Agenda item

To consider the priority list from the Communities, Insight, and Change Directorate

The Committee considered a report, set out in agenda pages 37 to 42, which outlined the directorate priorities for the Communities, Insight, and Change Directorate.

The report outlined a number of areas of work for the year ahead, including providing IT capabilities and resilience, launching the business change strategy and embedding the change framework methodology into the organisation, tracking of customer satisfaction through various channels, ensuring that services were open to everyone by minimising any barriers or equality issues, maintenance of Wokingham Borough Council (WBC) housing stock in addition to increasing customer satisfaction to 90%, and supporting communities to be clean and safe.

Gregor Murray (Executive Member for Resident Services, Communications and Emissions), Shahid Younis (Deputy Executive Member for Corporate Strategy, Insight & Change), Keeley Clements (Director – Communities, Insight, and Change), and Simon Price (Assistant Director – Neighbourhood and Communities), attended the meeting to answer Member queries.

During the ensuing discussions, Members raised the following points and queries:

·           What was the satisfaction rate of Council tenants currently? Director response – At a low point, satisfaction reached 76%. Currently, satisfaction levels were around 88%, and the service was looking to improve this level further.

·           What preparation had been done in anticipation of the eviction ban coming to an end? Director and officer response – The Council’s “all in” policy had been very successful at keeping people off of the street during the Covid-19 (C-19) pandemic. WBC was expecting landlords to look to sell some properties due to changes in their circumstances, and WBC would need to review the overall position in the coming months. Due to the court backlog and a possible extension to the eviction ban, evictions may not take place for three to four months.

·           Could some clarity be provided relating to the proposed strategic use of the HRA? Director and officer response – Officers were looking at unlocking the HRA to understand the borrowing capacity to be able to contribute to strategic projects. The aim was to buy some of the newly developed S106 properties, in addition to redeveloping and buying speculatively where appropriate.

·           What was being done to improve the customer experience, including action tracking? Director response – Workflow tracking was planned in the medium term, and the service already knew of 5 to 6 areas where customers were more engaged. Where customers had queries, WBC needed to respond appropriately and in a timely fashion. A website UX UI Specialist had been hired to streamline the WBC website and reduce “clicks” needed to reach useful information.

·           What was the strategy for taking graduates on board at WBC? Director response – A cohort of graduates had been taken in under change management for rotation around the organisation, to build their depth and breadth of knowledge and skills.

·           What was the Insight Strategy? Director response – There was a difference between data and insight, as insight was about contextualising and understanding what the data was telling us. As a Council, we needed to build up and connect our datasets to allow us to understand what the insight was telling us, which would allow better customer interactions and enable us to progress as an organisation.

·           Were there any developments relating to investigating fly tipping in the Borough? Director response – A lot of work had been done in this area and the overall situation had improved as a result of additional cameras and communications efforts. C-19 had definitely had an impact on fly tipping, and plans were in place to continue enforcement efforts going forwards. Communications relating to Christmas waste had helped over the festive period. Recently, some officers had been redeployed to help with surge testing and surge vaccinations. There was a working group which was looking at this overall issue, and WBC was working with the police to check vehicle licence plates when transporting and dropping of waste, to ensure that they were registered waste disposal businesses. Where breaches were found, fixed penalty notices were being issued.

·           How were equality assessments being made a key priority in everything we do? Director response – An equalities impact assessment was required for any change in service or proposition, and it was the responsibility of each directorate to carry this out for each change within their area. The equalities plan sat within the Communities, Insight, and Change Directorate, and this was about how an overall strategy could be developed for the Borough, whilst being a dynamic policy.

·           The 21^st Century reorganisation strove for all customer contacts to be done digitally wherever possible. After the C-19 pandemic, was it possible that a surge of people would want face to face interactions, and if so was WBC prepared? Director response – This reorganisation was carried out before this Directorate, or Director, formed part of WBC. Every customer should be able to engage in the best way for them personally, and if there was an uptake in demand for face to face interactions, then customer services would support this.

·           When was the poverty strategy expected to come forward? Director response – This was hoped to come forward as soon as possible, however the manager of the strategy and planning area had recently left WBC, who needed replacing. There were five blocks of work which needed actions, one of which was the voice of the customer which had recently been carried out, and had provided some very useful insight for the organisation.

·           Did the Directorate have enough staff to fulfil its ambitious programme? Director response – A number of inherited areas of the Directorate had been looked at, with a number of areas such as accounts payable being moved to a more appropriate Directorate to increase response times. There were some vacant posts which did cause strains on existing staff who had to fill in the gaps, and there was some work to do to fill some of the key roles within the Directorate.

·           What was WBC doing to protect itself from cyberware and ransomware attacks? Director response – This could be picked up with Members separately.

·           Could highways issues tracking be prioritised, as Members were pushing residents to report directly to WBC rather than having to go through their local ward member. Director response – There was a piece of work looking at priority areas where residents engaged most with the organisation, which would allow resources to be targeted in streamlining the customer experience in these high contact areas initially.

·           The report made mention of 1000 planned library events due to take place, in a normal year would 1000 events take place? Officer response – The libraries team was continually engaging with younger communities, including online book clubs and other online events. Details could be shared with the Committee at a future meeting.

·           How was customer feedback captured, including conversational feedback? Director response – “Gov Metrics” had been deployed across the WBC website, and options were being explored to expand this to phone and email interactions. There was a cultural change required to log any comment of dissatisfaction as a complaint, which would enable the voice of the customer to feed into the organisation’s central thinking.

RESOLVED That:

1)     Gregor Murray, Shahid Younis, Keeley Clements and Simon Price be thanked for attending the meeting;

2)     Information related to the Council’s strategy to protect against cyberware and ransomware attacks be provided to Members confidentially where requested;

3)     Additional information relating to library services return to a future meeting of the Committee;

4)     A number of key priorities from the Communities, Insight, and Change Directorate return to the Committee during the current municipal year, after discussion between the Chairman and the Director.