Agenda item

Report to follow.

The Finance and Staffing Portfolio Holder and the Policy and Performance Manager presented the 2017-18 first quarterly position statement on finance, performance and risk.

The Portfolio Holder drew the committee’s attention to:

·         The new format of the variances at page 35.

·         The extra two columns that had been added to the table on page 37.

·         Changes to the risk register which had been implemented as agreed by the Audit and Corporate Governance Committee.

The report was discussed and the committee raised the following points:

·         The cost of planning appeals concerned the committee. Whilst this was a concern, the Portfolio Holder pointed out that there was little that the Executive could do about this.

·         The Executive Director confirmed that £77,000 of recharges was still to be invoiced to Cambridgeshire County Council for re-provision and the new homes programme. The Finance and Staffing Portfolio Holder would look into why these recharges had not yet been made.

·         The committee was informed that the Council would be reimbursed by central government for the costs incurred for the general election.

The committee raised the following specific areas of concern:

·         The Council’s poor performance in paying invoices. The Portfolio Holder acknowledged this and was addressing this with officers. Committee members were particularly concerned about the impact of this on small businesses. The committee was informed that the Council had set itself a difficult target and that it did not take much to put performance in the red.

·         The number of days it took to process new housing benefit. In response to this the committee was informed of the main reasons for this poor performance, one of which was the general election as many staff had been involved in the running of this which had taken them away from processing new housing benefit. The committee was assured that measures were in place to improve performance.

·         The worsening of customer satisfaction with the planning service. The Joint Director of Planning and Economic Development informed the committee that this was being targeted. The service was looking into providing a duty officer on the telephone, as well as more information being provided on the website. Members also informed the Joint Director of Planning and Economic Development that customers were known to be dissatisfied with the length of time to determine planning applications. The Joint Director pointed out that the trajectory of this performance indicator was improving and it was hoped that this would improve customer satisfaction levels.

·         The length of time it took for commercial premises planning applications to be processed. The Finance and Staffing Portfolio Holder advised members to submit their concerns regarding this directly to the Planning Portfolio Holder.

·         The length of time for discharge of conditions, which incurred significant costs to developers. It was felt that the statistics in the performance report did not capture the small number of applications that were significantly over time. In response to this, the Joint Director of Planning and Economic Development provided some reassurance that the validation time had significantly improved,  having reduced to five days from over 20 days. He recognised that the financial implications of the time to discharge conditions were potentially significant.

·         Councillor Chamberlain informed officers of the feedback from the Council’s task and finish group looking at rural businesses. The feedback from senior level business people was that the Council was notorious for the length of time taken to process commercial planning applications.

The Scrutiny and Overview Committee noted the report.