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Agenda Document Pack - Scrutiny and Performance Committee - 24/04/2024

Perth and Kinross Council · 24 April 2024
Back to Scrutiny and Performance Committee — 24 April 2024 and its agenda

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Page 1

Securing the future… • Improving services 
• Enhancing quality of life • Making the best use of public
resources 
Council Building
2 High Street
Perth
PH1 5PH 
17/04/2024 
A hybrid meeting of the Scrutiny and Performance Committee will be held in the
Council Chamber on Wednesday, 24 April 2024 at 09:30. 
If you have any queries please contact Committee Services on (01738) 475000 or
email Committee@pkc.gov.uk. 
THOMAS GLEN
Chief Executive 
Those attending the meeting are requested to ensure that all notifications are
silent on their device and other devices are in silent mode. 
Please note that the meeting will be broadcast online and recorded.  The
recording will be publicly available on the Council’s website following the
meeting. 
Members:
Councillor Colin Stewart  (Convener)
Bailie Alasdair Bailey  (Vice-Convener)
Councillor Keith Allan
Councillor Steven Carr
Councillor Angus Forbes
Councillor Michelle Frampton
Councillor Ian Massie
Councillor Willie Robertson
Councillor Caroline Shiers
Councillor Frank Smith
Councillor Jack Welch
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Scrutiny and Performance Committee 
Wednesday, 24 April 2024 
AGENDA 
MEMBERS ARE REMINDED OF THEIR OBLIGATION TO DECLARE ANY
FINANCIAL OR NON-FINANCIAL INTEREST WHICH THEY MAY HAVE IN ANY
ITEM ON THIS AGENDA IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE COUNCILLORS’ CODE
OF CONDUCT. 
1 WELCOME AND APOLOGIES   
2 DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST   
3 MINUTE OF MEETING OF SCRUTINY AND PERFORMANCE
COMMITTEE OF 31 JANUARY 2024 FOR APPROVAL
(copy herewith) 
5 - 12 
4 OUTSTANDING BUSINESS STATEMENT (OBS)
(copy herewith 24/122) 
13 - 16 
5 WEATHER EVENTS - IMPROVEMENT PLAN
(copy herewith 24/123) 
17 - 22 
6 TAYSIDE CONTRACTS   
6(i)  TAYSIDE CONTRACTS ANNUAL PERFORMANCE REPORT
2022/23
(copy herewith 24/124) 
23 - 74 
6(ii)  SUPPORTED SELF ASSESSMENT OF TAYSIDE CONTRACTS -
OUTCOME
(copy herewith 24/125) 
75 - 108 
7 SUMMARY REPORT ON CARE INSPECTORATE AND
EDUCATION SCOTLAND INSPECTIONS
Report by Strategic Lead - Education and Learning (copy herewith
24/126) 
109 - 124 
8 ARMS LENGTH EXTERNAL ORGANISATIONS - UPDATE ON
FINANCIAL PERFORMANCE AND BUSINESS
TRANSFORMATION
Report by Head of Culture and Community Services (copy herewith
24/127) 
125 - 144
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9  PERTH AND KINROSS HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE
PARTNERSHIP (HSCP) CLINICAL AND CARE GOVERNANCE
ASSURANCE REPORT
Report by Chief Officer, Perth and Kinross HSCP (copy herewith
24/128) 
145 - 200 
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SCRUTINY AND PERFORMANCE COMMITTEE 
Minute of hybrid meeting of the Scrutiny and Performance Committee held in the
Council Chambers, 2 High Street, Perth, on Wednesday 31 January 2024 at 09.30am. 
Present: Councillor C Stewart, Bailie A Bailey, Bailie C Ahern (substituting for
Councillor K Allan), A Forbes, K Harvey (substituting for Councillor S Carr), M
Frampton, I Massie, W Robertson, C Shiers, F Smith, and J Welch. 
In Attendance: T Glen, Chief Executive; C Mailer (Director – Strategy, People and
Resources); B Renton (Executive Director (Communities)); S Devlin (Executive Director
(Education and Children’s Services)); F Robertson, K Johnston, E Ritchie, M
Butterworth, F Crofts, A Brown, H Hope and S Skene (Communities); K Ogilvy and M
Dickson (HSCP); L Simpson, A Taylor, L Dott, K Molley, A Brown, and M Pasternak
(Strategy, People and Resources). 
Also in attendance: C Glasgow and C Hood, PTCH; P Cromwell and D McElhose, LAL
Ltd; and H Smout, Culture P&K 
Apologies: Councillors K Allan and S Carr 
Councillor C Stewart, Convener, Presiding. 
The Convener led discussion on Items 1- 5 & 7-8 and the Vice-Convener led discussion
on item 6. 
1. WELCOME AND APOLOGIES 
The Convener welcomed all those present to the meeting and apologies were
noted above. 
2. DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST 
No declarations of interest were made in terms of the Councillors’ Code of
Conduct. 
THE COMMITTEE AGREED TO VARY THE ORDER OF BUSINESS AT THIS POINT. 
3. MINUTES 
3(i) MINUTE OF SPECIAL MEETING OF THE SCRUTINY AND PERFORMANCE
COMMITTEE OF 22 NOVEMBER 2023 
The minute of special meeting of the Scrutiny and Performance Committee of 
22 November 2023 was submitted and approved as a correct record. 
3(ii) MINUTE OF MEETING OF SCRUTINY AND PERFORMANCE COMMITTEE
OF 11 DECEMBER 2023 
The minute of meeting of the Scrutiny and Performance Committee of 
11 December 2023 was submitted and approved as a correct record.
3
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4. OUTSTANDING BUSINESS STATEMENT 
Resolved: 
The status of actions in the Outstanding Business Statement, be noted and
completed actions removed accordingly. 
5. UPDATE BY ARM’S LENGTH EXTERNAL ORGANISATIONS 
(i) Perth Theatre and Concert Hall 
C Glasgow, Chief Executive and C Hood, Chairman, Perth Theatre and Concert
Hall provided a brief update on PTCH’s contribution so far, in supporting the
delivery of the Cultural Strategy’s Year 1 Action Plan. The report was shared
with members in advance of the meeting. 
(ii) Live Active Leisure Ltd 
P Cromwell, Chief Executive and D McElhose, Chairman, Live Active Leisure
provided a brief update on LAL’s contribution so far, in supporting the delivery of
the Physical Activity & Sport Strategy’s Year 1 Action Plan. The report was
shared with members in advance of the meeting. 
(iii) Culture P&K 
H Smout, Chief Executive provided a brief update on Culture P&K’s contribution
so far, in supporting the delivery of the Cultural Strategy’s Year 1 Action Plan.
The report was shared with members in advance of the meeting. 
Members questions were answered. Councillor C Stewart thanked
representatives for their attendance and they left the meeting. 
THERE FOLLOWED A SHORT RECESS AND THE MEETING RECONVENED AT
1055AM. 
6.  REVIEW OF EXTEREME WEATHER EVENTS IN PERTH AND KINROSS IN
OCTOBER 2023   
There was submitted a report by Chief Executive (24/45) considering the
remainder of the report presented to Scrutiny and Performance Committee on 22
November 2023 22 November 2023 (Report No 23/232 refers). 
In response to a question from the Vice-Convener regarding the number of
housing properties that experienced internal flooding in Invergowrie during storm Babet,
M Butterworth advised that 7 residential properties had been reported in November with
internal flooding. However, through further engagement with residents it had been
confirmed that 49 residential properties and 5 businesses struggled with internal
funding. M Butterworth confirmed that those affected had received grant funding from
the Scottish Government. B Renton added that residents in the village of Invergowrie
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were leafleted and asked to provide feedback which created more contact with the
Council regarding the weather event. 
In response to a question from Councillor A Forbes, B Renton confirmed that the
in her experience the link with the Local Resilience Partnership across Tayside had
been very useful in ensuring that all partners are aware of the issues occurring across
all three local authority areas and then would link back into the Incident Management
Team. 
In response to a question from Councillor J Welch regarding the involvement of
External Agencies and how they work together, B Renton advised that nationally
resilience had been established in Scotland by several category one and category two
responders and the Local Resilience Partnership are made of those organisations. B
Renton highlighted the strength of the Local Resilience Partnership and the national
collective work in managing incidents. B Renton confirmed that since the weather
incidents in October 2023 there are strong discussions ongoing with SEPA on the
telemetry of the river Tay which should help for future preparedness.   
The Convener suggested that the protocol that had been created following the
weather events in October 2023 on how information would be cascaded from SSE to
SEPA and then through to the Council be shared with members. Councillor C Stewart
referred to the storm at the end of December and queried if the protocol had been
effective as a member had contacted staff to alert them of a potential release of water.
B Renton confirmed that the Council were in regular contact with SEPA and SSE
Renewables throughout the weather events in December. B Renton advised that the
Council had not been clear on the impact of the snow melt over the Tay catchment area
and discussions are being held with agencies as different information had been
received throughout the December events. However, B Renton confirmed that
relationships are strong between the agencies to be able to question and ask for more
information.
Councillor C Shiers raised concerns over a change of personnel across agencies
and knowing that processes remain followed. B Renton advised that there had not been
conversations held yet with other agencies in terms of suggested changes to the Flood
Protection Scheme. B Renton confirmed that as part of future planning the Council
need to ensure that all agencies are aware of any changes made to the Flood
Protection Scheme.
In response to a question from the Convener regarding engagement with
businesses at Friarton in closing the flood gates at the appropriate time, A Brown
confirmed that the Council are in contact with businesses regarding when the gates are
due to be closed and reopened. M Butterworth added that as part of the Improvement
Plan, officers are looking to extend training to other Council employees, so further
support can be made available to the Roads Maintenance Partnership in the event of
an emergency.
