Agenda and minutes

Councillor Neghat Khan

Councillor Thulani Molife

Councillor Mohammed Saghir

Councillor Marcia Watson

Beverley Denby (Third Sector Advocate)

None

To confirm the minutes of the last meeting held on 9 July 2014

Subject to amendments recording Beverley Denby (Third Sector Advocate) as present and Councillors Culley and Ferguson as absent, the Committee confirmed the minutes of the meeting held on 9 July 2014 as a correct record and they were signed by the Chair.

Please note that the briefing paper and Nottingham Plan report will be circulated following publication of the agenda

Liz Jones, Interim Head of Policy, introduced the Nottingham Plan to 2020 Annual Report for Year 4 (2013-14) and gave a presentation highlighting the following issues:

a)  The Nottingham Plan to 2020 is ‘owned’ by the One Nottingham Board.

b)  Reviewing progress over the last 4 years of the Plan, performance is ‘looking good’ for about half of the measures; ‘looking less good’ with room for improvement in about one third of the measures; and there are some measures for which data isn’t available every year and therefore a current assessment is not possible.

c)  Measures of new business growth and Gross Value Added (GVA) are moving in the right direction and the visitor economy remains strong across both City and County in terms of both foot fall and spend.

d)  The overall employment rate is holding up, despite the increasing numbers of jobs and people helped into work being counterbalanced by increases in the working age population. 

e)  The levels of children living in poverty (measured as the percentage of children who live in workless households) has remained static throughout the 4 years of the Plan.

f)  The Citizens Survey found that 88% of people are satisfied with their local area, which is the highest level achieved to date.

g)  Fuel poverty has worsened compared with other Core Cities.  The factors affecting this include energy efficiency of properties, household income and the cost of energy tariffs.

h)  The number of teenage conceptions has continued to fall and there has been a 24% reduction since 2010.  The City is on track to achieve the target of a 50% reduction by 2020 but levels are still higher than the England average.

i)  Performance in school attainment has improved – both at Key Stage 2 and the best ever performance at GCSE level in 2013, but Nottingham is still the worst performing Core City.  There appear to be issues at the transition stage between primary and secondary school.

j)  Levels of child obesity remain higher than the England average.

k)  Following more significant reductions in previous years there was a small fall in crime during 2013/14.

l)  There has been an increase in the number of people successfully completing drug treatment but the City is currently not on track to meet targets for this.  Some of the reasons for this are that the measure of success is more challenging and requires abstinence from drugs and alcohol for 6 months, and services are seeing increasingly complex cases.

m)  Following a blip in 2012/13 in the downward trend in smoking prevalence, it reduced by 3% in 2013/14.  Progress is on track to meet 2020 targets for physical activity by adults and the proportion of people with poor mental health has decreased to the lowest level since 2010.  However, the City continues to have high levels of alcohol-related hospital admissions (a proxy measure for the use and harm caused by alcohol) and despite an emerging positive picture on health there are still high levels of health inequality both within the City and compared with other areas of the country.

n)  CO² emissions continue to fall and levels of energy produced by low or zero carbon technologies has risen.

o)  The recycling rate remains challenging and significant improvement can only be achieved by collecting food waste to be composted.  This would require access to an anaerobic digester which is very expensive and currently not affordable.

p)  It is proposed that the Joint One Nottingham and Scrutiny Performance Panel meeting to be held on 12 September look at the concerns about performance in fuel poverty, child obesity and alcohol-related hospital admissions; and explore further the issues around growth and jobs.

Following questions from councillors, Liz Jones and Laura Catchpole, Policy Officer, provided the following additional information:

q)  37 key performance measures are tracked using the Council’s Covalent performance management system.  There is a 10 year profile for each measure and performance against tolerance levels determines whether a measure is flagged as green, amber or red for that year.  Many of the measures use nationally produced data.  This is robust and useful because it means that performance can be compared with other local authority areas.  Many of the health measures are taken from the Public Health Outcomes Framework.  Measures based on citizen perception use local methods and measures because there are no longer national surveys measuring these issues.

r)  While levels of child poverty and fuel poverty are influenced by national factors there are a range of local interventions that the Council and its partners make to try and address these issues.  There are some factors which can be more successfully influenced locally than others and consideration needs to be given to where the greatest value can be added.

s)  The desired outcomes and targets of the Plan were refreshed last year, and some targets were amended to ensure that there was the appropriate level of challenge for the City. 

t)  Direct levers to improve educational achievement have reduced but there are still indirect levers available, for example influencing the expectations and culture of children and their families; and establishing the Governors Academy to improve governance in schools.  Councillor Parbutt reminded councillors that school attainment was due to be considered in more detail at the Committee’s next meeting.

The Committee concluded that it was happy with the proposed areas of focus for the Joint One Nottingham and Scrutiny Performance Panel and had no further comments or recommendations in relation to performance against the Nottingham Plan to 2020 at this time.

RESOLVED to agree that Councillors Culley, Jenkins, Klein, Molife and Parbutt take part in the Joint One Nottingham and Scrutiny Performance Panel.

Report of Head of Democratic Services

Angelika Kaufhold, Overview and Scrutiny Co-ordinator, introduced a report of the Head of Democratic Services detailing the scrutiny work programme for 2014/15.  She informed the Committee for the next few months the majority of scrutiny activity would take place through the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and health scrutiny committees, and it was proposed that the scrutiny review panels be put temporarily on hold while officer resource was recruited.  During this period the Scrutiny Chairs will have opportunity to chair the Overview and Scrutiny Committee to develop their skills and experience in chairing.

The Committee noted that a meeting of the Call In Panel was scheduled for 11 September 2014.

RESOLVED to:

(1)  Add the outcomes of, and action taken since the OFSTED safeguarding inspection to the work programme for January 2015;

(2)  Move consideration of implementation of the Citizen First/ Customer Access Programme to February 2015;

(3)  Temporarily put on hold the programme of scrutiny review panels; and

(4)  Move the Committee’s meeting in November to 12 November 2014 at 2pm.