Agenda item

The item was introduced by Craig Cusack (Director, Enabling Services). He reminded members the report was divided into four sections covering areas within the Committee’s remit: progress against the Council Delivery Plan; performance measures; financial assessment; and risk. Of the issues relevant to the Committee, 80 per cent of activities relating to the Council Delivery Plan were on track and 61 per cent of performance measures were on track to be met. Four performance issues had been identified. These included the budget and delivery of savings, due to the current demand and cost pressures facing the Council. Another related to staff sickness rates. Craig Cusack reminded members a briefing note on staff sickness had been circulated prior to the meeting as requested at the Committee’s previous meeting. Other identified issues related to WFRS and some delays in site-specific business cases from the Warwickshire Property Development Group.

Responding to a point raised by Councillor Tim Sinclair regarding staff sickness, Kate Sullivan (Head of Strategic HR) said rates had increased and active steps were being taken to address this. However, increases in staff sickness rates reflected a national trend and were not unique to Warwickshire. There were some pockets of longer-term sickness, and tackling these was a key priority. Work had taken place to address this, but the long-term nature of the challenge meant there would be a delay before its impact was seen in the data. Councillor Sinclair noted wellbeing scores recorded in the staff engagement survey had been above target, and this should be viewed as a positive.

Councillor Sinclair proposed an update report on staff sickness to show progress should be presented at a future meeting. This was seconded by the Chair and agreed by all members.

Responding to a question from Councillor Boad, Kate Sullivan said around half of staff had not had any sickness absences in the last year, and there had been a reduction in short-term absences. Some staff working remotely might be more inclined to work while unwell as they did not have to travel or risk infecting colleagues. However, a balance needed to be found as working while unwell may lead to longer-term absences.

Responding to a question from Councillor Feeney regarding fire protection inspections, Ben Brook said all of the issues relating to the His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabularies and Fire and Rescue Services (HMICFRS) cause for concern regarding protection had been addressed except for the introduction of a risk management IT system. The protection inspections had been paused for three weeks while the new IT system was thoroughly tested to ensure it was fit for purpose. Inspections had now recommenced following the implementation of the new IT system. Ben Brook said although the performance measure relating to inspections had been behind target, this had been done deliberately to allow for the implementation and testing of the IT system. He confirmed the target was for 600 inspections to take place per year.

Responding to a question from Councillor Feeney regarding the Medium-Term Financial Strategy, Rob Powell (Executive Director for Resources) said in-year spending controls had been implemented as part of a wider financial mitigation strategy. Detailed quarterly financial updates on progress were provided to Cabinet, and Rob Powell stated his belief it would be unnecessary for additional updates to go to any other committee.

Regarding fire appliance response times, Councillor Boad asked when the new performance metric would be implemented and how the information would be presented to the public. Councillor Crump said it would show a mean average that included all response times; currently, no details were made public on response times that had failed to meet the target. Councillor Crump said a crew could fail to meet its target by a matter of seconds and this would be included in the statistics as not meeting the target response time. He added that HMICFRS had not raised any concerns over the recording methodology. Councillor Boad said she would find it useful to know more about the spread of the average (knowing the quickest and longest response times). Ben Brook said that any incident that was not responded to within ten minutes would be scrutinised and numerous factors would be noted, including time of day, location and type of incident. However he said the Committee could be provided with whatever information they had requested. He said the new metrics would be likely to take effect from the start of the next financial year when the annual performance measures were reset.

Ben Brook said there were no national standards for response times. Research did not suggest any correlation between severity of injury sustained and length of response to the incident. Additionally, the majority of property fires did not extend beyond five square metres and would often be contained to the room where they had broken out.

The Chair suggested further discussions on what information members would like to be included in future reports relating to WFRS performance regarding incident response times could take place outside of the meeting.

Members noted the contents of the report.