In response to a question from Councillor A Forbes regarding the action included
in the Improvement Plan on developing a protocol to share vulnerable people lists
during emergencies, H Hope provided assurance that the Council have contacted
SSEN for a list of their vulnerable customers to help share information regarding future
weather events. The Convener asked members to encourage their local Community
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Groups and Community Councils to form Community Resilience Teams which would
help reach all vulnerable people in the event of an emergency. 
In response to a question from Councillor J Welch regarding how we are going to
work collaboratively across the Council through other committees such as E,I&ED,
Climate Change and Planning to mitigate issues within a catchment level, B Renton
advised that a report would be brought to the next E,I&ED Committee on the officer
response to a consultation that the Scottish Government are operating in relation to
water, waste water and drainage policy. B Renton advised that as part of the response
officers would emphasise what would the impact be on climate change and how do we
collectively tackle it. 
In response to a question from Councillor C Shiers regarding equipment for
operative employees, M Butterworth advised that staff are given the correct protective
clothing to wear out on site. M Butterworth added that regular meetings are held with
trade union representatives to check that employees are safe at work. M Butterworth
assured members that he had not been aware of any issues and that the necessary
arrangements are in place to protect staff. 
In response to a question from Councillor I Massie regarding the number of
Community Reliance Groups that have formed since the weather events in October
2023, S Skene advised that 20 groups have been created. S Skene confirmed that the
Council are looking to support groups to develop and have been flexible at arranging
meetings out of work hours. S Skene confirmed that next steps include developing
Local Resilience Plans for each of the Community Resilience Groups. 
Councillor C Shiers raised concerns over poor mobile coverage in rural areas in
the event of a weather emergency. Officers agreed that the action would be included in
the Improvement Plan. 
B Renton suggested that a tour of the Flood Protection Scheme be provided to
members. 
Members thanked B Renton and her teams for their ongoing work towards the
actions outlined in the Improvement Plan. 
Resolved:
(i)     The findings of the review into the Council’s preparedness, response, and 
recovery activity during each of the three October weather events from Section 7 
of Report 23/232 onwards, be considered.  
(ii)  The updated improvement actions identified within Appendix 1 of Report 24/45,
be considered. 
THERE FOLLOWED A SHORT RECESS AND THE MEETING RECONVENED AT
12.20PM.
7. DRAFT CORPORATE DELIVERY AND IMPROVEMENT PLAN 2024/25 
There was submitted a report by Chief Executive (24/44) presenting the draft
Corporate Delivery and Improvement Plan (CDIP) for 2024/25 for consideration, with
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updated baseline data where this has become available since the plan was presented
to Council. 
In response to a question from Councillor A Forbes regarding further information
on direct tourism expenditure and economic impact of tourism, L Dott confirmed that
information would be shared following committee. 
In response to a question from Councillor C Shiers regarding the Cost of the
School Day toolkit, S Devlin advised that all schools in Perth and Kinross are using the
Cost of the School Day toolkit. S Devlin confirmed that a session had recently been
held for all school Headteachers on the toolkit at the Headteacher Development Day. In
response to a supplementary question from Councillor C Shiers, C Mailer confirmed
that all benchmarking information would continue to be reported in the Annual
Performance Report and online in terms of wider benchmarking data. 
Councillor C Stewart queried the same baseline data for the number of
community asset transfers and community groups applying for community asset
opportunities. Officers agreed to relook at the data. 
In relation to those experiencing and at risk of poverty, the Vice-Convener
suggested changing the monitoring to see how many individuals are helped by cash
first partnerships instead of measuring success in the number of cash first partnerships.
C Mailer confirmed that the suggestion would be taken on board and factored into the
final version of the CDIP. 
In relation to the decarbonisation of the fleet which would be measured by the
increase in number of council vehicles with electric or other zero direct carbon fuel
technologies, the Vice-Convener suggested increasing the goal by including a
percentage increase target. C Mailer confirmed that the suggestion would be fed back
to officers but would be driven by the availability of resources. 
The Vice-Convener referred to the figure of 20% reduction of vehicle kilometres
within a year. L Dott advised that the figure had been taken from the Climate Change
Action Plan but would be confirmed with members following Committee. 
In response to a question from Councillor A Forbes regarding distressing
behaviour by pupils at school, S Devlin advised that there are several pieces of work
underway to ensure that children and staff are safe when attending school. S Devlin
confirmed the Anti-bullying Strategy had recently been reviewed in full consultation with
staff across all schools. S Devlin added that several measures and supports are being
looked at for children who find it difficult to attend and engage in school. S Devlin
confirmed that robust processes are in place and encourage staff to report distressed or
violent behaviour. Following a further question from Councillor A Forbes, S Devlin
advised that those results are monitored, and data would be reported to the Employees
Joint Consultative Committee on a quarterly basis. S Devlin confirmed that the objective
would be to reduce the number of incidents in schools across Perth and Kinross where
possible. 
In relation to the previous question, the Vice-Convener referred to measuring
success by schools having robust procedures to reduce bullying in line with improving
relationships and suggested that when undertaking the next review of the CDIP to
include objective measures. 
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In response to a question from Councillor A Forbes regarding affordable housing
and how success would be measured by maintaining the 53% / 47% split across urban
and rural areas, C Mailer confirmed that the percentage split between urban and rural
areas had been based on the housing need for local communities. Councillor A Forbes
also referred to the baseline data of 71 buybacks/empty homes and queried if a target
had been set for improving results over the next year, C Mailer advised that within the
Local Housing Strategy a target had been set for the delivery of affordable homes and
buybacks. C Mailer confirmed that data would be shared with members following the
meeting. 
Resolved:
The draft CDIP and available baseline measures outlined in Report 24/44, be
considered. 
8. PERTH AND KINROSS HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE PARTNERSHIP (HSCP)
CLINICAL AND CARE GOVERNANCE ASSURANCE REPORT 
There was submitted a report by Chief Social Work Officer (24/46) providing
assurance to Perth & Kinross Council’s Scrutiny and Performance Committee on the
Clinical Care and Professional Governance of the Perth and Kinross HSCP. 
Bailie C Ahern raised concerns over issues of recruitment within the mental
health workforce and queried if the redesign of services should be considered. K Ogilvy
confirmed that several options are being looked at to help recruit mental health
professionals within Perth and Kinross. K Ogilvy advised that that in terms of redesign,
the Health and Social Care Partnership are looking at alternative roles such as
Advanced Nurse Practitioners to take on some of the lower end roles that consultants
have traditionally undertaken to allow current consultants to focus on more complex
areas. K Ogilvy added that as well as the wider mental health redesign across Tayside,
discussions are being held locally on the redesign of the Community Mental Health
teams to make better use of the resources and services that are currently in place. 
In resposne to a similar question from the Vice-Convener on recruitment in adult
social work and social care and the lack of care at home capacity especially around
rural Perth and Kinross, K Ogilvy advised that anyone could apply without experience
or qualifications as the appropriate training would be provided. 
In response to a question from Councillor I Massie regarding clinical and care
governance arrangements, K Ogilvy confirmed that there are Locality Governance
Groups for North, South and Perth City. There are also several Professional
Governance Groups which meet regularly. A Mental Health Governance Group had
been recently established to focus on mental health services, which refers to substance
use, learning disabilities and autism. K Ogilvy added that professional meetings are
also held for social workers and nurses to look at specific governance arrangements
within those professions. K Ogilvy confirmed that issues are addressed where possible
at the locality and professional level before being escalated to the Perth and Kinross
Care and Professional Governance Forum which covers all of Perth and Kinross. K
Ogilvy added that in addition, the Health and Social Care Partnership focus on
exception reporting, learning reviews, and risk monitoring. 
COUNCILLOR A FORBES LEFT THE MEETING DURING THIS ITEM. 
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Resolved:
(i) The contents of Report 24/46, be scrutinised.
(ii) The Committee agreed to the level of Reasonable Assurance provided. 
~~~~~~ 
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SCRUTINY AND PERFORMANCE COMMITTEE 
OUTSTANDING BUSINESS STATEMENT (OBS) 
(Report No. 24/122) 
Please note that this statement sets out outstanding decisions of this committee along with an update and estimated completion date.  Actions which
are overdue are shaded for ease of reference.  Where an update reflects that an action is complete then the Committee’s agreement will be sought to
its removal from the OBS. 
No  Minute
Reference
Subject Title Outstanding Action Update  Lead Officer
/Service
Action 
due
Action
Expected
15. February 2023  Scrutiny Review
Topics 
Progress with
discussions on
Additional Support
Needs Provision in Perth
and Kinross 
Meeting was arranged
with the Convener/Vice-
Convener and lead
officers in February. 
Officers to prepare a
report to the S&P
Committee in September
2024 on Topic 1:
Applying Adjustments -
How effective are we as
a council at ensuring
that adjustments made
for ASN pupils are: 
1. Applied properly
and consistently
over time in
practice.
2. Communicated
well when pupils
move schools or
transition from
nursery to
primary.
3. Applied in a way
that means that
Education and
Children’s
Services/ Legal
and
Governance
Services 
July 2024  July 2024 
4
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No  Minute
Reference
Subject Title Outstanding Action Update  Lead Officer
/Service
Action 
due
Action
Expected
we and the child
benefit from
having made
interventions
early. 
Case studies will be
included in the report. 
The draft of the report
will be shared with the
Convener and Vice-
Convener by the end of
July 2024. 
COMPLETED   
30. 22 November
2023
Item 3
Review of Extreme
Weather Events in
Perth and Kinross
October 2023
Invite representatives from
SEPA, SSE and SW to
attend a future Scrutiny
and Performance
Committee. 
Representatives will
attend the September
Committee. 
COMPLETED 
Fraser Crofts  September
2024 
September
2024
31. 31 January
2024
Item 6
Review of Extreme
Weather Events in
Perth and Kinross
October 2023 
Protocol on cascading
information from SSE to
SEPA and then to the
Council to be shared
with members. 
Email response was
circulated to members. 
