Agenda item

RESOLVED:

That Cabinet approve the Q1 2025-2026 dashboard

KEY DECISION:

No.

PORTFOLIO:

Leader

ALTERNATIVE OPTIONS CONSIDERED/REJECTED:

As set out in the report.

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST:

None

DISCUSSION:

The Leader introduced the item and was pleased to see that NFDC was maintaining good performance in many areas. The Leader stressed that it was also important that the Council understood why it was not meeting certain targets and was mitigating these with the appropriate actions, as outlined in the report.

The Performance and Insight Manager summarised the report and explained that the report covered the first quarter of 2025. There were 23 KPIs reported during this period. The exceptions in this quarter were:

The Households and emergency accommodation KPI was recorded as red though was always very close to the target with susceptibility to small changes in numbers. This KPI generally resided closely either side of the target. The homelessness prevention efforts have been strengthened with the appointment of a dedicated Prevention Team Leader and the addition of four floating support workers to expand the team and to meet its growing needs. The Council has also supported a new homelessness prevention service in Totton, and Cabinet were advised that efforts on this would continue to be made in order to meet the KPI targets.

The number of Appletree Careline customers was reported as green and revised promotional material was to be disseminated across the District, and partnerships with age-related community-based services with positive results starting to take effect.

On cultural events supported by NFDC, the Performance and Insight Manager explained that there had been 31 cultural events within the district in the last quarter alone. It was acknowledged that this high number of events were unlikely to be repeated, as they were the culmination of one-off commissioned projects, however this represented a very positive first quarter of 2025.

The Performance and Insight Manager explained that Housing fire safety and compliance management measures continued to measure well.

On planning, the six planning appeals that were considered by the Planning Inspectorate were all dismissed.

Fly-tipping continued to be an issue with 870 incidents reported across the last year, a topic of which was discussed at length at the Place and Sustainability Overview and Scrutiny Panel. Although there was a new profile target this year, the number was still higher than anticipated and it was acknowledged that this was a unique year given the rollout of the new District-wide waste service. A significant portion of the increase was down to residents leaving glass and cardboard outside of the provided containers at bring sites. The Panel had asked the service area to undertake more analysis on the specific locations of fly-tipping.

Staff sickness remained a challenge though the relevant KPI was now registering as green rated for first time over the last four quarters. ICT performance was also recorded as green rated across all four of the relevant KPIs.

The dashboards were presented to all Scrutiny Panels, and their comments were included in the report.

The Portfolio Holder for Planning and Economy congratulated the planning department as it was surpassing both the government and local targets.

The Portfolio Holder for Housing and Homelessness was delighted to have visited the five newly refurbished family accommodation units in Ringwood as well as looking ahead to the six new units in New Milton as well as those in Totton which would be opening next year.

The Portfolio Holder for Finance and Corporate noted the Windows update project undertaken by the ICT department and congratulated them on facilitating this Council-wide project.

The Portfolio Holder for Environment and Sustainability referred to the bring sites and specifically fly-tipping. Immediate action was being taken to increase signage at these sites as well as a paper coming forward to Cabinet which would include the actions to be taken to mitigate this issue in the future.

The Portfolio Holder for Community, Safety and Wellbeing acknowledged the work undertaken by Culture in Common who were providing a great quality of culture to the District, for example the West-End level performances in parks across the District.

A non-Cabinet member raised a concern on fly-tipping, specifically regarding small businesses, and explained that a productive dialogue with small businesses should occur to mitigate the issues currently experienced.