Agenda item

Consideration was given to the report of the Service Manager Performance and Democratic which presented the Finance and Performance Report for Quarters 1 and 2 (April 2021 to September 2021).

The Service Manager Performance and Democratic presented the report and highlighted the main points contained therein.

A Member commented that it was disappointing that not all senior officers were in attendance to represent their service to address Members comments and felt that the report was overly positive.  He felt that to give a true picture the report should include a synopsis at the start of each section compiled by the individual Corporate Directors. With regard to financial pressures, he felt that even with the improved funding received from the Welsh Government over the last five years, the Authority was still struggling financially and had to resort to the MRP to balance the budget.  He referred to the Cardiff Capital Region City Deal and the Abertillery rail link and felt that the Authority should use City Deal funding to pursue other opportunities to develop projects.

The Chair also raised concerns regarding senior officers’ attendance and felt that advanced notice should be given to the Chair if senior officers were unable to attend scrutiny meetings.

The Managing Director took this point on board and referred to the Members comments regarding the Cardiff Capital Region City Deal and advised that there were other projects being developed such as the housing viability project in Tredegar.  There were also other City Deal projects coming forward across the region that were in the early stages of consideration with the Heads of the Valleys regions and Welsh Government City Deal colleagues.

A Member referred to the bus service and felt this could form an integrated transport system with the rail link.

Another Member felt that the report needed to be more balanced covering issues the Authority did well and issues that needed further work.  He raised concerns regarding several issues i.e. communication with the public when systems were unavailable, IT connectivity, iTrent system, hospital discharges and CCTV.  The Managing Director responded that the Authority had invested significantly in IT systems and had a strong partnership with SRS, other local authorities and Gwent police.  The switch to homeworking had been almost seamless and a credit to the organisation.  Last year Members had agreed an IT investment plan in order to keep IT systems continually upgraded, however, there would be challenges with systems failing from time to time but importantly there was a robust partnership with SRS to respond quickly to those issues.   She felt that the organisation had moved incredibly effectively to working on IT platforms and overall the Authority’s IT systems stood up extremely well.

With regard to IT connectivity in schools the Director of Education said there had been some challenges around school connectivity but this had been an all Wales issue relating to the All Wales Public Services Broadband Aggregate which sits outside of direct control of the SRS but had created varying levels of connectivity across a number of schools.  The Director advised that the situation had stabilised and there were plans in place to secure connectivity for schools over the summer period and provided assurances that schools would be in a far more stable position moving forward.

With regard to delayed transfers of care the Director of Social Services said Blaenau Gwent was the best performing Authority in Gwent around delayed transfers of care and they were working hard to maintain those standards, unfortunately there was a UK wide issue in relation to recruitment to the care sector.  Welsh Government was introducing the real living wage from April 2022 which would help to retain and recruit staff and he felt this was the start of a journey to try and improve wages and professionalism to recruit the right people into the sector. The Director confirmed there had been a waiting list for Domiciliary care packages recently and priority had been given to hospital discharges over the community, currently there were only a few people awaiting domiciliary care packages. 

With regard to the iTrent system the Head of Organisational Development reported that the system was currently operating fully and no issues had been reported where managers were unable to record sickness absence.

The Chair commended officers on their outstanding work to keep front line services operational throughout a very difficult period.

The Committee AGREED to recommend that the report be accepted and endorse Option 2; namely that the information as presented be accepted.