The Committee were presented with an update against the Performance Management Framework, as introduced within the council’s Corporate Plan, for Quarter Four 2020-2021 (January to March 2021).

The officers went through each policy commitment in turn and provided an update on what activity had and/or would be delivered in order to successfully realise the policy commitments. The following comments were made by the officers during the update:

PI 3 – The increase seen on the chart represents an additional 8 reported incidents within a three month period, some of which are wrongly reported through the system and some of which represent slips and falls in the workplace.

PI 4 – The figures are distorted due to some inspections not taking place due to the Covid-19 lockdowns; when a food business has missed an inspection it is classed as ‘non broadly compliant’ therefore explaining the dip in the chart. The gradual dip does not therefore necessarily reflect a dip in food safety standards.

PI 9 – There has been an increase in the residual waste collected per household, this is a result of national lockdowns which have caused people to be at home more and an increase in home decorating. As there has been an increased demand for bulky waste collections, frontline staff are working every other Saturday to keep up with the demand.

PI 11 – There has been a slight increase in graffiti across the borough. The council are working on getting different bodies to take responsibility for graffiti on their assets, for example passing the removal process on to Network Rail if the graffiti is on their bridge. 

PI 39 – The council’s service is more efficient now as inspectors carry iPads when they visit playgrounds which they can then use to load all the documents from the independent body inspection. This reduces the need to print off loads of paper and makes the process quicker.

Following questions from the Committee; the Assistant Director (Operations) and Regulatory Services Manager highlighted the following:

·         A question was asked in regards to PI 39 and whether all the playgrounds had passed the inspections, Members were informed that there were no high risk equipment found in any of the Gravesham playgrounds and therefore all playgrounds passed their inspections.

·         Regarding PI 5 and the quality of responses received by residents from the Environmental Protection team, the Regulatory Services Manager reassured Members that quality is not being sacrificed in order to respond within five working days.

·         The majority of shopping parades are visited seven days a week by waste removal services and generally there are no issues of overflowing bins and Bigbelly bins have been moved to Perry Street and Valley Drive to help reduce littering. The Assistant Director (Operations) is now looking at digital solutions such as collecting data to establish when a bin was emptied and how full it was when it was emptied, this would help with efficient bin emptying schedules. Furthermore, the concept of litter bin sensors is being considered for the rural areas as some bins in the rural area do not get as much usage. Therefore, a sensor could reduce the amount of times a bin gets unnecessarily emptied and a sensor would establish whether a bin is in a good location for usage.

Members noted the information contained within the report.