COMPLETED 
Fraser Crofts   24 April
2024 
24 April
2024 
32.  31 January
2024
Item 6 
Review of Extreme
Weather Events in
Perth and Kinross
October 2023
A session on the Flood
Protection Scheme be
delivered to members. 
A session has been
arranged on 22 May
2024. 
Fraser Crofts   May 2024  May 2024 
33.  31 January
2024
Item 7 
Draft Corporate
Delivery and
Further information to be
shared with members on
direct tourism expenditure
Email response was
circulated to members. 
Clare Mailer  24 April
2024 
24 April
2024 
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No  Minute
Reference
Subject Title Outstanding Action Update  Lead Officer
/Service
Action 
due
Action
Expected
Improvement Plan
2024-25 
and economic impact of
tourism.  COMPLETED
34. 31 January
2024
Item 7
Draft Corporate
Delivery and
Improvement Plan
2024-25 
Further information to be
shared with members on
monitoring usage of active
travel measures resulting
in a 20% reduction of
vehicle kilometres. 
Email response was
circulated to members. 
COMPLETED
Clare Mailer 24 April
2024 
24 April
2024 
35. 31 January
2024 
Item 7
Draft Corporate
Delivery and
Improvement Plan
2024-25 
Targets on the delivery of
affordable homes and
buybacks be shared with
members. 
Email response was
circulated to members. 
COMPLETED 
Clare Mailer  24 April
2024 
24 April
2024 
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Report No. 24/123
Weather Events - Improvement Plan 
Theme  Ref.
no. 
Activity  Responsible
Officer 
TimescaleComments 
Notifications
and
preparedness
1  Report to
EI&ED on
resource
requirements to
support year-
round
resilience. 
Strategic Lead
– Environment
&
Infrastructure 
No later
than June
2024 
Proposals being
developed with
various options being
considered and
costed in conjunction
with other inter-
related actions
below.   
2  Officers to
review and put
in place new
minimum
staffing/standby
-levels at
command and
operational
levels to ensure
resources are
available to
successfully co-
ordinate and
deploy all flood
defence
measures
within
timescales set
within the to be
revised
protocols
(action 8
refers). 
Roads
Maintenance
Partnership
Manager 
By June
2024 
As above, various
options being
considered and
costed in conjunction
with other inter-
related
actions.  Consideratio
n also being given to
changing the flood
gate closure
procedure to provide
greater community
reassurance, reduce
risks and resource
requirements. 
Incident
Management,
Resourcing
and
Response 
3  Undertake
further training
in terms of
emergency
planning across
the wider
leadership
team to ensure
Strategic Lead
– Strategic
Planning,
Policy &
Resources 
By March
2024 
Arrangements are in
place to provide both
external and internal
training/ awareness
sessions as well as
accredited online
training. Currently
liaising with
5
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resilience to
deal with
incidents 
colleagues in Local
Resilience
Partnership (LRP)
regarding further
training for Gold and
Silver command
including Crisis
Management
training. 
4  The Council’s
Out of Hours
Standby
arrangements
be reviewed to
include
exploring the
opportunities
for expanding
the remit of
staff from other
Council
services. 
Strategic Lead
– Environment
&
Infrastructure 
By March
2024 
Being undertaken in
conjunction with other
inter-related actions.
Internal discussions
on-going regarding
what resources are
available across PKC
and how these can
better support/
increase any
response to an
emergency, including
flood gate closures.
Focus on Parking
Services team who
already have out of
hours standby
arrangements. 
5  Continue to
work with
current
Community
Resilience
Groups and
build on the
success of
these models,
reflecting that
public agencies
including the
Council are
unable to
respond to all
Strategic Lead
– Housing &
Communities 
This is an
ongoing
action
which is
monitored
within the
service.  
Word of mouth
marketing including
by elected members
has generated a very
healthy appetite for
creation of new
Community
Resilience Groups
with support available
from PKC.  A CRG
conference is planned
for mid 2024 where
established and new
CRGs can come
together to network,
share learning and
seek further support
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impacts across
the authority 
from PKC, including
financial support. 
New
action
Appropriate
allocation of the
approved
funding to
communities to
support
resilience in
terms of both
training and
equipment 
(Scrutiny and
Performance
Committee
action) 
Service
Manager –
Community
Resilience
and
Emergency
Planning 
By June
2024 
It is anticipated
funding will largely be
disbursed after the
CRG conference as
both existing and new
groups establish their
specific needs at a
local level. 
6  Review how the
logging and
sharing of
information
between
partner
agencies is
undertaken,
building upon
the
conversations
which have
taken place to
date with SSE
and SEPA 
Strategic Lead
– Environment
&
Infrastructure 
By March
2024 
Discussions have
taken place with
SEPA and agreement
reached on new way
forward. Revised
operational protocols
have been agreed
which will provide for
better communication
and data sharing
between
organisations. 
SEPA have updated
their guidance and
provided a copy to
PKC. 
SEPA triggers on the
Tummel/Garry
scheme require SSE
checks by SEPA
(page 31 of the
guidance refers). 
Action complete. 
7  Undertake a
review of the
handling of
Strategic Lead
– Environment
By March
2024 
We have reviewed
the Contact Centre
arrangements for both
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calls to the Out
of Hours
contact centre,
as well as a
further review
of the Council’s
out of hours
customer
contact
arrangements 
&
Infrastructure    
Strategic Lead
– Customer &
Digital
Services 
Aberdeen City
Council (ACC) and
Perth & Kinross
Council (PKC). 
We have listened to a
sample of calls from
ACC during the
weekend of 7th/8th
October and the
standard was as
expected of a contact
centre advisor – no
concerns in the way
calls were handled by
ACC’s Contact Centre
out of hours staff. 
There remains a
limitation to the
service that ACC can
provide in a severe
weather event
therefore several
proposed actions
require to be
implemented to
reduce the call
volumes being made
to ACC during
instances of severe
weather. This will
reduce pressure in
the system and
provide improved
capacity for dealing
with genuine
emergency calls. 
8  Review the
Perth Flood
Scheme Gate
Closure
Strategic Lead
– Environment
By June
2024 
Various options being
considered in
conjunction with
action 2 above to
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Operational
Procedure
document with
SEPA 
&
Infrastructure 
increase resilience
and community
reassurance whilst
minimising the need
for additional stand-by
resources.
Consideration of what
gates can be left
closed/sealed up with
limited amenity
impact.  Modernisatio
n of Promontory and
Queens Bridge
barriers being costed
that are lighter and
require less
specialised
knowledge/vehicles to
install.    
New
action
This review to
include a
clearer and
better tested
‘plan B’ for
when
something does
go wrong with a
piece of
infrastructure 
(Scrutiny and
Performance
Committee
action) 
Strategic Lead
– Environment
&
Infrastructure 
By June
2024 
Plan being developed
which creates less
reliance on the use of
heavy equipment and
the use of alternative
protection measures.
Modern/lightweight
contingency barrier
ordered – delivery
late April. 
New
action
Develop a
protocol to
share
vulnerable
people lists
during
emergencies  
(Scrutiny and
Performance
Service
Manager –
Community
Resilience
and
Emergency
Planning 
By June
2024 
Officers are liaising
with colleagues in
SSEN and the NHS
regarding the sharing
of relevant
information.  The key
issue being data
protection and GDPR.
It is hoped this can be
completed by summer
2024. 
Page 21 of 200

Page 22

Committee
action) 
Impact and
Recovery 
9  Review of
welfare
response
protocols and
engagement
with those
directly
impacted,
including follow
up with affected
individuals in
Perth City and
Invergowrie. 
Head of
Environmental
& Consumer
Services 
Senior Service
Manager
Housing 
By 23
December
2023 
A welfare response
protocol has been
developed and was
put in place which
worked well during
the flooding event at
the end of December
2023. 
Action complete. 
10  Establish
formal
feedback
mechanisms
from
community
resilience
groups to take
on board
learning and
develop future
response
arrangements 
Strategic Lead
– Housing &
Communities 
By March
2024 
Feedback
mechanisms are
currently in place
although a formal
debrief process/
procotol will be
produced by officers
by the end of summer
2024. 
New
action
Representative
s from SEPA,
SSE and SW to
attend a future
Scrutiny and
Performance
Committee  
(Scrutiny and
Performance
Committee
action) 
Chief
Executive/
Executive
Director
(Communities)
By June
2024 
SEPA, SSE and SW
to attend September
Scrutiny &
Performance
Committee meeting. 
Page 22 of 200

Page 23

ANNUAL
PERFORMANCE
REPORT
2022/23
6(i)
Page 23 of 200

Page 24

Page
Introduction 3
Corporate Leadership Team 5
Tayside Contracts - Who We Are, and What
We Do 6
Plan on a Page 8
Our 5C’s:
Confidence, Trust and Relationships 9
Commercial Approach 15
Collaboration and Sharing 20
Continuous Improvement and
Performance 29
Communities, Councils and Customers 40
Summary of KPI’s and Targets 50
1 Page 24 of 200

Page 25

2Page 25 of 200

Page 26

Thank you for taking the time read our
Annual Performance Report. This
report summarises the work
undertaken across all Tayside
Contracts’ activities during 2022/23, to
deliver the best possible services, and
achieve the best possible outcomes,
for the communities of Tayside. We
are proud of what we do, and the
report presents us with an opportunity
to celebrate our successes, and
highlights our strengths, whilst also
reflecting on the challenges we have
faced, and those areas where we need
to make further improvements.
The period covered in this report
represents one of the most difficult
and unpredictable periods in the
organisation's 27-year history, as we
emerged from the last of the COVID
lockdowns, and faced the impacts of
the post pandemic recovery, including
severe shortages of goods and
services, coupled with essential items
– such as gas, electricity, diesel and
bitumen – increasing at rates, far
higher than general inflation. With
inflation at record levels during the
year, this resulted in unprecedented
pay costs. With pay awards weighted
to lower paid workers, this was
especially expensive for Tayside
Contract.  We also experienced low
school meal uptake following the
pandemic, as well some of our highest
levels of sickness absence, turnover,
and skills shortages during the year,
reflecting similar national trends
across the public and private sector.
