Agenda item

Report of the Leader of the Council. 

The report of the Leader of the Council was submitted setting out the details of the business undertaken by the Executive.

 

The Leader and the Cabinet made statements and responded to questions.

 

The following questions were submitted in accordance with Council Procedure Rule 11.1. 

 

1.  Pedestrianisation of Guildhall Square

 

Question from Councillor Fitzhenry to Councillor Hammond. 

 

Can the Leader confirm his commitment to the pedestrianisation of Guildhall Square as quickly as possible? 

 

Answer

 

It was never agreed the Northern Above Bar side of Guildhall Square would be entirely traffic free – but that a review would be undertaken.  Now that the galleries are open we are undertaking monitoring of the traffic and will consider the options of pedestrianisation as part of the LTP4 consultation.   

 

2.  One New Home Every Day

 

Question from Councillor Fitzhenry to Councillor Hammond.

 

Can the Leader confirm his commitment to the Labour election pledge of one new home every day?

 

Answer

 

This pledge was made in 2012 since then we have been faced with changes to affordable homes legislation, Brexit, three Leaders (ourselves and the Opposition), the context is very different today.  In our latest manifesto, we set the target of providing 1000 new homes over the next five years.   

 

3.  Telephone Answering

 

Question from Councillor Laurent to Councillor Chaloner

 

Eastleigh Council answer the telephone and deal with queries at the same point immediately and efficiently.  Why cannot Southampton Council do the same?

 

Answer

 

We have been investing significant time and effort into improving our customer services, to increase the efficiency with which we deal with customer enquiries. As an example last month we dealt with around 45,000 calls and answered these in an average time of 2 minutes 28 seconds. This is an improvement on the position in June 2017, the average speed of answer was 4 minutes 12 seconds.

 

Dealing with customer issues at the first point of contact is a key part of our strategy for improvement. We have recently introduced a new customer satisfaction survey for the contact centre and one of the questions monitors our performance in this area by asking whether customers were able to successfully do what they called for on that occasion. The latest data shows 72.5% of customers responding positively to this question. However, there will always be a proportion of customer enquiries which require referral to a specialist team, for example where the information provided indicates a social care assessment is needed.

 

We are continuing to make changes to systems and processes to improve customer experiences both online and via traditional channels.

 

4.  Reduced operating hours at Housing and Gateway cash offices

 

Question from Councillor Fitzhenry to Councillor Chaloner

 

Given the Council’s strategic approach towards digitalisation and reduction in customer facing interactions, can the Cabinet Member confirm if the reduced hours of service at our housing and Gateway cash offices has increased our rent/payment arrears and/or increased our costs of recovery?

 

Answer

Part 1 – Impact of reduced hours.

 

The following stats compare the use of the cash office for 4 months either side of the reduction in opening hours for both 2017 and 2018.

 

 

The table above shows that over the first 3 months there is slow down in March and April offset by an overall increase in May, which over the 3 month period evens out the overall amount received.

 

June is the first month of the reduced opening hours, so is possibly too early to assess whether this is having an impact. Additional information would be required to assess the impact of trying another way to pay i.e. setting up of standing orders or direct debits and or making one off payments on line.

 

Part 2 Impact on Council Rents

In reviewing the collection of rents between May and June this year that the difference in income collected is minimal at £13,647 and tenants paying their rent through the cash office has reduced by 60 people. This is only one route through which our tenants can pay their rent. As mentioned above, reviewing data for the first month of reduced opening hours is too early to identify trends, but this early information indicates minimal impact on rent collection and therefore arrears. Tenants do have other payment options including direct debits and standing orders.

 

5.  Management of Cemetery Grounds

 

Councillor Galton to Councillor Hammond

 

Is the Leader happy with the management of our cemetery grounds or will he change how things are done here after the years of dissatisfaction expressed by our residents?

 

Answer

 

The Council manages and maintains 5 Cemeteries within the City; Hollybrook, St Mary Extra, South Stoneham, Millbrook and Southampton (Old) Cemetery, totalling over 100 acres of cemetery grounds. 

 

Grounds maintenance within the cemeteries and Southampton Crematorium Garden of Rest is undertaken by a small team, (11.33 FTE) who also dig graves and undertake burials within the cemeteries, approximately 500 p.a.; and operate the cremators at the Crematorium, approximately 2400 cremations p.a.  In addition to working with Friends groups and volunteers the team is supplemented with temporary staff during the grass cutting season.

 

Maintaining the cemeteries is labour intensive due to the number of obstructions encountered and the care needed to ensure that headstones and kerb sets are not damaged by machinery.

 

6.  Air Quality

 

Councillor Galton to Councillor Rayment

 

Why is the driver monitoring equipment in the Council’s fleet still not being used to improve our staff’s safety, to reduce fuel consumption and most crucially to improve local air quality? (ref: Air Quality Inquiry recommendation viii).

 

Answer

 

We do not have driver monitoring equipment in the majority of the Council’s Fleet vehicles or the supporting systems to effectively monitor and analyse the data to enable effective management of driver behaviour. The team have been working hard to introduce a wide range of measures to improve air quality in the city which has included the introduction of electric vehicles into the council’s fleet. The introduction of driver monitoring equipment has not been progressed as a priority.

 

However we have carried out work with The Blue Lamp Trust to encourage behaviour change.

 

7.  Fly-tipping Hotspots

 

Councillor Galton to Councillor Rayment

 

Why have the Council refused to take pro-active action around the regular fly-tipping hotspots in the City such as Cannon Street in Shirley?

