Finance and Corporate Resources - Resource Plan progress

Finance and Corporate Resources - Quarter 4 progress

Progress reports on the Resource Plans are provided at the end of the financial year (Quarter 4).

Progress>

Our performance management reporting system IMPROVe uses a traffic light format with the following definitions to give a status report on each action or performance measure:

Status Definition
Blue Project complete
Green The timescale or target has been met as per expectations
Amber There has been minor slippage against timescale or minor shortfall against target
Red There has been major slippage against timescale or major shortfall against target
Report later The information is not yet available to allow us to say whether the target has been reached or not. This will be reported when available.
Contextual Included for "information only", to set performance information in context.
Status Statistical measures Project measures Total %
Blue N/A 9 9 22%
Green 15 7 22 54%
Amber 4 2 6 14%
Red 2 0 2 5%
Report later/Contextual 0 2 2 5%
Totals 21 20 41 100%

Data as at 28 May 2026

Key achievements

Key achievements to date against each of the <six> Connect Outcomes are summarised below:

Connect Outcome - Communities and environment

  • A variety of engagement approaches have been undertaken to recruit and increase participation in Stakeholder Groups. Community events, drop-ins, and community conversations have been facilitated in several neighbourhood planning areas, bringing together residents and those delivering services, with the aim of promoting awareness around what has been achieved through neighbourhood planning to date and showcasing Participatory Budget-funded activities and the benefits projects bring. The Community Planning website is being used to highlight and promote the work and achievements of Stakeholder Groups, raising awareness of what communities are achieving and highlighting the variety of opportunities available to get involved.

Connect Outcome - Education and learning

  • No Resource Outcomes for this Connect Outcome

Connect Outcome - Health and wellbeing

  • No Resource Outcomes for this Connect Outcome

Connect Outcome – Children and young people

  • No Resource Outcomes for this Connect Outcome

Connect Outcome - Housing and land

  • No Resource Outcomes for this Connect Outcome

Connect Outcome - Our economy

  • No Resource Outcomes for this Connect Outcome

In addition to working towards the Connect Outcomes, we will continually aim to improve and ensure effective and efficient use of resources, and that business will be conducted with integrity and transparency and will operate to the highest standards.  In order to monitor and report progress against these values, Resource outcomes have also been identified under the heading Delivering the Plan and achieving Best Value. Related achievements to date are summarised below:

  • We continue to review our current processes and identify areas for improvement, including changes to the application process for the National Entitlement Card, where we have improved the telephony channels and updated the website, giving customers improved contact information to apply or renew. A new online form has also been developed for the application for a Disabled Parking Bay, setting out the criteria, ensuring customers are aware of the qualifying criteria before applying. These improvements are part of our programme to provide our customers with increased accessibility to services
  • Under the Customer Services Engagement Review, significant work is taking place in the development of a business case for the implementation of a customer experience platform, the development of the council’s first Customer Experience Strategy and the review of service structures used to provide customer services across the council
  • A set of audited Accounts has been produced and received a clean audit certificate. These were approved for signature by the Risk and Audit Scrutiny Committee by the submission date of 30 September 2025
  • During the period 1 April 2025 - 31 March 2026, SLC employees completed 88,462 eLearning modules. In the same period, 7,674 employees attended 808 classroom-based events, and 973 employees attended 119 virtual online events
  • The Digital Telecare Project has been formally signed off and closed
  • Partial go-live of the new Housing Management System in January 2026
  • Completion of the initial CoPilot Accelerator programme
  • A dashboard of key facts and figures about South Lanarkshire, including time trends and comparisons with Scotland, was developed to complement the Council Plan and provide a quality-assured source of core statistics for council officers and members of the public. Once the dashboard has been tested and refined through internal feedback, a public version will be made available via the council’s website

Progress to date against the full suite of measures is contained in the Finance and Corporate Resources Quarter 4 progress report 2025-26 presented to the Finance and Corporate Resources Committee.