These pressures on our people – both
at work and in their home lives – have
had a substantial bearing on our
employees and it is no surprise that
stress, work-related stress and
depression now account for 43% of the
total days lost through sickness absence.
Our Annual Performance Report
highlights the proactive measures we
have taken to help deal with these
physical and mental health challenges,
to keep our people safe. 
Despite these challenges, we achieved a
range of successes. For example; 
the success of our School Meals
Action Plan delivered an increase of
14% in average daily meal uptake
over the year.
we generated an additional income
from other public bodies and external
customers of £1.2m (an increase of
26% from the previous year). 
the launch of our new Community
Fund, which enabled us to support 29
groups deliver local community
empowerment.
Despite the ongoing challenges of
recruitment difficulties and higher
than normal sickness levels, we
continued to deliver services across
all Council areas with no service
failure.
The success of Tayside Contracts relies
on our employees. This has been no
exception during the last 12 months,
with our employees working tirelessly,
under the most difficult circumstances,
to deliver the essential services needed
by our communities across the area.
Without their commitment and
dedication, many of the core services
that our stakeholders have been
required to deliver to support to our
schools and communities, as well as
keeping the road network serviced and
maintained in all weather conditions,
would not have been possible.
3 Page 26 of 200

Page 27

The greatest challenge we continue to face
will be the significant financial pressures
arising from government budget
restrictions, record levels of inflation, and
unprecedented increases in costs such as
pay awards. These will put a substantial
pressure on meeting our budgets and
delivering our essential services, for 2023/24
and beyond. 
To achieve our aims, teamwork is essential,
and we would like to thank members of the
Tayside Contracts Joint Committee,
colleagues from our three constituent
Councils, our affiliated Trade Unions, and our
selfless and hardworking people within
Tayside Contracts, for their contribution to
working together to deliver the actions
contained in this Annual Performance
Report and to deliver vital services to the
communities of Tayside.
We have set out our 2022/23 achievements
under the ‘5C themes’ of the current 2021/24
Business Plan. These themes are:
Confidence, Trust and Relationships
Commercial Approach
Collaboration and Sharing
Continuous Improvement & Performance
Communities, Councils and Customers
Bailie Mike Williamson
Convener of Tayside Contracts
Keith McNamara
Managing Director
4Page 27 of 200

Page 28

Our Corporate Leadership Team
5 Page 28 of 200

Page 29

Our Facilities Management team keep
over 400 buildings clean and well
maintained and help ensure all the
occupants are safe.
We are very proud of what we do in Tayside
Contracts;
We are the largest civil engineering
construction organisation in Tayside -
carrying out £45 million of road repairs,
maintenance and construction, winter
maintenance, and street lighting
improvements each year.
We are also Tayside’s largest catering
organisation – serving over 5 million meals
every year to schools and community
customers – that’s 28,000 meals each day.
Our School Crossing Patrollers help to
keep the children of Tayside safe when
travelling to and from the 175 schools in
Tayside.
During the winter we treat over 355,000
kilometres of roads, to protect the
travelling public
We operate a fleet of 600 Tayside
Contracts vehicles and plant. Through the
Angus Fleet Partnership, we also manage
and maintain a further 370 vehicles and
plant on behalf of Angus Council.
6
Who We Are
For the past 27 years, Tayside Contracts
has been the collaborative and
commercial operating arm for the three
Councils in Tayside (our constituent
Councils):
Angus Council
Dundee City Council
Perth & Kinross Council
We are not a private company. We are
governed by a Joint Committee of 18
Elected Members from the three
Councils.
Who We Are and
What We Do
What We Do
We provide essential public services to the
400,000 residents in Tayside on behalf of
the three Councils.
Our annualOur annualOur annual
Turnover is aroundTurnover is aroundTurnover is around
We have 4 recycling depots strategically
placed within the Tayside area, ensuring
waste from our construction activities is
reprocessed into saleable products.
Our Quarry at Collace in Perthshire
produces over 110,000 tonnes of coated
and dry roadstone materials each year, to
keep Tayside’s roads well maintained.
We currentlyWe currentlyWe currently
havehavehave
posts.posts.posts.
3,200
£89m
Page 29 of 200

Page 30

We operate as a business and
carry out work for other public
bodies, private firms and the
wider public.  Every pound we
make through our commercial
activities is reinvested in our
public services and local
communities.
By doing what we do and making
sure we provide high quality and
cost-effective services, we are
enhancing the communities of
Tayside.
To view a short video on who we
are and what we do, click here.
All of these activities are
supported by our highly
professional Human Resources,
Safety and Training, IT, Finance,
Communications, Equalities and
Business Support teams – who are
invaluable to our success.
7 Page 30 of 200

Page 31

1
8Page 31 of 200

Page 32

Confidence, Trust and Relationships
‘Proud of what we do, chosen for how we do it’
Tayside Contracts can only survive and thrive if we have the strongest possible
relationship of transparency, honesty, mutual respect and trust with the Elected
Members and officers of our constituent Councils. We rely on Councils to trust us to
deliver shared services on their behalf, based on their confidence in our ability to
deliver excellent services. 
Our Vision is to grow our organisation by taking on greater business opportunities
beyond the Councils in Tayside. Therefore, we also want these other prospective
customers to choose Tayside Contracts, for how we do things - for anticipating their
needs, providing high quality services, and delivering best value for them.
Introduction
Here are some of our highlights during 2022/23: -
The financial stability of Tayside Contracts is essential to maintain the confidence of
our constituent Councils.  For the year 2022/23, despite the unprecedented trading
conditions, we achieved an overall distributable surplus of £977k. This surplus was
achieved through the positive performance and contribution by all parts of the
organisation, as well as close working with our constituent Councils, which had to
incur additional costs, as we passed on increased charges to cover the impact of
record levels of pay awards. 
The statutory trading surpluses achieved over the last three years are £3.4m for the
Construction Division and a break-even position for the Facilities Services
Division- with all surpluses being distributed to the constituent Councils.
Over the past 27 years, Tayside Contracts has performed well in terms of operational
and financial performance, returning over £31m to the constituent Councils in
surpluses, to allow reinvestment in public services.
Despite the various challenges of supply chain shortages of essential materials,
accompanied by significantly higher than inflation costs for many materials and
services, our Construction Division increased its turnover by £1.5m (3.1%) to £51.2m
in 2022/23, compared to £49.7m in 2021/22.  Income from the constituent Councils
increased by £305k to £46.5m. Work from other public bodies and external
customers increased by £1.2m (a 26% increase) to £4.6m. This was achieved
through additional Scottish Government- funded active travel projects, and
significant additional income from private customers and other new constituent
Councils' works, combined with a saving in various overheads, helping to maximise
both workloads and income.
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Page 33

We also benchmark with other organisations to learn about areas we can improve,
and we celebrate our successes through the award nominations we receive. 2022/23
was another successful year for Tayside Contracts, where we were proud to be
nominated for the following UK-wide APSE Performance Networks awards:
The fact that we were nominated for these national awards is evidence of the quality
of services we provided during the year.  
With the significant challenges facing Scottish Councils over the next few years, it is
more vital than ever to be reassured that public services are being provided through
the most appropriate service delivery models; and that the greatest focus is given to
ensuring efficiencies, transformation and income generation, to mitigate against
reductions in public service delivery - as well as maximising the advantages of the
greater collaboration that Tayside Contracts offers. We have worked with our Council
colleagues or the Governance and Strategy Group on a shared development of
transformational actions that maximise the delivery of service, whilst minimising
costs – this is known as our ‘Change Plan’.
Overall, the organisation achieved a 5.4 % increase in income of £92,265k which is a
£4,753k increase on the 2021/22 figure of £87,512k (and above budget expectations by
£8,620k).
The Facilities Services Division comprises the Facilities Management (FM) and
Catering Units. The underlying operational and financial performance of the Division
remained sound. However, 2022/23 saw the consequences of the pandemic having
an opposite impact on the two units within the Division. The FM Unit achieved a
significantly higher surplus, due to the greatly increased amount of cleaning required
across the school estate and in non-school premises - showing an increase of £1.3m
compared to budget, and a £708k increase on the 2021-22 surplus. 
However, due to change in habits formed as a result of COVID-19, meal uptake has
not reverted to pre-pandemic levels (a situation reflected within school catering
services throughout Scotland). This has severely impacted on the financial outcomes
of the Catering Unit, although, more encouragingly, meal numbers did increase
steadily during the financial year (average daily meal numbers increased by 14% over
the year).
Despite the challenges, Facilities Services Trading Account for 2022/23 shows an
increase in income of £3.2m (8.5%), to £41m compared with 2021/22 (£37.8m), with a
distributable surplus of £367k achieved for the Facilities Division.
10
Street Lighting Partnership (Dundee) - nomination for Street Lighting ‘Best
Performer’ and ‘Most Improved’ finalist. 
Transport Services – nomination for Transport
Operations and Vehicle Maintenance- ‘Most
Improved’ finalist
Angus Council – nomination for Roads, Highways
and Winter Maintenance - ‘Most Improved’ finalist
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Page 34

1
These developments have been informed in part by the outcomes from joint
workshops held with colleagues in our constituent Councils in 2022 on Roads
Maintenance and Facilities Services, to identify transformational options, to meet the
challenges.
As part of our drive to reassure our constituent Councils that we are as cost-efficient
as we can possibly be, and that our future plans to maximise sharing services and
expand our business to other customers are effective,  in March 2023, the Chief
Executives of the three constituent Councils  and the Managing Director of Tayside
Contracts commissioned a Supported Self-Assessment by an independent reviewer
into the activities of Tayside Contracts.
