Agenda item

To present the draft Corporate Plan for the period 2024 to 2027 to Council, and to recommend its approval and adoption from 1 April 2024.

Members considered the Corporate Plan for 2024-2027, as recommended by the Cabinet meeting held on 18 January 2024.

The mover of the report, with the consent of Council was allowed to speak for a further five minutes on this motion.

In moving the report, the Cabinet Member for Corporate Governance and Licensing outlined that this was a Plan grounded in a comprehensive evidence base, informing the Council’s strategic direction and priorities. It was designed to be ambitious, realistic, dynamic and adaptable, with a long-term focus of where the District needed to be in the medium term.

The development of the ‘Plan’ was guided by three fundamental principles:

·       Listening and being responsive to the needs of all our communities.

·       Building public trust and confidence by promoting a culture of openness, transparency and accountability.

·       Providing value-for-money for residents and businesses through responsible and prudent use of resources. 

The Corporate Plan was based on a golden thread. This was the thread that connected all work, at all levels of the organisation, directly to the overarching vision, priorities and ambitions. The vision was to be ‘A thriving district in which to live, work and visit’.

The Priorities were the core of the Plan. There were five, each representing a key sphere of activity for the Council:

Priority 1 - Connecting Communities: To enhance the strength, wellbeing, security and capacity of all our communities for a thriving and cohesive society that all our residents are proud to belong to. 

Priority 2 - Sustainable South Kesteven: To meet the challenge of climate change and ensure a clean, green and healthy natural and built environment for present and future generations.

Priority 3 - Enabling Economic Opportunity: To enable and support a dynamic, resilient and growing local economy, which benefited all our communities.

Priority 4 - Housing: To ensure that all residents can access housing which is safe, good quality, sustainable and suitable for their needs and future generations.

Priority 5 - Effective Council: To deliver trusted, high quality and value-for-money services that fulfilled the needs and expectations of all our residents.

Each Priority contained a series of Ambitions. Each Ambition stimulated a range of programmes and projects. Below the Ambitions sat the Actions, detailing specific pieces of work the Council would be undertaking over this Corporate Plan cycle. The Actions would be monitored through the suite of Key Performance Indicators (KPIs), which would be reported to the Overview & Scrutiny Committees and Cabinet.

Each Priority contained a number of 2034 Outcomes. The Outcomes introduced an element of longer-term strategic planning. The Plan recognised that the Council could not solve these challenges or deliver the Vision for the District alone. The Outcomes were intended to provide long term focal points to bring together residents, businesses, skills providers, partners and community groups to develop and deliver action– united by the common goal of a thriving South Kesteven. This provided a positive strategic framework for the Council to face to the future, rather than being purely reactive to events.

The Plan was underpinned by three elements that were collectively called the Foundations. Each was integral to the success of the Plan. These were:

·       Financial Sustainability – how the Plan would be funded. A commitment to and the practice of sound and prudent financial management was crucial.

·       Performance Management – how delivery would be monitored, improvements driven, and open and transparent accountability upheld.

·       Corporate Values and Equalities – the ethos in which the Plan would be delivered.

The Plan was developed through an evidence-based approach. On 11 September 2023, Cabinet approved the State of the District (SOTD) report 2023. This document, the first of its type for the Council, provided a comprehensive and data driven account of the society and economic performance of South Kesteven.

The developing Plan was refined through three workshops, which all Members were invited to attend in early October 2023. Feedback from the Members confirmed the Priorities and informed further development of the Ambitions.

An all-Member consultation was undertaken from 10-17 November 2023.The Priorities were supported by 84% of respondents (averaged across the five priorities) and the Ambitions by 90.67%. A four-week Public Consultation subsequently followed from 22 November to 19 December 2023. The consultation received 587 responses; the second highest response of any consultation undertaken in the last eighteen months. The Priorities were supported by 80.86% of respondents (averaged across the five priorities) and the Ambitions by 86.41%.

The motion was duly seconded.

The following points were raised during debate:

·       Concerns were raised over a potential reduction in ambition due to the change in wording between the old and new Plans from the ‘best’ District in which to work live and visit, to a ‘thriving’ District. However, it was important for any ambitions to be deliverable.

·       The previous Plan had 15 ambitions whereas there were 28 ambitions in the latest draft.

·       The Institute for Fiscal Studies had looked at the impact on funding for local Councils and public expenditure, and the forecasts for growth for local authorities were not currently positive.

·       It was important to develop KPIs coherently and with realistic targets, and the mechanism for doing this was key. There was a commitment to open and independent Scrutiny through the 5 Overview and Scrutiny Committees.

·       A clear year on year target for the number of properties to be built or acquired for social leasing should have been within the Plan.

·       Trees and woodland played a key part in alleviating flooding across the District and they should not be removed unless appropriate. A tree workshop had been run to fine tune the approach to the natural environment.

·       Whilst it was important to have goals within the Plan related to climate change it could sometimes work against the local authority to have rigid policies in relation to solar farms. An example was given of Basildon Council where the Planning Committee refused a solar farm application; it went to appeal, and the Planning Inspectorate overturned the decision of the Planning authority and granted permission. The reason given was the Climate Change Strategy Action Plan. Any policy documents the Council produced should allow for some flexibility, with the aim of allowing the local Council a greater say in what was constructed in its own area.

·       The mechanism within Priority 4 (Housing) should have included improvements to the time taken to complete works in relation to voids. However, there had recently been a Voids Workshop which had been attended by a number of members which had delivered some useful information.

·       The communities of South Kesteven needed to be put first; however there were large inequalities within communities even within individual wards. Every voice needed to be heard.

·       The Plan was a substantial document highlighting the District’s proud military and aviation heritage. However, there were no references to an ambition or an undertaking to continue or improve support for the armed forces community.

·       The Council had set up a Youth Council which had been doing good work. However, it was unclear whether schools, especially 6^th Forms and colleges had been consulted on the Plan.

·       Three member workshops were held on the Plan; 23 members took part across all three sessions, which were held in both the daytime and the evening.

Note:  Councillor Ian Stokes left the meeting.

·       The Local Plan was set separately and the Corporate Plan could not contradict it.

·       The content around ‘Connecting Communities’ was most welcomed, but if this was to include public transport the further work was required to link up the District. Lincolnshire County Council had seen budget cuts and there was now only £1 million to provide bus services across Lincolnshire.

Note:  With the consent of Council, speech time was cut to three minutes per Councillor.

·       Over 140,000 people live in South Kesteven, and 587 people responded to the consultation.

In summing up, the Cabinet Member for Corporate Governance and Licensing thanked members for their contributions, and also addressed the issue of online survey responses by explaining that South Kesteven District Council’s public consultations were carried out using Survey Monkey, a market-leading survey software that was also used by some of the world’s biggest companies.

The consultation officer collected IP addresses from survey responses and entered them on a separate tab on an Excel spreadsheet so they were not associated with any other personal data, in line with GDPR. These were then checked in order to establish if there were multiple responses from the same IP address using the duplicate search function on Excel. If there were two responses from the same IP address it was reasonable to assume that they were from members of the same household who had completed the survey using the same device.

There were no anomalies identified in the Corporate Plan responses.

Having been proposed and seconded and upon being put to the vote, it was AGREED:

DECISION:

That the Council:

1. Approves the Corporate Plan 2024-27.

2. Requests the Overview and Scrutiny Committees develop and monitor the new Key Performance Indicators (KPI).

Note:  The meeting adjourned at 4:16pm and reconvened at 4:36 pm.