Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies were received from County Councillor Driver.

County Councillor Iddon took the Chair in County Councillor Driver's absence.

Members are asked to consider any Pecuniary and Non-Pecuniary Interests they may have to disclose to the meeting in relation to matters under consideration on the Agenda.

No pecuniary or non-pecuniary interests were disclosed.

Resolved: That the minutes of the meeting held on 12^th September 2019 be confirmed and signed by the Chair.

A report was presented by Angela Esslinger, Complaints and Appeals Manager, providing complaints and customer feedback reports on both the Statutory Social Care Annual Report (with separate sections for both adult and children and young people's services) and the Non-Statutory Corporate Complaints Report for 2018/19.

It was reported that complaints represented just over 1% of all active adult social care and children's social care cases throughout Lancashire in 2018/19.

The Cabinet Committee noted that there had been 538 complaints about adult social care in 2018/19 which had been broadly the same for 2017/18. However, it was reported that people were more likely to compliment the adult social care service, rather than to complain, and that these compliments had risen from 615 in 2017/18 to 692 in 2018/19.

Children's social care complaints had risen slightly to 289 in 2018/19 from 280 in 2017/18. It was appreciated that due to the nature of the work, not many compliments were received for children's social care services. It was reported that social work practice continued to be the most frequent subject of complaint, covering more than 61% of all children's social care complaints.

Ombudsman complaints had decreased for both adults and children's social care.

Lessons learnt from upheld complaints were detailed within Appendix 'A'. It was appreciated that communication issues were at the heart of many complaints and that, if this were addressed, many complaints would be resolved much earlier in the process.

The Cabinet Committee noted that there was a shortage of children's social care Social Workers and that this was the case nationally.

County Councillor Williamson reported that the county council had a good handle on where children's social care complaints were coming from and thanked Angela for all her hard work.

In relation to non-statutory corporate complaints, Lancashire County Council had dealt with 1188 expressions of dissatisfaction in 2018/19, which was a reduction of 3% on the previous year. It was noted that the vast majority of these had been resolved and nipped in the bud as routine service issues, early in the complaint process. It was reported that 35% of expressions of dissatisfaction had been about highways, although this was a significant reduction from 2017/18 when the proportion had been 50%.

A total of 34 final decisions had been made by the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman in 2018/19: 76% of these were not investigated, 15% were upheld or partly upheld and 9% were not upheld.

It was reported that, in the last two quarters, no corporate complaints had been upheld by the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman.

The Cabinet Committee noted that a total of 8794 corporate compliments had been received in 2018/19 and that 92% of these were in relation to public health commissioned services.

Lessons learnt from upheld corporate complaints (mainly about blue badges) were detailed within Appendix 'B'.

Angela reported that she had organised some Corporate Complaints Management Training, which she would undertake.

Resolved: The Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement noted the statutory Social Care  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

A report was presented by Donna Talbot, Head of Business Intelligence, on proposed performance indicators against the following 5 objectives of the Corporate Strategy 'A Vision for Lancashire', which had been approved by Full Council on 14 February 2019:

·  Lancashire will be the place to live

·  Lancashire will be the place to work

·  Lancashire will be the place to prosper

·  Lancashire will be the place to visit

·  Lancashire will be the place where everyone acts responsibly

A workshop for all Members of all Scrutiny Committees had been held in June 2019, to debate the proposed key metrics or to identify additional ones as required. The report at Appendix 'A' reflected these considerations, the proposed performance indicators, the response to queries raised and officer recommendations.

It was reported that targets were currently being developed against the metrics and that these would be referred to the Internal Scrutiny Committee for review who would then make recommendations to Cabinet.

The Cabinet Committee noted that the new metrics and targets would be included within the future quarterly corporate performance monitoring reports to the Cabinet Committee, in addition to detailed reports on the proposed indicators, to enable a more in-depth discussion. Reporting using the new format would start in February 2020.

It was reported that a forward plan for the annual reports would be developed with the Leader of the County Council, as Chair of the Cabinet Committee.

County Councillor Green pointed out that we may not see a lot of movement for the following quarterly performance indicators:

·  Number of Rosebud loans provided to new or existing businesses

·  Number of jobs created by Boost

·  New businesses established

Resolved: The Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement agreed the performance monitoring proposals for the Corporate Strategy.

An item of Urgent Business may only be considered under this heading where, by reason of special circumstances to be recorded in the minutes, the Chairman of the meeting is of the opinion that the item should be considered at the meeting as a matter of urgency.  Wherever possible, the Chief Executive should be given advance warning of any Members' intention to raise a matter under this heading.

There were no items of Urgent Business.

The next meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement will be held at 2.00pm on Wednesday 11^th December 2019 in Committee Room B – The Diamond Jubilee Room, County Hall, Preston.

The next meeting of the Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement would be held at 2.00pm on Wednesday 11^th December 2019 in Committee Room B – The Diamond Jubilee Room, County Hall, Preston.