The report will be the Quarter 4 performance monitoring report.

The Head of Business Improvement submitted a report (previously circulated and now appended) which contained non-financial performance monitoring information for Quarter 4 of the last financial year as well as the full year results.

Councillor Price drew attention particularly to the reduction in carbon emissions, reduction of days lost to staff sickness and the percentage of council spending made locally. He congratulated officers for this performance.

Councillor Brown, on behalf of the Value and Performance Scrutiny Committee commented on the report which had been to the committee the previous evening. He said that on the whole the Committee had been impressed with the full year results. The principal point of scrutiny concern was the high level of abandoned calls to the contact centre.

In response to the concerns of the Scrutiny Committee the Chief Executive said that work was being progressed to improve call response times in call centres. He said that a sustained large increase in call volume had been experienced peaking especially during the adverse weather earlier in the year, and at the time of changes to recycling and garden waste container collection. He said that staff changes and training as well as merging two call centres would improve performance. He added that a large number of callers had disconnected after listening to pre-recorded information, although there was no way to tell if their queries had been resolved.

Resolved to note:-

1)     The increase in the number of performance targets that had either met or exceeded the target set for 2010/11; and

2)     The final outturn performance information and the actions that were in place to address the fourteen measures that had not achieved the year end target.