project etc.

Ø  The annual reports were designed to be in a much more accessible format for Members, residents and businesses.

The Chairman stated he remembered the document being presented to Full Council in 2017 and the objective of the report was to improve the Council’s services overall whilst looking to reduce costs with residents still receiving good services. The report also helped to eliminate any lack of transparency. The Chairman was pleased with the report and the improved performance on last year.

The Chairman stated in table one of page 18 of the agenda pack, the strategic priorities showed two green indicators and one amber. There was also one red indicator in the customer service category. The Executive Director stated page 30 of the appendix showed each measure. The red indicator was for all two year olds being offered a review but the take up was only 57% however, reviews were not mandatory. The service launched the programme to promote services and the focus was on health and wellbeing.

The Executive Director confirmed that the amber in customer services was for calls answered in 60 seconds, and there was a range of work ongoing to improve the customer service experience which would improve that measure.

Councillor Quick stated the report looks like the Council is beating itself up on a target that had not been met even though the measure for 2 year olds to attend a health review was optional. The Executive Director responded there was a range of promotions of the service being implemented and he would feed comments back to the team. The service was offered to all parents, but it was up to them to take up the offer.

Councillor Quick asked if there was a specific issue with customer service calls being answered within 60 seconds; the KPI was sat at 66.2%. the Executive Director stated there was a range of factors and things had improved. The Council provided a very extended service as a Council, the Royal Borough was the only Council to offer a seven day a week service. Other customer service contact centres were only open 4.5 days per week whereas, the Royal Borough provided a far reaching service. So, there were peaks of phone calls received during the week but, also a new telephone system had been installed which should improve things, but, it would take a while for those improvements to flow through.

The Chairman stated looking through the document, the Council had met a lot of its targets. Affordable homes had a green indicator and there was excellence in customer services. He queried what the methodology was for understanding resident’s needs. The Executive Director stated there were a number of ways for residents to engage  through consultations, meetings and face to face appointments with officers. Targets were challenging and one of the amber KPIs was for processing housing benefit claims. However, the report did not show the whole picture because the Borough was third overall in the whole country for processing housing benefit claims. The Council processed claims within 20 days so although the Borough was very good compared to the rest of the country, the KPI was amber due to the challenging targets set.

Councillor Hunt stated the Borough was very good at handling claims, she had helped residents with council tax claims and they had been dealt with very quickly. Her concern was when residents call up the customer service centre. When a resident called a Councillor, they were answered by the person they were trying to reach. But when they called the switchboard, it was not always a pleasant experience, and when they finally got through, they then have to be transferred. She felt the initial issue was that first contact being difficult for residents. The Chairman said the Council was doing excellent work and he felt a little more communication with residents would help. He added the Council needed to give residents examples of the work being carried out to improve things, and that could be added in bullet point format to the report next to the KPIs. The Chairman also suggested more press releases of the improvements being made should be issued.

Councillor Shelim stated there should be two areas added to improve the customer service experience, the first was when residents called the switchboard, they should be able to choose which department they get put through to straight away. The other was to add national comparative statistics to the report so residents could see how well the Council was doing as the targets set were very tough. The Executive Director confirmed the targets were discussed at the Senior Management Team meeting to add the national statistics as other Local Authorities would love to have statistics like the Royal Borough’s.

Councillor Hunt said there were a lot of consultations carried out and a lot of those were done online. However, a lot of residents did not use the Council website so it was a missed opportunity to engage with residents and get their views which would not be counted during consultations. She added that Around the Royal Borough publication was distributed to all residents but deadlines did not often meet up with consultations. Consultations should be geared up to work with the Around the Royal Borough publications deadline and distribution. Councillor Shelim suggested installing display screens in the Towns so that all the information could be displayed which would help engage local residents.

The Chairman stated the Borough was providing 38% affordable homes in just one scheme and reducing rates for some businesses so, evidence of that could be provided to residents to show how the Council had met its targets. The report could also show how the Borough was working towards its targets. He added he wanted to show that the Council was doing better than the national average plus, evidence of what had been done since last year.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That Members endorsed the recommendations and requested that national comparable statistics be added to the report showing that the Borough is doing well nationally in comparison to other Local Authorities, and also for the report to show evidence of what work had been done since 2017 in bullet point format.