The outcomes of this review work will help strengthen our approach to the
challenges ahead.
We are committed to sound governance and the effective delivery of services. The
effectiveness of our governance framework is reviewed annually by the Managing
Director and the Corporate Leadership Team, through use of a self-assessment
scoring mechanism as part our Annual Governance Statement. This assessment
showed that Tayside Contracts had 68 items (91%) fully compliant with the
existing guidelines (exceeding our 80% target). This objective evaluation provides
reassurance over  Tayside Contracts’ governance arrangements.
Confidence in our activities can also be gained by the independent assurance on our
performance, provided by our Internal Auditors. For their 2022/23 annual report,
Internal Audit concluded that 'Tayside Contracts had adequate and effective risk
management, control and governance processes to manage the achievement of its
objectives, and that Tayside Contracts has proper arrangements to promote and
secure value for money'.
Internal Audit provided a ‘Strong' level of assurance that the organisation had
implemented their Auditor’s recommendations. In addition, Internal Auditors
awarded Tayside Contracts with a 'Strong' level of assurance relating to our
Procurement arrangements, identifying 7 areas of good practice. A similar 'Strong'
level of assurance was given for the organisation’s Communications and Social Media
functions, with Auditors highlighting 13 areas of good practice within the
organisation. 
Tayside Contracts continues to retain ‘High Confidence’ centre accreditation to
enable us to deliver a wide range of training, qualifications and awards. We are proud
to be accredited as approved providers/trainers with the following organisations:
11 Page 34 of 200

Page 35

Royal Environmental
Health Institute of
Scotland (REHIS)
Scottish Qualification
Authority (SQA)
The Institution of
Occupational Safety
and Health (IOSH)
Highway and
Construction Training
Association (HCTA)
DVSA Training
Accreditation (DVSA)
Street Works
Qualifications Register
(SWQR)
Public Health Scotland – Scotland’s
Mental Health First Aid (SMHFA)
Casestudy
In early 2023, our Training and Development Adviser, Susie Newton was recognised by the
Royal Environmental Health Institute of Scotland (REHIS), by being awarded the
prestigious REHIS ‘President's Award’ for an ‘individual who has significantly
contributed to the improvement and protection of health and wellbeing in Scotland’. 
This award was given for the REHIS courses delivered both in-house, externally to other
groups, and to the local charity, Dundee Bairns In addition Susie developed and piloted a
new national course in the important area of food nutrition; and she was also recognised
for her selfless volunteering work with local soup kitchen, ‘Graham’s Kitchen’.
12
Confidence and trust in our High Performing Employees
pictured here L to R is Ron
McCabe, Safety & Training
Manager, Susie Newton and
Evonne Bauer, REHIS President
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Page 36

Award Winning Response to Successful Operation Unicorn
Tayside Contracts played a key part in the multi-agency planning and assisting with the
delivery and resources of within the Dundee and Angus.
With global media attention on Dundee section of the cortege route, there was no room
for oversights or mistakes which could affect the cortege’s safety or delay free passage
through the city.  Planning was of vital importance given the city’s roads were expected to
be overwhelmed by an estimated 75,000 members of the public expecting to pay their
final respects.
Volunteers from throughout the Dundee Roads Maintenance Partnership (DRMP) and
Dundee Street Lighting Partnership (DSLP) planned for and implemented over 30 closures
only minutes before HM cortege passed through the city. The cortege passed through the
city of Dundee trouble-free and immediately closures began to be removed by the DRMP
and DSLP volunteers to allow well-wishers and the residents of Dundee to return back to
their normal day to day. Tayside Contracts Facilities Team also supported this event by
providing 700 welcome meals and drinks for the volunteers attending the route of the
cortege.   
The efforts of these partnerships, as part of the greater Dundee City Council Operation
Unicorn delivery team, was recognised at Dundee City Councils annual awards ceremony
(the OSCAs) by winning the ‘Above and Beyond Award’ from the Leader of Dundee City
Council.
Without doubt the greatest challenge has been the post-pandemic supply chain
and cost of living crisis, with resulting financial consequences.  International supply
chain pressures meant that the lead times for supply (and occasionally zero supply)
of essential goods such as replacement vehicles, flood and bitumen for roads
surfacing caused significant disruption to the organisation.
Record levels of inflation has hit Tayside Contracts in two main ways. Firstly, the
spiralling price of goods and services has hit Tayside Contracts with certain key items
greatly exceeding inflation (in many cases over 50% and sometimes up to 150%) - this
has impacted on the organisation's costs and profitability, as we attempted to absorb
these costs wherever we can rather than charge these to our constituent Councils.  
Additional costs such as labour, materials, plant and sub-contractors have resulted in
our surplus of £977k being lower than originally budgeted a (£1,634k). 
Casestudy
Following the sad announcement of HM Queen Elizabeth passing on 8
September 2022, longstanding plans were activated for 'Operation
Unicorn', for the funeral cortege passing through the country, including
Dundee on Sunday 11 September.
13 Page 36 of 200

Page 37

Next Steps:
The financial issues facing Tayside Contracts and Councils are both complex and
challenging, and further engagements with Joint Committee members will be needed
to share information on the scale of the financial challenges, as well as options to
address these, to help inform Councillors when developing both Council budgets and
Tayside Contracts budget, as well as the development of Tayside Contracts Medium
Term Financial Strategy.
We have engaged with the Joint Committee members and the Governance & Strategy
Group, to ensure we provide the right performance information, at the right time and
in the right format, for these groups and also, to our Council partners and our citizens.
We are currently developing this into a dashboard approach, where performance
information will be presented more clearly and pictorially, and will be accessible to
stakeholders at any time, rather than needing to wait for scheduled update reports.
The involvement of the Joint Committee and other key stakeholders will be essential in
building a shared view of the future priorities for Tayside Contracts, New Business Plan
which will set the agenda for the next 3 years, from 2024 onwards.
We build confidence and trust in our services through our participation in national
benchmarking exercise such as APSE (Association of Public Service Excellence)
performance networks, the largest voluntary public sector benchmarking service
across the UK, which is used by over 200 local authorities. Due to delays at APSE, the
2022/23 figures have not yet been released. Once these are issued we will use the data
to compare our performance and target our prioritised areas for improvement. 
We will be incorporating the outcome and recommendations of the independent
Supported Self-Assessment review into our future Improvement Plans.
Record inflation has also greatly impacted on costs through the local authority pay
award. As 73% of Tayside Contracts employees are on the Scottish Government Living
Wage level (compared to 0% in our constituent Councils), these costs have
disproportionately affected Tayside Contracts. The costs of the 2022/23 pay award
added an extra £4.5m cost to the organisation (approximately 10% increase on pay
costs), which was £3m higher than budgeted. This created both a pressure for
Tayside Contracts and the constituent Councils during 2022/23, but these increases
also add to the baseline of costs for 2023/24 budget and beyond. 
The other significant challenge in 2022/23 related to school meal numbers. The meal
number targets were set with each of the Councils, at levels prior to the pandemic.
However, the changes in behaviours of school pupils, developed during lockdown
and restricted meal service (where pupils brought their own lunches or went out with
the school to buy food) has carried forward into the year.  This also impacted on
Tayside Contracts' financial performance. 
14Page 37 of 200

Page 38

‘Business head, community heart’
Commercial Approach
Introduction
The need for Tayside Contracts to extend our commercial approach is more vital than
ever. We recognise that increasing our commercial income protects us from making
savings in jobs and services. This safeguards public services from declining funding
experienced in recent years, and likely to continue, as the economy recovers from the
global pandemic.
Expanding on our commercial portfolio is an essential part of our vision for the growth
of the organisation.
Here are some of our highlights during 2022/23: -
Providing winter maintenance services and sharing our depots with the new North
East Trunk Road operator, Amey – as part of our ongoing partnering arrangements
(see case study).
Provision of 134,500 tonnes of roadstone materials to the contractor in the
construction of the Cross Tay Link Road (see case study on page 18).
Commercial Business Achievements
Our successful commercial activities delivered £4.6m of income from commercial
customers and other public bodies, outwith our three constituent Councils in 2022/23 an
increase of 26% (£1.2m) over the previous year.  Highlights include.
Delivery of roads improvement services to Fife Council, as part of their preparations
for the 2022 Open Golf Championship at St Andrews.
Provision of the Community meals teatime service for Angus Health & Social Care
Partnership.
15 Page 38 of 200

Page 39

North East Trunk Road
Partnership with AMEY 
Tayside Contracts’ successful
commercial approach can be
demonstrated through our partnership
working with the national
infrastructure services and engineering
company, Amey, to develop a bid to
operate the maintenance of the
strategic trunk roads in Scotland. This
responsibility for roads in Scotland is
split between local Councils for the
majority of the roads - other than the
main Trunk Roads, which are the
responsibility of the Scottish
Government, which tenders for
providers to carry out all maintenance
and management of these roads.
Our hard work with AMEY was
rewarded when in April 2022 Amey
were awarded the North East
Operating and Maintenance contract.
This contract covers roads from the
River Forth to the Moray Coast.
Working in partnership with Amey, we
are providing Depot facilities, fuel
services and Stores at Forfar, Dundee
and Perth, as well as providing a Winter
Maintenance service on behalf of Amey.
As the Trunk Road contract duration is
8 years with an additional 4 year option,
this provides a substantial and
sustained income to Tayside Contracts. 
We look forward to building on the
commercial and partnership
opportunities with Amey throughout
the duration of the contract.
Casestudies
Providing Secure Supplies of Road
Materials, and Commercial
Opportunities, by Extending the
Future Life of Collace Quarry
Our shared quarry at Collace is located in
the Sidlaw hills between Dundee and
Perth and is therefore well placed relative
to the Council areas it serves. It  provides
the three Councils and Tayside Contracts
with an assured reasonably priced supply
of roadstone materials to keep Tayside
roads maintained. The quarry also
generates income by providing its
materials to other customers. The quarry
produces more than 100,000 tonnes of
material each year, and generates a
turnover of £7.6 million.
