Improvement and Efficiency Sub-Committee

This morning I attended a meeting of the Improvement and Efficiency Sub-Committee. I raised a couple of questions. On the first report I asked questions about the performance indicator on 'Number of Learning Centre users as a % of the population.' The Leisure and Communities Department point out that many people use their own computing devices on the wireless networks available in libraries and community centres. Currently they are unable to quantify how many people log on in this manner I asked whether it would be possible to quantify this. I was told that the department didn't know but that they were actively looking into this. I also noted that the intention was not to use this as a performance indicator in the future. I sought some clarification on this as I was concerned that we were dropping an indicator mostly because it was going in the wrong direction. I was reassured that this was not the case.

On the second report I asked questions about equality impact assessments. I am concerned that the Best Value 2 Audit highlighted this as an area where there is a need for improvement. I asked about this and pointed out that I had searched the City Council's website and had found information that was old, dating from 2007. I was told that there was more recent information available online and that I must have come across old information. I was grateful to be told by officers that they would tidy-up the website and ensure that only current information was available. The information I was talking about is here. In these times of change and even cuts in local government I believe that it is crucial that we take Equality Impact Assessment seriously. We need to ameliorate the actions which the council will take, we must ensure that the poorest and weakest are not hit disproportionately. As a Labour councillor I will try my best to ensure that we protect the poorest and weakest in our city.