The Performance & Finance Overview & Scrutiny Board has recently been looking at how well the Council is doing over a range of services that it provides. Information is collected on all the Council’s departments and is reported on every 3 months. This information compares how well the Council is actually performing with how it said it would perform. Each quarter’s performance is also compared with the figures for the same time last year. The Board’s role is to go through the information and query under performing areas. At this meeting the Board were interested in finding out more about pupil attendance figures at both primary and secondary schools, planning enforcement and adult social services. The Chair of the Board, Councillor Darren Price, has written to the Cabinet Members for Education, Economic Regeneration & Planning and Social Services requesting further information. The Chair’s letters will be available as part of the agenda pack for 9th January meeting and will be available from here soon.
The Board also has a role in monitoring the Council budget. This is also done quarterly. The Board looked at the figures from 1st July to 30th September. Each department is asked to highlight any significant changes to the set budget. There is a general assumption that any overspends should be contained within each department and offset against under-spends by the end of the financial year. The reported figures are for an overspend of £4,534,000 by the end of the financial year. The majority of this overspend relates to Child & Family Services; the monitoring of this budget is done via a joint meeting of the Child & Family Services Overview & Scrutiny Board and the Performance & Finance Overview & Scrutiny Board. The Board were interested in a possible underspend in the Housing Revenue Account (this is money that can only be spent on council house properties) and have written to the Cabinet Member for Housing to see whether there are any plans to spend the money in this financial year.
The performance and finance monitoring reports can be found here.
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