 

Answer

 

Waste and Recycling deploy crews to Cannon Street twice a day Monday to Friday and also a visit on Saturday to clear fly tipped waste. Where there is potential evidence in the waste, such as postal addresses, this information is passed to Environmental Health to investigate further.  We are reviewing if CCTV is possible.

 

8.  Car Park Fines

 

Councillor Galton to Councillor Rayment

 

How many fines have been issued in our district car parks since your decision to introduce new charges and how many of these were for a failure to show a ticket?

 

Answer

 

Since the period of free parking was reduced from 5 to 2 hours, following the posting of signage and a period of grace, in common with the level of fines issued in other car parks the numbers requested are below:

 

Car Park	March	April	May	June	July
Angel Crescent	133	111	164	206	62
Lances Hill	61	22	24	24	5
Whites Road	20	9	14	9	0
Westridge Road	201	234	156	127	32
Oak Bank Road	67	63	42	41	11
Marlborough Road North	65	83	49	55	9
Howards Grove	66	100	77	71	7
Totals	613	622	526	533	126

 

9.  Childcare Social Workers

 

Councillor J Baillie to Councillor Jordan

 

Given the difficulty in recruiting childcare social workers, what is being put in place to address this?

 

Answer

A cross-council project led by Children and Families to improve recruitment and retention has been under way in recent months. The project focuses on the ‘hardest to recruit to’ roles in the service, including social workers. The work is informed by local evidence and experience in the context of broader, more national, themes. This has helped to identify our specific recruitment and retention challenges and the work required in order to address these.

 

The project has looked at how we manage all the key stages of recruitment, from how we advertise roles online and in specialist media, the use of dedicated recruitment events, and targeted campaigns via social media in order to help improve our position and reputation across the region. We now have a Recruiter’s Licence on LinkedIn, which gives us scope to target individuals with specific skillsets and experience. We have developed new recruitment literature (e.g. “A day in the life of…”) and are also raising awareness of SCC employee benefits and wellness initiatives. There has been a focus on improving creativity in our advertising, and on how well we liaise with applicants. The interview and appointment processes have been improved, and applicants are now given more options about how they would like to engage in these processes. We have a clear ‘journey’ right up until the social worker starts in role, and we have also refreshed our induction and support arrangements to give our new colleague a good start in their employment with SCC.

 

Between February and June 2018 we received 62 applications for a social work position, which represented an approximately fourfold increase in applications when measured against the preceding 4 months. Of these, 18 were successful, 26 were of insufficient quality and 18 withdrew, usually as a result of receiving an offer of work elsewhere or because of unrealistic expectations around flexible working. 

 

The inaugural recruitment event held in February 2018 proved very successful, with nearly 100 registrations for the event resulting in 92 job applications, of which 43 were for social worker positions. The event also generated a good deal of positive feedback both from within SCC and also from the broader social work community. There will be a similar event in September 2018, along with a separate social event targeted at experienced social workers. 

 

At the time of writing there are 16 vacancies for social work roles in the service, which shows good progress compared to the position in February 2018 when there were 28 vacancies.

 

We continue to experience a significant degree of competition, especially for more experienced social workers. Some neighbouring authorities, which are less financially constrained, than ourselves, are also able to offer more administrative support within the role which helps them to attract and retain staff. In addition, Southampton continues to suffer from a legacy of poor reputation in its Children’s Services department which, despite the significant improvements made in recent years, is likely to continue to impact on our ability to recruit.

 

In addition, a majority of our recruits are newly qualified social workers, who cannot manage the same levels of caseload as more experienced workers. We also continue to experience challenges in retaining our newly-qualified staff: these are being addressed through a range of longer-term measures such as a wider training offer, improved levels of managerial support, and better career development opportunities.

 

10.Southampton Schools

 

Councillor J Baillie to Councillor Paffey

 

Is the Cabinet Member confident that in the coming years every child in the city will be able to attend a Southampton School?

 

Answer

Southampton City Council's forecasting of pupil numbers has been shown to be accurate to within 1%, making it one of the best in the country (confirmed by the Department for Education's place planning team). We are therefore confident that our school places have been planned accordingly, taking into account both the increased pupil numbers currently in our primary schools as well as the ‘pushback’ resulting from increased pupil numbers in Hampshire schools and a subsequent reduction in the number of Southampton pupils attending Hampshire schools .

 

Following the success of the primary expansion scheme which provided sufficient places for Southampton children, our Secondary School Expansion Programme due for approval at Cabinet on 17th July 2018 is reflective of our forecasting. To meet future demand, we propose a combined strategy of (1) filling capacity in existing schools, (2) expanding others in parts of the city where there is demand, and (3) the creation of a new 900 place secondary school.

 

With the majority of SCC schools being either Good or Outstanding, and the rest on the road to improvement, this approach will ensure there are sufficient good school places that will enable every child in Southampton to get the best start in life.

 

11.Rebranding Process

 

Councillor J Baillie to Councillor Kaur

 

What value will the city get out of the ‘rebranding’ process?

 

Answer

 

The work has been jointly commissioned by the two Universities, Business Improvement District, Cultural Development Trust, Associated British Ports and the City Council, with an aim of maximising the value of the substantial collective marketing spend of these organisations through an agreed common approach and narrative for the City. The ‘branding’ is the first stage of a process which will also involve the agreement of a Destination Management Plan for Southampton to attract increased visitors, inward investment, businesses and students, with associated economic benefits. In addition, funding organisations require evidence of local collaboration for the Visitor Economy, and this new approach has already yielded a successful partnership bid, led by Southampton City Council, for £250,000 to increase visitors to the City from the cruise industry.