16
Under the current planning approval, the
remaining stone we are permitted to
extract is estimated to be exhausted by
2025. To increase the operational life at
Collace, to ensure long term security of
supply, and expand commercial
opportunities, during 2022/23 we invested
in the detailed investigatory work,
regulatory processes, and extensive
community consultation to extend the
quarry. If successful this will increase our
stone reserves by over 3 million tonnes, 30-
year extra life, increasing the area of the
quarry by 2.2 hectares.
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Page 40

Maximising our Commercial
Activity - Cross Tay Link Road
The Cross Tay Link Road is one of the
largest infrastructure projects ever
undertaken by Perth & Kinross Council. 
It involves the construction of a new 3-
span bridge over the River Tay and a six
kilometre stretch of new carriageway.
The project will improve the local
transport network and traffic flow and
reduce journey times. It will also
enhance pedestrian and cycle safety,
increase network capacity as well as
significantly reducing traffic congestion
and related pollution in Perth city
centre.
The project is being delivered by
engineering and construction group
BAM Nuttall (BAM). During 2022/23 we
worked with BAM to assist in the
delivery of this key project.
The location of Tayside Contracts and
our Quarry at Collace in Perth & Kinross,
are instrumental in helping to achieve a
key objective of the project - to spread
the benefits to the local community,
and minimise the impact on the
environment, using locally available
resources where possible.
Casestudy
As part of a formal procurement
process, Tayside Contracts successfully
bid to provide capping materials (dry
stone) for the project. In May 2022 an
order was placed for more than
200,000 tonnes of stone.
This is a great achievement for
everyone at the quarry, as this material
has been blasted, crushed, loaded, and
transported to the project by the
existing team on site. At the end of
financial year 2022/23 this equated to
134,852 tonnes of material. Putting this
into context, Collace averages 30,000
tonnes of capping sales per annum, so
our production output had to increase
by 450%.
Not only does this give a boost to the
quarry income it has the added
advantage of accelerating the
development of the southern rock
faces within Collace. These faces have
the “Red” rock conglomerate, which are
not suitable for our normal asphalt road
construction products, however this is,
perfect rock for capping material,
required for the Cross Tay project.
In addition to the dry stone provision,
Tayside Contracts, in partnership with
Breedon Group, have also provided
asphalt products for the contract. The
provision of this service is ongoing and
it is anticipated that Collace quarry will
have supplied approximately 8,000T of
coated material by the time the
contract is completed.
17 Page 40 of 200

Page 41

Casestudy
Exploring further opportunities to provide meals and catering services for other
councils were constrained by uncertainties across Scotland, as councils struggled to
reach pre-pandemic levels of meal uptake. This also combined with uncertainties
from the Scottish Government over the timescale for the introduction of the next
phase of Universal Free School Meals (UFSM) in primaries (for P6 and P7), which
would boost meal number demands on all councils. This made strategic planning
very challenging for the councils we were keen to provide services for, as they
prioritised the recovery of their existing services.  With the Scottish Government now
confirming the implementation of USFM by the end of 2025, this gives greater
certainty for Councils future planning, and engagement with Tayside Contracts over
how we can provide services to them.
Provision of Community Meals Teas for Angus Council
In August 2022, Tayside Contracts was asked by Angus Health &
Social Care Partnership to temporarily provide a Cold Teas
service, 7 days per week, for its Community Meals’ service users
in Angus, due to supply issues with the Partnership’s current
supplier. We were able to swiftly put arrangements in place to
meet their needs, and the meals were freshly prepared daily by
our Community Meals team based at Sidlawview Primary
School in Dundee, who currently provide the meals for the
Community Meals service in Dundee.
We continued to provide these meals until October 2022.  By
that time our client decided to extend the arrangement due to
the high quality of our service and product, and we are still
providing this service.
Mirroring national trends in 2022/23 following the pandemic, we experienced
historically higher than average sickness absence rates and vacancy levels - with both
these factors reaching the highest level in Tayside Contracts for several years. This
challenged our ability to pursue external income in some cases, because with
shortages in employees across the organisation, we did not have the confidence to
deliver additional work, when staffing shortages were already impacting on our
existing core services for our constituent Councils.
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Next Steps:
Despite the above challenges our main target continues to be building on the
investment made by our constituent Councils in our innovative cook freeze unit at Tay
Cuisine. This project has been one of the largest initiatives ever embarked upon by
Tayside Contracts, with an investment of £1.9m and years of planning and
development. This creates excellent commercial opportunities. The unit is currently
scheduled to produce around 5 million meals for nurseries, schools and community
meals but has the potential capacity to produce up to 10 million meals per year.
Therefore, we can offer the extra production capacity at the facility to other potential
customers. We are currently engaging with several organisations which need school
and community meals service, and are attracted by the low cost, high quality and
consistency model offered by Tay Cuisine.
We will continue to maximise the opportunities to generate more commercial income
for Tayside Contracts so the financial benefits can be shared by our constituent
Councils. We have a targeted list of commercial opportunities and are working
through these with our teams, and prospective customers.
We continue to tackle recruitment and sickness absence through implementation of
our Wellbeing Strategy and Recruitment and Retention Strategy and their action
plans, to ensure we have the workforce in place to meet the commercial opportunities
which arise.
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Collaboration and Sharing
‘Sharing the gain’
Introduction
Greater collaboration between our constituent Councils offers a proven route to
reducing costs whilst maintaining service quality. If savings are not found through
innovations such as sharing services, then our Councils will need to find these savings
by other means, including service reductions.
Sharing services also offers other benefits, such as
being more attractive to recruit and retain staff;
offering improved innovation opportunities by pooling investment across partners;
providing the scale to access best practice and create centres of expertise;
ensuring a large, flexible workforce available to deploy to priorities such as extreme
weather events; and
having access to specialist staff that individual partners would struggle to supply, if
operating independently.
Here are some of our highlights during 2022/23: -
Our innovative cook freeze unit at Tay Cuisine (also known as the Central Production
Unit, or CPU), had a first successful year of operation, including the incorporation of
the primary school meals service for Perth & Kinross Council in 2022, which was a
significant implementation project. Not only will this deliver year on year cost
reductions of nearly £1m to the three Councils, and protects catering jobs and
services long into the future, it also ‘future proofs’ the participating Councils from the
advent of Universal Free School Meals for primary pupils - which will require an
estimated 1.5 million extra meals to be produced across Tayside to meet demand.
In 2022/23, we continued to expand the services we provide to our constituent
Councils, generating additional income, and delivering more efficient services.
Examples include:
Gutter Cleaning service for Perth & Kinross Council schools now delivered in
house, rather than outsourced.
School window cleaning service for all three Councils now delivered in house,
rather than outsourced.
Providing Facilities Management services for Dundee City Council Community
Centres, by transferring of 16 Resource Assistants to Tayside Contracts
These additional activities contributed to the additional 5.4% income achieved by
Tayside Contracts during the year.
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Window and Gutter Cleaning Minor
Works Team
Our Facilities Services Division (FSD) is
always looking for innovative ways to
improve and expand the services we
provide to our constituent Councils. The
close working relationship with Perth
and Kinross’ Property Maintenance team
highlighted an opportunity for our
Business Improvement section to
provide a service which was a significant
departure from the kind of services we
usually provide. 
The regular maintenance of flat roofs,
gutter and down pipes is a cost-effective
way to avoid the huge costs associated
with repairing a building which has been
damaged by roof leaks. Tayside
Contracts and Perth and Kinross Council
have already achieved a number of
successes in providing minor works
teams for property related works in
schools and other buildings. Following a
period of research and investigation, the
gutter cleaning team was set up, to
deliver this service for PKC to mitigate
the risk of costly roof leaks. 
Taking up an opportunity to diversify and
expand our business portfolio and
further enhance the cost-efficiency of
our services, we identified an opportunity
to provide an ‘in-house’ window cleaning
service for schools and other buildings in
all three Council areas.
Casestudy
This service was previously delivered by a
private window cleaning contractor but
could now be amalgamated with our gutter
cleaning service, given their synergies.
In addition to the savings and improvement
in quality achieved by providing these
services ‘in-house’, the environmental
credentials of the service were improved by
implementing a ‘Smart Water’ window
cleaning system which avoids the use of
harsh chemicals in the delivery of these
services. Further environmental benefits
were realised in the reduction of road miles
by providing the two services
simultaneously from the same vehicle. 
The successful implementation of this
initiative opens up the opportunity for the
Facilities Services Team to expand into
other minor works at schools and other
sites, when our people are based at these
locations, rather than pay expensive callout
charges for private contractors.    
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Roads Maintenance Partnerships in both Dundee City and Perth & Kinross, where we
share Partnership Managers, who report jointly to both Tayside and Contracts and
the Councils. 
Tayside wide Street Lighting Partnership. This partnership now includes all three
Councils, so this one team provides an effective and integrated service across all of
Tayside. 
Partnering arrangements with each of the three Councils for Facilities Management.
The strong working relationship between Angus Council colleagues and our vehicle
workshop maintenance staff is vital as we provide the Council’s Fleet Maintenance
Service, keeping their staff on the move. The partnership is due for renewal in April
2024, as part of the process an overarching review will be undertaken, assisted by
APSE, to review the benefits achieved to date and the areas where opportunities exist
for further improvement.  
We are part of the shared Procurement Board with our three Councils (formerly
known as Tayside Procurement Consortium).
