To review the council’s performance against the strategic goals and provide critical friend challenge to service delivery.

Members are asked to refer to the report included in the Tower Hamlets Council - Agenda for Cabinet on Wednesday, 9th March, 2022, 5.30 p.m.

The Committee considered a report on the strategic performance and delivery reporting – Q3 2021/22 that is going to Cabinet on 9^th March 2022 and supplies an update on the delivery and implementation of the Council’s Strategic Plan throughout 2021/22.  The mains points arising from the questioning on the presentation have been abridged as follows:

The Committee:

v  Wanted to know the current position with regard to those who are awaiting these assessments with regard to Education Healthcare Plan (EHCP) assessments completed within the statutory timescales of 20 weeks.  In response they noted that it is very dependent on the child and their needs as to whether there is a significant delay in completing the assessment.

v  Noted that LBTH have already put in the extra support to meet a child’s needs and their EHCP assessment will then confirm and make sustainable funding for that added ability. Although in other instances where specialist input is needed, then potentially there is an impact in the short term.

v  Noted that when there is a need for specialist input then it should be recognised that the extra weeks that it takes to complete those assessments has seen an improvement in performance although LBTH have struggled with levels of staffing absence which was related to the SARS-CoV-2 Omicron variant in particular around December 2021.  Although about staffing levels in the frontline child protection teams in the Borough LBTH have tried to ensure there are never any gaps.

v  Was advised that whilst it is true to say that the London local market is very problematic at the moment which has had an impact on performance LBTH is now in a much better position now.

v  Noted with regard to the percentage of completed homes that are classed as affordable depends very much on the performance of the marketplace and clearly that has suffered a series of challenges as a result of Covid and the interplay of a number of competing factors (e.g.,  private sector schemes).

v  Noted with regard to the percentage of customers who are satisfied with the online customer experience that councillors have noticed some improvement in the quality of that over the last three years which is to be welcomed.

v  Expressed concerns about the ability of some of the Boroughs constituents who are older; disabled or do not have English as a first language to be able to use the LBTH online systems as they find it confusing and difficult.

v  Agreed that if when contacting the LBTH that process goes wrong or if the customer has not been able to access the online system then their experience will not necessarily be captured as part of that exercise.  However, when accessing a particular service has worked it should not be taken as a complete measure of success in terms of overall service delivery.

v  Noted that LBTH have more resources into the contact centre during the Covid period because it has also served as the hotline for queries around Covid (e.g., the ability to book vaccinations).

v  Agreed that LBTH has been working to make the contact centre more customer-centric and is also working to become more strategic in the way it connects with other agencies and functions in the Council. The challenge being that these different agencies and functions sometimes do not always connect, interact, or work as closely as they could.

v  Agreed that the aim needs to be to ensure that the contact centre is equipped with the tools, capabilities, and telephony to ensure collaboration and communication between different agencies and functions.

v  Noted that with regard to the number of residents supported into work through the WorkPath partnership that there is still uncertainty over the pace, breadth, and scale of changes within the economy effects on our economic prospects for some time.  Therefore, agreed that there should be an absolute key focus to support residents into employment, especially post pandemic and it should be driven by clear and ambitious targets moving towards more training and skills whilst finding funding streams available from the Government and the European Union.

v  Noted that Local authorities tend to work with the harder to reach groups of people and at present the market is very fragile.

v  Agreed that those emerging from a drug treatment successfully need to be interpreted with Covid in mind (e.g., what happened during the higher periods of Covid infection was that the support networks around those receiving treatment were considered valuable in terms of people’s well-being).  Noted that it was actually in some sense similar to the wider measures on the rehabilitation of people coming out of hospital and what LBTH had to do was adjust the mechanisms to deal with the pandemic and people’s needs within that context. In addition, it was noted that the available figures are not really compatible with other periods.

In conclusion, the Chair placed on record his appreciation to all those Members present for their involvement in the deliberations on Strategic Performance and Delivery Report together with (i) Mayor John Biggs; (ii) Chief Executive Will Tuckley; and (iii) Thorsten Dreyer, Head of Intelligence & Performance.