Agenda item

A report was presented by Donna Talbot, Head of Service – Business Intelligence, providing an overview of performance activity across the Council for Quarter 1 of 2019/20 and where appropriate/available, compared performance against previous quarters and with performance nationally.

Education and Children's Services

It was reported that the timeliness of undertaking children's social care assessments in quarter 1 remained at the improved level achieved in quarter 4 of 2018/19. The figures for assessments which took over 45 days to complete had been lower than all comparator averages for the past 2 quarters and there was now a target to complete in 30 days.

The latest child protection plan rate was the highest (57.0 per 10,000) it had ever been since February 2017 and the looked after children rate remained significantly higher than the comparators. However, the bid to the Department for Education to support the move to a family safeguarding model was predicted to address the high levels of children in care and those on child protection plans, following a planned and supportive model, whilst managing risk. County Councillor Williamson added that the family safeguarding model would bring wrap around family support to try to prevent children coming into care.

Following a recent joint inspection of Lancashire youth offending services, our Youth Offending Team had been rated as Good.

The permanent exclusion rate for Lancashire remained higher than the national, regional and statistical neighbours averages, although lots of work was ongoing to address this, including reshaping the special educational needs provision. County Councillor Williamson added that separate Service Heads had been appointed, one for under 11s and one for under 25s, and that work was being done with other authorities, in order to reduce the permanent exclusion rate.

The Children and Family Wellbeing payment by results claims had achieved the target of 5,370 families by June 2019.

The number of eBook downloads had increased significantly. A piece of work was currently being undertaken comparing Lancashire's library visitor figures to those in other authorities.

Growth, Environment, Transport and Community Services

It was reported that the average time taken to repair highway street lighting faults had decreased. This had been due to the Salix Light Emitting Diode (LED) replacement programme. The safety carriageway defects repaired within 2 working days and those repaired within 5 working days remained an area of concern. However, the Cabinet Committee noted that improvement should be seen in this area, once the amendments to the risk matrix filtered through from July 2019 figure.

County Councillor Iddon informed the Cabinet Committee that all Highways staff had been instructed to report any highways defects, even if these were not part of their area of work. It was noted that separate figures were available on which defects had been reported by Inspectors and those that had been reported by members of the public.

County Councillor Turner stated that there had been a vast improvement in the HAMS system.

The Cabinet Committee noted that increases were continuing to be seen at the recycling centres and that green waste was up on last year, and that these increases were partly due to more districts introducing charges for the collection of garden waste. CC Atkinson highlighted that other new initiatives at the recycling centres had also contributed to these increases, examples including accepting all hard plastics, allowing carpets at a couple of sites to be put into non-general waste skips, and including pots, tubs and trays in with the plastic bottle cages.

It was noted that the Thornton plant continued to be successful in mass loss and landfill diversion. In addition, a framework agreement had been entered into with Lancashire Waste Recycling Ltd on 1 June 2019, and was on track to produce Refuse Derived Fuel and would divert 60,000 tonnes away from landfill. County Councillor Iddon asked for his thanks to be passed onto the Waste Management Team.

Adult Services and Public Health

It was reported that there had been a further increase in the proportion of adult social care service users receiving direct payments, keeping Lancashire higher than the national average. Over 95% of adult social work assessments had been completed within 4 weeks and delayed transfers of care from hospital had improved considerably. In addition, the percentage of care homes and community care services in Lancashire rated Good or Outstanding matched or exceeded the North West and England averages.

The Cabinet Committee noted that Lancashire's rate of older people admitted to residential care was considerably higher than the national average, although lots of work was being done to reduce this and targets had been set for improvements over the next 4 years.

It was pointed out that the figure of 1,300 people waiting for older people social work assessments included 727 people who were currently in the system receiving a service, but who were waiting for a re-assessment.

It was reported that the Lancashire Shared Lives Service had been rated as Outstanding in all five of the Care Quality Commission assessment domains (safe, effective, caring, responsive and well-led).

County Councillor Iddon wished to pass his thanks onto the staff for the quality of services provided both in care homes and the community care services.

Resolved: That the Cabinet Committee on Performance Improvement note the reported performance for Quarter 1 of 2019/20.