Scope for improvement

Measures that have been classified as ‘red’ (major slippage against timescale or shortfall against target) are noted below, together with reasons and management actions being taken, and the management action now being taken, where applicable.

Delivering the plan and achieving Best Value

Resource Outcome: The council demonstrates high standards of governance and sound financial stewardship

Measure Comments/Progress Action by Manager

Liquor licensing processing – target 97%

Our individual monthly totals for Q4 are as follows:-

January 2026 – 71.43%
February 2026 – 100%
March 2026 – 97%

Whilst performance has now been generally consistently above target since October, a challenging month (January) fell below target due to work supporting the increase in registrations from the previous month of December which was an additional 92, alongside other ongoing business and festive annual leave.

We continue to work towards a sustained improvement in performance, including through planned staff training, recruitment to vacancies, which have been successful with both posts filled, active absence management, review of staff accommodation arrangements and more proactive allocation of tasks. Longer term, it is anticipated that the planned introduction of an upgraded licensing case management system in 2026 will also assist.

Team Leaders have been reminded to continue to allocate tasks depending on the nature of the business within performance targets where possible. The management team will continue to oversee this.

Resource Outcome:   Customers experience high quality and improving council services

Measure Comments/Progress Action by Manager

Customer Service Centre – average queue time (in seconds)

Performance has been impacted by a range of factors. High staff turnover, training commitments, absences, the implementation of new systems, manual recording of information, and an increase in calls following the garden waste permit renewal, annual council tax billing and DHP renewals have resulted in performance being below the target.

Customer Services continues to work with Personnel Services regarding recruitment and the management of absences. We continue to liaise with Resources on training and support for new systems and processes. Support is provided from other call handling teams during busy periods, and we are developing technology solutions to support customer enquiries

Scrutiny of change in measure status

A further analysis introduced to aid scrutiny of performance is to highlight and explain all measures that have changed status from Quarter 2 to Quarter 4. On analysis of these, four measures improved and three measures declined in performance. Details of these seven measures are included in the table below. The remaining measures under scrutiny changed from Green or Report later to Blue (complete)/Green and need no further action.

Performance has improved from Q2 to Q4

Measure Q2 status Q4 status Updated comments
Sundry income collection Amber Green An annual collection target of 97.5% was set for Sundry Debt in 2025-26, and a collection rate of 98.2% was achieved.
Registration processing target - 97.5% within service targets Red Amber Despite improvements in performance in Quarter 4, the annual result fell below the target. Workload is prioritised depending on the nature of the business and priority is given to urgent time-critical service requests.
Migrate to the new Integrated Housing and Property Management system Red Amber Housing elements went live as planned in January 2026. Repairs and Assets have been delayed and the revised go-live date is being developed.
Migrate to the new Social Work Information system Red Green Revised timeline for go-live agreed for May 2026 (went live successfully on 18 May)

Performance has declined from Q2 to Q4

Measure Q2 status Q4 status Updated comments
Respond to FOI/EIR Requests within the statutory timescale Green Amber Slight slippage, 0.44% below target. The position will be monitored.
Customer Service Centre: average queue time (in seconds) Amber Red Performance has been impacted by a range of factors. High staff turnover, training commitments, absences, the implementation of new systems, manual recording of information, and an increase in calls following the garden waste permit renewal, annual council tax billing and DHP renewals have resulted in performance being below the target. In addition, an increase in the call queue lengths has been trialled, which has also contributed to longer waiting times for some customers. Customer Services continues to work with Personnel Services regarding recruitment and the management of absences. We continue to liaise with Resources on training and support for new systems and processes. Turnover has stabilised, absence levels have reduced, and more staff are in post.
Deliver action plan on Digital Inclusion as a key stakeholder of the Digital Inclusion sub-group. Green Amber Digital Inclusion subgroup has agreed on an approach and developed a plan for services to address exclusion. Delivery is now expected in Q1/Q2 2026-27.