A PERFORMANCE report concentrating on the first quarter of the 2019/20 financial year show that Powys County Council (PCC) has been “average.”

Portfolio holder for finance Cllr Aled Davies (Conservative – Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant/Llansilin) took the cabinet through the report which is for the three months from April 1 to July 1.

He pointed out how PCC services were performing against a number of indicators.

Cllr Davies, said: “This provides an overview of the corporate achievements issues and actions during the first quarter of the financial year.

“Performance details are provided for the following areas of our monitoring framework, top 20 performance measures – Powys specific Performance Measures based on what is most important to Powys, informed by Vision 2025 and regulatory reports.

“CIP which we keep referring to (Corporate Improvement Plan 2018-2023,  PAMs (Public Accountability Measures) which are set out by the Welsh Government, the Strategic Equality Plan (SEP) 2016-20 and of course the Quality Assurance – Framework .

“Overall performance against our monitoring framework has been average during the first  quarter.”

Cllr Davies explained that PCC had achieved:

  • 46 per cent of the top 20 measures,
  • 57 per cent of the CIP measures,
  • 50 per cent of the PAMs
  • 50 per cent of Strategic Equality Plan
  • 57 per cent  of CIP activities were on track

The performance monitoring report is an innovation and Emma Palmer, head of strategy, performance and transformation progress explained that the report also had comments by heads of service embedded in the document which gave a background to the data.

Cllr Davies added that there was some good news in the report which includes 94 per cent of calls answered within time scale and 96 per cent of  adult protection enquires completed within statutory time scales.

“There’s clearly a lot of good work going on in the council,” said Cllr Davies.

Edcuation portfolio holder, Cllr Myfanwy Alexander (Independent – Banwy) wanted to draw attention to one statistic that put Powys at the top of the pile of 22 local authorities in Wales.

Cllr Alexander said “It’s not been an easy thing to manage, there’s been a lot of talk about the roll out of childcare for families in Powys.

“Because we’re such a rural area it’s sometimes quite difficult to meet the aspiration that (the) Welsh Government has.

“But, 77 per cent of our families have been offered the childcare provision which means that we are the highest performing county in Wales.

“Given the difficulty of rurality I think it is worth mentioning, as it’s been a hard won achievement from teams that have been reduced.”

“It’s crucial for our economy that families have access to high quality child care and we can be very proud of this particular result.”

Cllr Alexander explained that this work had been done by teams in the education service that had suffered cuts due to the need to find savings.

The report was noted and passed by the cabinet.