Agenda item

Report of the Director of the Built Environment.

The Committee received a report of the Director of the Built Environment setting out the progress made during Q2 of the 2019/20 Departmental Business Plan.

A Member commented that, financial information aside, the report did not offer any real sense, strategically, of progress made against specific objectives for Quarter 3. Officers stated that the approach to feeding back to Committee’s was very much a work in progress and thanked Members for their input which would be taken on board for future updates.

A Member referred to the projected overspend and the three reasons offered for this. He questioned how much of the overspend was attributable to incomplete timesheets and what the difference between the first and the third reasons were. A second Member noted that the budget was currently overspent by £345k but that a £357k better than budget position was forecast for 2019/20. He questioned whether this was attributable to not recruiting to staff vacancies and, if so, whether this was a false economy that would lead to standards slipping. Officers clarified that recruitment in the department had not ceased but that selective recruitment was being undertaken and existing staff were also being given opportunities to take on new skills. In response to further questions around stress, Members were assured that the Department had stress management policies in place and that these matters were regularly discussed with staff at 1:1 meetings with their line managers.

The Chamberlain clarified that the majority of costs did relate to staffing. With regard to incomplete timesheets, Members were informed that there had been some delays towards the end of September 2019 around this. He added that there were agreed staffing budgets to charge to Capital Works but that other staff did not pick up costs on non-Capital projects

A Member questioned what a TMAN application was. Officers clarified that this was a Traffic Management system and undertook to provide details of acronyms/abbreviations going forward.

A Member spoke to congratulate Officers on progress made in quarter 2.

RESOLVED – That, Members note the report and appendices.