Thread by @dresserman

Nice to see there's still plenty of money in the public sector:

Bradford - approved £5.5m for the development of an Advance Fuel Centre and the replacement of vehicles with compressed gas variants. To be funded by fuel cost savings and additional income from sales.

I like to think the principles of our work - pragmatism, truth-telling and reality of the situation, apply to all areas, not just retail.

Not in writing reports that show your target is getting further away, and worsening.....

Just look at that bottom metric.

Target is 9.76. (days of sickness, a year!) Was 10.25, now 12.96.

Bradford is doing ok on the air pollution metric.

That'll be why they approved a huge incinerator across the valley from where we all live then. @_RobbieMoore

The market visits are down, of course, COVID plays a part and Q4 is excluded (although(?)) The trend is obvious.

This is symptomatic of the disastrous handling of the markets by the council and the overzealous parking charges don't help either.

It should be noted that the ONS changed the methodology around 'gross value added' for the local economy so seemingly, because it rated Bradford downwards, they just didn't bother putting any more years beyond 2018 on the chart.

But still found time to put COVID on the 'how can we be better' so well done to them...

Dreadful.

The 'how can we make things better' often features excuses, ahead of time. Like 'a new inspection framework may prove to be more challenging'....

For school absence, another disaster.

Yet if you read the opening gambits, there's no real mention of the concerning areas. Again, in the retail world, we'd see the bad news and deal with it.

The abject performance here is blamed on:

Academies who manage their own attendance and absence procedures (presumably, encouraging them to take time off...)

The council's own attendance service is fully traded (what they mean is they don't fund it, schools have to pay under a strange hybrid system) and only 26 schools have the money to do it.

Plus a problem seemingly unique to Bradford and Bradford alone is that families take term-time holidays to save on flight costs.....

Also, 'families cite', not 'sight'.

Seemingly an admission that Bradford was placing SEN pupils in unsuitable placements with unsuitable provision too......

Bear with me, still going.

Why am I doing this?

You should too. More people are needed to scrutinise and be awkward. We all pay council tax and it's a fair old chunk of money.

We know things are not great, but look at what's served up to 'justify it'.....

Early years - 1% increase, but still 4% behind the national average.

Still 2.7% behind their own target.

But the gap has closed by 1%. Remember the positive.

Not the miss.

On-time education health assessments? 20-week target?

28% done on time in Bradford.

They blame historical issues but the code of practice changed in 2014 and there was time to convert statements, this was done, it's simply down to mismanagement.

It's entirely unclear why other issues such as 'systems' and 'staffing' are referred to when they had the same amount of time as other authorities to get used to the new systems and processes.

Which came in (checks year), 6 years previously.

We only see 2018/2019 figures...

It's of no surprise to anyone in Bradford who has had to deal with this, just shambolic.

Who was asking questions?

There's now a focus on 'compliancy matters' which essentially means they accept they were not compliant with the law, essentially.

Which is a slight issue.

Positives?

Someone is now managing the emails.

More restructures planned to increase the number of referrals, perhaps they can remove the barriers to families legal rights to assessments too.

Why with all this, failure to adhere to your statutory duties in law.

Would you, in 2016/2017, develop a non-statutory plan framework with huge paperwork based requirement when you're unable to fulfil your legal duty?

It's beyond me.

Here's a good idea.

If you fail miserably to achieve your target that the CMO has set - 150 mins of moderate exercise a week.

Why not find another piece of research and thus another benchmark that suits your requirements.

Bonus points if it makes you look better.

Target too hard? Just reduce it.

Anything linked to social care is generally grim reading for Bradford, judged as seriously failing by Ofsted = 'shock' from those responsible.

This is a target to reduce the % of kids who have 3 (three!!!) or more (!) placements in the last year.

Clue - the rising line isn't good. Bonus points are that we get 2020 on there (provisional so could be higher).

Notably 'supply and demand' is blamed, not enough carers or foster families seemingly.

I wonder why that is.

transparencyproject.org.uk/bradford-counc…

Their decision to cut pay rates for families might have had something to do with it.

Saving £500k helped, it was based on 'case law' that seemingly, wasn't new and perhaps didn't even exist.

Which is why, 3 years later, you need to 'rebuild the sense of community' within the fostering service...

Frightening.

Performance management is key.

In 18-19 the number of staff with a 'goal' - in life? Work? For the week? Retirement? Entirely unclear actually went down.

However for 19-20 - it was up to 48%!!!

The target was 90%.

Beyond belief. Perhaps explained by the revelation that 308 managers had training on the system in 19-20.

Presumably, for 2 years previously, it has been paid for but no one knew how to use it.

Performance management is taken so seriously, that 48% of people actually recorded their goal when the target was 90%.

Who is being performance managed for that miss?

Where retailers are regularly hammered for not having enough representation on boards and in leadership positions, local authorities you'd assume would be the same.

Not so, Bradford missed its target again.

However, the proportion of disabled employees grew.

By 0.03%.

This is a 5-year target - 5.4% was the target set way back (given it's a 5-year plan) but the council has only got to 4.34% (despite the huge 0.03% rise this year).

It was at under 2.5% when it started.

Despite it being a 5-year plan and indeed, despite the year ending for the council in early April 2020.....

COVID is blamed for this failure. Commencement of technological work was delayed due to Covid-19.

Lockdown was announced in late March 2020(!)

Perhaps a fair nod for people not wanting to disclose their disability, it's a difficult one being voluntary but the spirit of the target is to get more folk with disabilities into the workplace.

Not make excuses.

An ongoing 'joke' is the public sector sick days and it appears that Bradford are bad here too, lots of sick days, nearly 13 per person each year.

Data shows a decline 19/20 (of 0.04 days) but this is unadjusted, presumably because adjusted data would show a further rise.

Not a significant reduction overall (it's 0.04 days, it's not even a reduction).

A big reduction in sickness in Health and Wellbeing (irony not lost) and Place - over 4,600 fewer days.

Despite this, it still went up overall over the years.

The cost of this? Huge.

The cost of a reduction of 0.04 days for a Full-time employee for 19/20? The time calculating the saving would wipe out any saving in cash terms.

But why is the rate so bad and barely improving? (To be fair, it's not improving at all)...

There were no targets to even discuss absence when triggers were hit, so they were implemented. (astonishing in itself).

Target? 85%

Actual? 54%

So 46% of absentees hitting trigger points don't have a conversation about why they've been off etc and therefore, presumably, don't ever hit the disciplinary structures/pathways.

No wonder there's a problem.

Targets are being integrated into management performance objectives.

Perhaps by 2025, they'll be actually measured on them.

To summarise.

Embarrassing.

I was only reading out of curiosity but scrutiny is good, it's all common sense really.

That being said - the future is bright.

Paying £1m to a London based consultancy (helping the local economy I note) to advise on how to save money.

Unbelievable.

thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/18606269.…

@threadreaderapp pls unroll

#bradford