Partnerships in Practice
We have continued to build positive trust and confidence through the successful formal
partnerships we have with our constituent Councils.  There is great value in the
partnership approach to sharing staff and resources, as it saves considerable costs from
having separate ‘Client’ and ‘Contractor’ roles in each organisation. The Partnerships we
share with our Councils are:
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Financial Benefits of Partnering
with Tayside Contracts in Perth &
Kinross
Working in partnership with Tayside
Contracts enables a readily available
workforce to be retained to deliver
essential services such as Winter
Maintenance and an Out of Hours
response to weather events such as
flooding, but also remains flexible
enough to adjust workforce levels to
accommodate fluctuations in road
maintenance budgets. This gives our
Councils confidence in being able to
manage and maintain the road network,
to meet statutory requirements, whilst
providing reactive responses to assist
local communities, when needed.  
As part of the partnership arrangement
in Perth & Kinross, for example, a road
maintenance framework contract is
used by the Council to procure works
both from Tayside Contracts and
external contractors. This is one of the
processes used to demonstrate ‘Best
Value’ is being provided. An updated
framework was issued for pricing in May
2022. Only 18 private sector contractors
across 11 work activities submitted rates.
Tayside Contracts were the only
contractor to submit prices across all
activities, ensuring Perth & Kinross has a
trusted supplier which could fulfil the full
range of works required by the Council.  
Casestudy
Through the period of the previous
framework contract (2017-2022) there
was a request via the Partnering Board
to focus potential savings back to the
service, in addition to providing the
agreed level of surplus. A key area of
where this could be achieved was by not
claiming additional contractual
entitlements such as contract inflation
allowed for by construction industry
indices uplifts (BERR).   In effect, this
means that Tayside Contracts did not
charge the Council for certain tasks,
which we were entitled to do. Private
sector contractors, however, would have
claimed these contracted costs,
irrespective of profit levels, with no
returns to the Council. 
Over the course of the partnership
period, (April 2019 to March 2023) this
resulted in a total of just under £2m not
being claimed by Tayside Contracts.
Instead, this money was reinvested
back in the road network – equivalent
to almost 9 km of A Class road being
resurfaced that wouldn’t otherwise have
been done, thereby demonstrating a
clear benefit to the Council of partnering
with Tayside Contracts.
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Tri Council and Tayside Contracts
Collaborative Service Delivery
There is a history of collaboration of the
three roads authorities across Tayside
which has led to extensive close working
arrangements, information sharing and
joint procurement over the years.
Tayside Contracts are fundamental to
this collaboration, with the benefits of
people and vehicle/equipment
resources, which can be shared across
the three authorities, as well as
delivering the economies of scale in
procurement for roads maintenance
materials, and the ability to share
specialist plant. With quarrying and
bituminous plant capability provided by
our Quarry at Collace, Tayside Contracts
influence the market in the region, so
competitors have to be wary about
increasing their prices.    
The Tri-Council Maintenance Strategy
Group (TCMSG) has worked on a range of
projects initiated by the needs of its
constituent councils to develop a joint
understanding an approach to roads
maintenance, with the common service
provided by Tayside Contracts. This
approach has been further strengthened
in 2022/23 following conclusion of a ‘Test
of Change’ review commissioned by the
Chief Executives of the three Councils, 
and ‘Innovation Workshops’ between
partners. Examples of the benefits
achieved include:  
Casestudy
Salt financial savings achieved by moving
to the use of indigenous “Rock Salt” away
from the much more expensive ‘Marine
Salt’.
Reduced road surfacing material types,
with a standardised material guide,
reducing Tayside Contracts costs.
GPS tracking of Tayside Contracts vehicles
to maximise fuel and vehicle maintenance
economy.
Shared training events.
Winter forecasting contract procured 
across eight councils.
Winter Policy alignment: cross boundary
routes, to provide more standardisation
and cost reductions.
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Casestudy
Casestudy
Road Condition Figure (RCI) improved by 0.9% meaning 22km of network in better
condition.
Safety Inspections again achieved the target of 95%.
The number of potholes repaired in total (Category 1 to 4) was 10,443 which is
significantly lower than the previous year, suggesting the investment by PKC is
having a positive impact on both RCI and pothole numbers.
First Time Permanent (FTP) repairs achieved the 80% target with 81% (8489) receiving
a 1st time fix.          
Sharing Good Practice on Salt Use Reduces Council Costs
Each winter Tayside Contracts procures road salt for the constituent Councils. There are
two types of salt, marine and rock, with marine coming mainly from Spain and rock from
England.
There has always been a price differential between rock and marine salt with marine salt
historically being substantially more expensive. Rock salt can potentially deteriorate when
stored outside for prolonged periods and therefore Councils have traditionally purchased
the more expensive marine salt for areas which had no storage cover.
For winter 2022/23, an additional increase in prices for haulage was applied and the cost 
for marine salt increased again. For Perth and Kinross this would equate to an increased
cost of £120k. A trial approach was taken, purchasing rock salt and storing it outside. This
was closely monitored, and the assessment indicated that service was not compromised
by this different approach.
Roads Maintenance Partnerships:
Collaborating to Deliver Improvements
Perth Road Maintenance Partnership (PRMP)
Investment is road resurfacing has continued to be a priority of Perth and Kinross Council
again in 2022/23, and through the high quality, works carried out by Tayside Contracts, the
national Road Condition Indicator (RCI) has improved. This was a key objective of Perth and
Kinross Council, when allocating additional funding to road maintenance.
Over the three-year period to the end of 2022/23, this investment has resulted in 160km of
the road network being in a better condition. The value of operating our own quarry at
Collace contributed substantially, by supply 40,965 tonnes of coated material through a
collaborative planning and programmed approach to ensure maximum efficiency and
delivery. The key highlights from 2022/23:
25
Sharing this experience through the Tri Council Maintenance
Strategy Group has resulted in Angus Council also moving to rock
salt use, in areas where externally stored, for winter 2023/24, which
will also provide savings for that Council.
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Percentage of jobs with works information received from Angus Council prior to works
starting (2 weeks baseline), Target 60%, Actual 67%. The receipt of this info is crucial in
the planning and programming of works.
Percentage of jobs started on (agreed) time, Target 90%, Actual 70%. This is an area
that is influenced by when work information is received, when previous works are
completed and available resources to undertake. It was agreed to look at this
collectively with an aim to improve for 2023/24.
Percentage of jobs completed in (agreed) duration, Target 80%, Actual 74%. This can
be influenced when additional works have been commissioned. Although the
outcome was close to the intended target, it was agreed to look at this collectively
with an aim to improve for 2023/24.
First Time Permanent fix repairs completed for the year was 3325 m2. There is no
formal target for this and is based on the requirements set out in the specification.
Gully cleansing for 2022/23 – cleaned 32,596 (102%) of the targeted 32,000 gullies per
annum.
Dundee Road Maintenance Partnership (DRMP)
Performance is monitored and reported to the Dundee Road Maintenance Partnership
Board Quarterly, with an annual report summarising the overall performance in June each
year. The key highlights from 2022/23:
Safety Inspection performing above target at 96% against a target of 95%
Defect repair compliance was very positive. with Category 1, 2 & 3 road repairs all
completed within target times for 2022/23 with response rates of Cat 1 (100%
compared to target 90%), Cat 2 (94% compared to target 85%) and Cat 3 (97%
compared to target 80%)
First Time Permanent (FTP) repairs significantly increased year on year with 43.6%
(30% target) of all defects repaired by permanent methods, an improvement
compared to 15.1% as recorded last year.
Gully cleansing - the rolling 2-year average of 35,116 remains above targeted level of
33,200 cleans.
Angus Operations – Collaborative Roads Maintenance Service Delivery
Tayside Contracts has been delivering the core infrastructure service for Angus Council
since it was established, the service provision is discussed and monitored at an Angus
Headquarters meeting, quarterly.  The key areas monitored for 2022/23 are:
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Casestudy
Angus
Tayside-wide Collaboration in Practice
Street Lighting Partnership
Street Lighting is a core service delivered by Tayside Contracts, maintaining a large scale
illuminated asset to keep people safe – this includes 72,000 illuminated columns, 4,560
illuminated signs and 1,380 illuminated bollards. The Partnership also undertakes a variety
of electrical and lighting commissioned for private sector clients and developers. Our
recently expanded tri-Council Partnership for Street Lighting now includes Angus Council,
which now benefits from our collaborative approach to service provision.
The Street Lighting Partnership is an excellent example of collaborative success in practice,
and this can be evidenced through performance information, which is monitored through
the Tri Street Lighting Partnership Board which meet on a quarterly basis as part of the
formal governance arrangements.
The performance data used are a combination of information made available through the
Society of Chief Officers of Transportation in Scotland (SCOTS)/Association of Public Service
Excellence (APSE) annual return and internal indicators. A summary of some of our
highlights are detailed below.
Faults repaired over
the year.
384
Faults completed within
7 days for the year.
71%
Average days to repair
within the target of 7 days.
6.4
Dundee
Faults repaired over
the year.
251
Faults completed within
7 days for the year.
97.5%
Average days to repair
within the target of 7 days.
3.2
Perth & Kinross
Faults repaired over
the year.
1,240
Faults completed within
7 days for the year.
96.7%
Average days to repair
within the target of 7 days.
2.7
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The opportunities available for collaboration greatly exceed our capacity to deliver,
and we need to ensure that our collaborations are prioritised and have the
appropriate levels of staffing resources and funding, to provide the capacity to be
successful. If we expect these major initiatives to be delivered as an add-on to
peoples’ busy operational jobs, we run the risk of failure. Therefore we, have
implemented an ‘Innovation and Improvement Fund’ of £200,000 to ensure we have
the capacity to support more collaboration, through funding projects which will
further the objectives of our Business Plan.
The past year has been a challenge for the Street Lighting Partnership in retaining
and recruiting staff. Like most businesses, it has been difficult to recruit qualified staff
leading to shortages in some areas. The strength in the Partnership arrangement has
been evident in the ability to flexibly deploy staff, between Council areas, where
resources have been required - rather than have gaps in service provision, if these
services were ‘standalone’ functions within Councils.
