Agenda item

(To receive a report by Sophie Reeve (Assistant Director – Commercial), and Arnd Hobohm (Serco Contract Manager), which provides an update of Serco's performance against contractual Key Performance Indicators specified in the Corporate Support Services Contract between August and December 2021)

Consideration was given to a report by the Assistant Director – Commercial which provided an update on the performance of the corporate support services contract for months 77 to 81 of the contract since its commencement in April 2015. 

The Board was asked to note that following general suspension of service credits in the early stages of Covid-19 in 2020, there were now no remaining instances of Covid-related mitigation.

The Board was referred to the overall Key Performance Indicator (KPI) summary performance, which was set out at Table 1.

There had been no instances where KPIs failed to meet the Minimum Service Level (red status) during the review period. However, there were three KPIs which failed to meet target service level, of which details were provided within the report:

·         CSC_KPI_04 % of total Calls that are Abandoned Calls

·         CSC_KPI_11 - Portion of Light Touch Reviews, Annual Reviews, and Carer's Assessments started within agreed timescales

·         PM_KPI_06 - Number of People Mgt. Records assessed in Spot Checks to contain errors, omissions or inaccuracies.

The Board was advised of the details of those KPI’s which had been granted mitigation over the period.

KPI’s were subject to a continuous process of review. During the review period, there had been one change which was the discontinuation of IMT_KPI_14 (windows end user devices patched within 21 days of release of critical operating system updates) as the responsibility now sat with Microsoft.

The Director of Services - Serco informed the Board that the previous period had been a challenging period for recruitment within the contact centre, with a higher turnover of staff than other areas. However, the service had managed well and was working hard on transformation activity across the whole contract and was committed to leaving the contract in a positive state.

The Children’s and Adult services contact centre had recently changed their operating model to a triage system which had impacted positively on the service and had allowed for an increase in demand whilst not impacting on staff resources.

Within the IMT service, the move to the Cloud system had been a successful programme of collaborative work and had brought savings to the Council of £50,000 per month.

Serco continued to work with Barnardo’s to mentor young care leavers and would be working with the University of Lincoln and the Council to research different technologies which may help the social care sector.

Consideration was given to the report and during the discussion the following points were noted:

• Serco had made significant progress on the carers set up within adult care. The reason for the reduction in the percentage of annual reviews and carers assessment starting within agreed time scale was due to absence within a highly skilled team and high volumes of work meaning levels were unable to be met. Serco was continuing to assess different operating models for the service and was working to review the KPI’s moving forward to cover more of the service offering.
• 0.46% of the total number of calls abandoned equated to around 150 abandoned calls.

RESOLVED:

            That the Board be assured about the performance of the corporate           support services contract.