Meeting documents

Apologies were received from Mr D Meacock, Mr A Oxley and Mr S Chhokar.

Mr P Cooper and Mr T Jones declared an interest in Item 5 as they were members of the Aylesbury Vale Licensing Authority.

of the Meeting held on 30 October 2007

The Minutes of the meeting held on 30 October 2007 were agreed and signed as a correct record.

Angela Macpherson to distribute membership details of the BSP to all Members   ACTION: AM

Feedback on the outcomes of the member input to prioritising the indicators for scrutiny.

Angela Macpherson – Policy Officer

Angela Macpherson, Policy Officer, told Members that following responses to the indicators spreadsheet, the two indicators with the most interest from Members had been 42 (a and b) and 71.

Members will receive a briefing from the lead officer for the LAA, reviewing the past year’s performance and outlining key achievements and challenges.

Dean Taylor - Strategic Director, Safer and Stronger Communities

The Chairman welcomed Dean Taylor, Strategic Director for Safer and Stronger Communities, to the meeting. Dean Taylor told Members that Chief Superintendent Paul Tinnion, Thames Valley Police, who had been due to attend the meeting, had sent his apologies.

Dean Taylor told Members the following:

• The Safer and Stronger Communities Block was one of four blocks in the LAA. Dean Taylor and Paul Tinnion were joint leads of the block, on behalf of the Safer Bucks Partnership Board.
• Multi-agency workshops had been held to set the indicators, and there had been a high level of consensus on issues.
• The block had 26 target indicators. Progress had been good. The last report to GOSE had showed 5 targets marked as red (these were targets 30, 33, 39, 41 and 42).
• Culture changes were important for the achievement of targets. There had been some early difficulties, but the rigour of the delivery plans had worked well. Targets which were also in the Public Service Agreement had been most successful.
• An alcohol strategy had been launched at the beginning of October 2007. This had been the first strategy of its kind in Buckinghamshire.
• Partnership working in Buckinghamshire had already been excellent, but had improved through the LAA. It was hoped that a Safer Buckinghamshire Partnership Manager would be jointly appointed by BCC and Thames Valley Police.
• As regarded funding, £90 000 had been secured through smarter commissioning. This funding was open to bids from local schemes. A new partner hub had also been agreed. The total budget for Safer and Stronger Communities Commissioning was £1.2m.

Dean Taylor told Members that the LAA (and specifically the Safer and Stronger Communities Block) faced the following challenges:

• Cynicism
• Patchy involvement by Members
• Capacity issues (BCC had a lead role, but no extra resources)
• Tension between the number of indicators for the ‘Safer’ part of the block and those for the ‘Stronger’ part of the block
• Difficulties with mandatory indicators imposed by central government
• Perception indicators (influenced by the media)
• Cuts in funding – there had been a 14% cut earlier in the year, with no prior consultation. The 14% equated to headroom which had been created through savings.

Dean Taylor said that better commissioning was required for the future.

Members discussed the Safer and Stronger Communities Block. Among the topics discussed were:

• Licensing hours; availability of alcohol; regulation of licensing
• The availability and low cost of alcohol in supermarkets/local newsagents and what controls were in place.
• Why people drank alcohol, especially very young teenagers, and how the police dealt with under-age drinking.
• Data from hospitals re: alcohol related accidents which could be used to pinpoint venues which were trouble ‘hotspots.’
• The role of industry – whether profits should be put back into prevention programmes.
• The responsibility of parents in regard to alcohol

Dean Taylor said that Education programmes in schools had traditionally been about drugs. However the charity that ran the programmes also looked at alcohol issues. Part of the alcohol strategy was to extend these  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

Members will be introduced to the performance plus software that has been designed to help Members, managers and officers to manage performance against the LAA targets.

Ben Chisnall - Policy Officer, Partnerships

The Chairman welcomed Ben Chisnall, Policy Officer, to the meeting.

Ben Chisnall showed Members the Performance Plus system. The LAA and the Corporate Plan were now on the Performance Plus system, which meant that all performance data was now on one server.

Performance Plus would be rolled out to all service areas over the next year.

A quarterly report on the LAA was produced from Performance Plus which was sent to the Programme Board.

Ben Chisnall told Members that the best way to access the Performance Plus system was through the internet site. The coding was as follows:

Green star = target on track

Amber circle = within 5% of the target

Red = below target

The spreadsheet in Performance Plus was arranged by outcomes.

The Direction of Travel box compared the gap between the actual outcome and the target for the current quarter and for the previous quarter. The Direction of Travel was not a performance alert tool but was useful to look at as an indication.

The spreadsheets showed data from the whole of Buckinghamshire. However when the data from Thames Valley Police was entered, it was broken down into districts. Some targets were at a district level.

Some indicators had no targets, as there was no baseline. All baselines had to be approved by the Government Office for the South East (GOSE). Targets could be negotiated with GOSE.

Each indicator in the system could be separated into sub-sets. Ben Chisnall also told Members that indicators without targets might appear on the Delivery Plans.

A Member noted that the targets needed to be looked at to ensure that they were right for the County.

The Chairman thanked Ben Chisnall for attending the meeting. Ben Chisnall told Members that the performance officers in each district were Tamsin Ireland (AVDC), James Streeter (CDC), Rachel Winfield (SBDC) and Jacqueline Ford (WDC).

The working group will have the opportunity to discuss the work plan arising from the proposed priority indicators. The actions and next steps in the process will be agreed by the group.

Angela Macpherson - Policy Officer

Members agreed that the task and finish group would look at the following three indicators:

42:

a. Increase the numbers of Class A drug seizures.

b. Increase the number of people charged with supply (including Possession with intent to supply) of Class A drugs.

43:

Increase in targeted detections of Under Age Sales – the number of detected under age sales as a percentage of the number of visits made by trading standards officers.

71:

Increase % of people who feel that parents in their local area take responsibility for the behaviour of their children.

It was also agreed that all visits would be undertaken by the whole group, rather than the group being split up to look at different topics.

The Chairman suggested that the group could visit the Accident and Emergency Department of a local hospital on a Friday or Saturday evening.

It was also suggested that young people be involved in the Review. One way of doing this was through the Youth Council.

Angela Macpherson, Policy Officer, said that she would send Members an e-mail link to the delivery plans for the above three indicators   ACTION: AM

Attendance at meetings was discussed. All Members needed to be aware of the importance of attending meetings, and should send a deputy if unable to attend.   ACTION: ALL MEMBERS

It was also suggested that future meetings could be held at DistrictCouncil offices as well as at BCC offices ACTION: HW

PROVISIONAL - 17 January 2008, 2:30pm, Large Dining Room, Judges’ Lodgings, Aylesbury

17 January 2008 at 2:30pm in the Large Dining Room, Judges’ Lodgings, Aylesbury