Agenda item

The Committee considered the report of the Interim Corporate Director of Resources (Interim) that presented the progress towards achieving the key outcomes of the Council’s corporate performance framework (for copy of report, see file of minutes).

The Corporate Scrutiny and Strategy Manager was in attendance to present the report.

He reported that overall environment cleanliness remained good but fly tipping incidents reported to the council were on the increase and were at a three-year high. Members were advised that Highway and Transport Satisfaction Survey results were released and were favourable for County Durham although the cleanliness of pavements in County Durham were lower than the national rates but higher than the rate for the North East.

The Community Action Team had just completed a project in Horden, and 366 issues of concern were identified and tackled that included the issue of 311 legal notices to enforce some activity. The next area of focus for the team would be Shildon. The find and fix team had undertaken works in 34 area across the county.

The Corporate Scrutiny and Strategy Manager then referred to carbon emissions and adapting to climate change and advised members that the provisional estimates showed that the council were 59% lower than the 2008 baseline. There had been a 17% reduction in carbon emissions in comparison to last year’s figure which was a significant reduction and was normally 6% a year and COVID-19 had a major contribution towards this reduction that was not sustainable.

Cabinet had considered a report this week on additional tree planting scheme that aimed to plant a tree for every child of school age that amounted to 69,000 trees through a woodland creation programme in partnership with a charity. Cabinet had also considered the leisure transformation programme that included adopting the BREEAM excellent standards for leisure centres that would contribute towards carbon emissions.

In terms of waste, one of the key indicators for household recycling showed the tonnage of both refuse and recycling had increased since the first lockdown. Recycling tonnage had increased but it hadn’t increased as sharply as refuse tonnage so the recycling rate proportion that’s recycled had gone down by two percentage points since last year. The increase in the volume of waste nationally had meant that waste disposal facilities were at capacity and have had to process some waste through non-energy waste channels such as landfill. This had resulted in the percentage of waste that was diverted from landfill was reduced by 2.7 percentage points since last year’s figures. There had also been a steady increase in contamination levels of household recycling that resulted in that recycling not been able to be processed that had a financial effect on the council as they had to compensate contractors, this was monitored and action undertaken. There had been a six percent increase in the garden waste collection uptake and a three percent increase in bulky household waste collection.

The Chair noted that in terms of performance it was not significantly different to what they would normally expect. COVID had impacted on services, although it was disappointing to see the figures this could be recovered and performance improved.

Resolved: That the overall position and direction of travel in relation to quarter three performance, the impact of COVID-19 on performance and the actions being taken to address areas of underperformance including the significant economic and well-being challenges due to the pandemic be noted.