Mixed results for council report card

A quarterly report card has assessed Baw Baw Shire’s performance in a number of service areas, with mixed results across the organisation.

While planning application delays continued, council recorded positive outcomes in its response to community requests and action against food premises complaints.

The number of council decisions made in meetings closed to the public were above target levels, raising a “red light” alarm for council.

The quarterly performance report presented to council reported on a number of key areas of council’s operations and services including community compliance, planning, libraries, financial responsibility including staff, community complaints and engagement and community assets.

The time taken to consider planning applications continued to increase in the January to March quarter.

The report said staff had focussed on determining older applications there were already outside the 60 day timeframe.

As a result the median number of days between receipt of a planning permit application and determination of the application had increased from 82 days the previous quarter to 98 days.

While planning responses increased, the time taken for council to respond to food premises complaints improved.

The report said there were four food related complaints during the quarter, all of which were responded to within one day.

“The average response time for the year to date has reduced to 1.94 days, which has improved by almost a day when compared to the same period last year,” the report said.

Council also received a positive result for the number of community requests resolved within 10 days.

The report said the percentage of “customer relationship management” requests that were resolved was 91 per cent compared to 85 per cent in 2016/16.

Resolution achieved within the 10 days was 78 per cent, which was a six per cent improvement on the previous year.

“As we see more activity in the CRM space we will hopefully be able to maintain positive statistics, however the limited resources at first point of call could impact on related statistics for the phones, such as an increased abandonment rate due to limited incoming lines and extended call times.”

The number of council decisions made at closed meetings to the public was in the “red light” category for performance.

Council attributed this to a number of large expenditure items relating to capital works being considered by council during the quarter.

“For expenditure of $250,000 or greater, these items under delegation must be held in confidential council meetings to protect the commercial interest of council.

Of the confidential decisions, council made 85 per cent of them public.

“Council has commenced a new process in which contractual matters are now being considered in open council meetings to improve transparency of council decisions and accountability with the community.

“The decrease in confidential council meetings will soon reflect the data collated as this progresses,” the report said.