Agenda item

Members received the end of year monitoring overview including performance indicators, targets, and a performance RAG status against each indicator. For most indicators actual 2018/19 data was provided although for four indicators data was not yet available. The overview also provided a high/low assessment of good performance. Commentary against indicators provided further information as did performance for previous years (against indicator targets from 2016/17).

Concerning the indicator, Number of Hours Worked by Friends of Parks Volunteers (ES25), the Vice-Chairman indicated a feeling that contractors receive recognition rather than Friends Groups. He also noted that no indicator is provided for contractor performance on trees. Aware of issues related to the arboriculture team (see Minute 10 below), he questioned whether it might have been possible to address them with performance indicator material in place. The Portfolio Holder stated that indicator ES25 was formed as the contractor was required to support Friends Groups and that it was felt that the best measure of the effectiveness of the contractor’s support to friends groups was the number of hours contributed by volunteers along with success of Friends’ grant applications. He also indicated that a downturn in performance by the previous arboriculture contractor, Gristwood & Toms, only occurred when the company knew it was unsuccessful for a future contract with the Council (from April 2019). The new contract does have more performance indicators and the Committee could add items to the performance overview as required.

Referring to the indicators, Streets Meeting Acceptable Cleanliness (ES12) and Defect correction notices issued to contractor (ES13), a Member expected the number of Defect Correction Notices to increase if cleanliness was not acceptable for streets last year. However, streets not meeting standards are graded C or D (requiring issue of a defect notice to the contractor). With an A or B grading indicating acceptable cleanliness, a B minus grade was previously used to indicate that only part of an inspected road was below standard (thereby being neither acceptable nor warranting a failure). For 2019/20 and moving forward, the B minus score would be removed so that inspectors must either score street cleanliness as acceptable or unacceptable (A,B or C,D) and the two indicators should add up to 100%.

The Chairman highlighted that the tonnage of Total Waste Arising (refuse and recycling) (ES16) was decreasing even though the borough’s population is increasing. The Chairman also highlighted that the percentage of Household Waste Recycled or Composted (NI192) had increased in 2018/19 to 50% and the percentage of Municipal Waste Landfilled (NI193) had reduced to 13.07% in 2018/19.

For the indicatorWaste & Recycling collections - homes missed (per 000,000)  (ES6), performance on the number of missed bins per 100,000 households fell short of the 120 target in 2018/19 by 15 bins. With an extension of the former contract, the collection vehicle fleet for the contract was old but under the new contract with a new vehicle fleet more vehicle reliability was expected. A small number of missed bin collections might continue to arise as the new contract is rolled out but there is a rigorous contract management framework in place for Veolia to meet its targets.