We acknowledge challenges in delivery within Angus Construction Operations. There
is a desire to build on the long-standing collaborative arrangement between both
parties to address the challenges of reducing budgets and also to address some
concerns around the service delivery. A working group consisting of Senior Officers
from both organisations has been established to progress this agenda.
Next Steps:
We have identified opportunities for further collaborative service delivery using a
criteria-based priority programme of collaborative opportunities, and we will work with
our councils to develop an agreed programme of collaborations, for the next 3 years
and beyond.
The Scottish Government’s National Roads Maintenance Review has stressed the
importance of the benefits of a collaborative approach to roads-related functions, Our
work in Tayside between our Councils, and now with Amey as the trunk road operator,
places us much further ahead than most areas in Scotland, however, there are greater
opportunities for fuller integration, and a real opportunity to build on the willingness
from the three Councils to pursue greater levels of roads service collaboration. We look
to build on the improvements already identified and implemented by the Tri-Council
Roads Maintenance Strategy Group (detailed in the Highlights section).
We will take forward the collaborative opportunities with our constituent Councils for
our Facilities Management (FM) service to focus on expanding by diversifying further
into what is known as Hard FM (e.g., building maintenance, etc) in addition to Soft FM
(the traditional janitorial and cleaning services currently provided by Tayside
Contracts), to achieve cost and efficiency benefits for our Councils.
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Continuous Improvement &
Performance
‘Think like a customer, act like taxpayer’
Introduction
The need to make sure we are delivering excellent public services at the right time, in
the right way, and to the right people and communities, has never been greater.
The future sustainability of public services requires us all to be more innovative and
open to change; we must be more entrepreneurial and innovative, in order to make
the best use of the limited resources that we have and provide the best service to
our customers and communities. The more efficient and effective we are, the more
competitive we will be.
Here are some of our highlights during 2022/23: -
Recognising the financial pressures on Tayside Contracts and our constituent
Councils we engaged with our wider group of senior managers to stress the financial
challenges, the pressures ahead, and the steps we collectively need to take to reduce
costs and maximise income. From this we established a 3-year Change Plan.  Of the
targeted £3.5m efficiencies and service reductions, we have achieved £1.7m by the
end of 2022/23 with an additional £2.8m income generated during the year. The
following examples highlight how we achieved these results.
At the start of 2022/23 we reduced the number of funded posts on our Facilities
Services Division (FSD) Establishment by 193 posts, reducing labour costs in 2022/23
by £1.35m. We were able to achieve these reductions through robust vacancy
management, thereby ensuring our existing employee’s jobs were not at risk as we
reduced the posts. 
During the year we continued to manage labour costs in accordance with our
Establishment Control and Vacancy Management Policy to achieve the highest level
of slippage possible without unduly risking service failure. Our full Establishment
during the year totalled 3,270 posts, however, only 3,069 of these posts were occupied.
These proactive measures carried out provided some mitigation of the significant pay
costs and inflation increases that the organisation and to constituent Councils had to
incur during the year.
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Casestudy
Perth & Kinross
Dundee
Shared with Amey PLC
(North East Trunk Road
operator)
Shared between *DRMP & Street
Lighting Partnership
and now Dundee City Council
Construction Services
Shared between PRMP,
Street Lighting Partnership,
Perth Housing repairs team
and Amey PLC
Shared with *PRMP and sharing
depot space to facilitate a potential
review of waste management
services on the adjacent Perth &
Kinross Council site
We moved to a more modern and better located site in Aberfeldy. Gritting
routes have been redesigned, improving efficiency, as we no longer need
temporary cabins and loading equipment to be situated at satellite depots.
P&K Council Grounds Maintenance team are also sharing the site, freeing up
their previous location for commercial rent.
Shared with Angus Council
Waste Management and
Roads Infrastructure teams.
Shared between Street Lighting
Partnership, Angus Education
Mini Bus Services and Amey PLC
(Trunk Road, Contractor).
Angus
Carnie Depot Arbroath
Continuous Improvement by
Building Rationalisation and Sharing Buildings
Our Business Plan gave a commitment to ‘Make Best Use of Our Assets’ in our drive to
reduce costs. We targeted our property portfolio, and through working with Councils and
other partners, we have extended our sharing of facilities (and sharing costs) in our offices
and depots across Tayside. The following summarises activities:
Forfar Depot
Fairmuir Depot Marchbanks Depot
Blairgowrie Depot Ruthvenfield Depot
Blair Atholl to Aberfeldy move
The net effect of reducing our building footprint, and sharing accommodation and
costs with partners, will reduce our annual costs for property by £500k per annum.
*DRMP = Dundee Roads Maintenance Partnership
*PRMP = Perth Roads Maintenance Partnership
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Casestudy
Casestudy
Sharing Headquarters Accommodation and Sharing Costs
Investment in New Weighbridges
Delivering Partnering and Efficiency Opportunities
These weighbridges, replaced end of life
weighbridges at each site, increasing
reliability and thus availability, but also
offering the facility to access weighbridge
information ‘real time’ remotely allowing
management staff to carefully manage
winter de-icing stock levels through
specialist software to give a better public
service. This facility is of huge benefit given
all three sites are now shared with the Trunk
Road operator AMEY, and allows shared
In March 2023, significant changes were made within our Headquarters at Contracts
House, following the successful implementation of a ‘Home & Hybrid Working Policy’, using
learning from the COVID pandemic, where homeworking became much more common.
This resulted in   Contracts House having spare capacity, and following a review, we
decided we could accommodate both our existing staff within Contracts House as well as
operational staff from the adjacent Fairmuir Depot office i.e. Dundee Roads Maintenance
Partnership (DRMP) and Dundee Street Lighting Partnership (DSLP), into the Contracts
House building.
By rationalising the office space and people from
two buildings into one, this not only enabled
Tayside Contracts to make significant savings in
running costs by reducing its asset portfolio by one
building, but also enabled the vacated office
building to be occupied by Dundee City Council’s
Construction Services, which allowed them to
relocate from their unsuitable existing
accommodation, and avoid them incurring
substantial costs to refurbish their building or
relocate elsewhere.
31
As part of our ongoing investment in plant and equipment to maximise efficiency, three
new operator-free weighbridges were installed in Arbroath, Forfar and Dundee during
2022/23.
stock utilised by both parties to be correctly allocated to each end user.
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Casestudy
School Meal Review and Action Plan
Following a review of our school meals service, an Action Plan was developed in
partnership with our constituent Councils, to increase the uptake of school meals to
support the Scottish Government’s agenda to tackle poverty, reduce childhood obesity
and support learning, through school meals.
Daily average meal uptake was significantly impacted by the Covid pandemic, however
2022/23 saw an encouraging and continued steady recovery in meal uptake, heading
towards pre Covid levels, and - in the case of primary uptake - exceeding these levels.
Average daily meals increased by 14% over the year, as the following charts
demonstrate.
Part of our Action Plan was a more
visible presence on social media,
including a regular electronic
newsletter for parents and pupils. The
following positive feedback shows the
impact of this new development:
‘I just wanted to let you know that I
think your recent newsletter is
excellent. Clearly lots of research has
been done surrounding food and
nutrition. Teachings/language
including ‘good’ or ‘healthy’ and
‘bad’ or ‘unhealthy’ options and age-
appropriate explanations of eating in
moderation and how certain foods
help and fuel the body.
The visual menus are a fantastic idea
and may help my child to look
forward to picking her meals and
encourage her to eat what she has
chosen. It’s lovely that the research
is being put into practise resulting in
old beliefs and habits dying out.
Ultimately resulting in a positive
change and healthier children.’
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Transport/Fleet Performance
Maintaining High Standards for Reliable Service Delivery
2022/23 was another outstanding year from the Fleet Maintenance team maintaining their
performance well above the national average performance. This not only demonstrates a
high level of performance it also provides the assurance that a reliable fleet is managed
and maintained to meet the needs of our vehicle users.
The annual test pass rate for 'first time pass' was 97.2%, this remains an exceptionally high
score, compared to the national average of 89.15%. Our high score at annual test is
attributed to regular staff training, good workshop practice, regular vehicle inspections
and quality control checks on maintenance staff.
Currently Tayside Contracts
Operator Compliance Risk Score
remains at ‘G00’ for both
Roadworthiness and Traffic which is
the best score that can be achieved
and has never been below this
rating since the introduction of the
system in October 2012.
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CasestudySupporting our People and Tackling Absences
Through our Wellbeing Strategy
National data has highlighted significantly higher levels of absence in workplaces across
the UK. The UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) reported that 2022, saw the highest
level of working days lost due to sickness or injury across all employment sectors, since
2004. The Improvement Service National Benchmarking Overview Report published in
March 2023 highlighted that staff absence levels were the highest ever reported for local
authorities in Scotland. A recent survey by ACAS found that the mental health of nearly
half (47%) of British workers has suffered due to the cost-of-living crisis.
Tayside Contracts values the contribution of its employees and recognises that their
health, motivation and wellbeing is essential to the delivery and maintenance of quality
services to the community. We believe that supporting, encouraging and enabling
employees to maintain a healthy balance between their work and other interests and
responsibilities in their life is the core principle underpinning our Wellbeing Strategy.
The top ten reasons for sickness absence within Tayside Contracts for 2022/2023 are
detailed below:
Stress has moved to the top reason
for sickness absence in 2022/2023.
Stress, work-related stress and
depression now account for 43% of
the total days lost through sickness
absence.
Several initiatives have been
identified as part of Tayside
Contracts Wellbeing Strategy and
Action Plan which aims to promote
and encourage good physical and
mental health as well as providing
support mechanisms to help deal
with physical and mental health
problems.
During 2022, we teamed up with the expert mental health organisation ‘Headtorch’ to
roll out training on mental health in the workplace to all managers and employees. All
managers were invited to attend online training called Headtorch Aware. This was
designed to provide them with the skills to better understand mental health and how
this can impact on them and their teams.
Following this success, we moved our focus to providing training to our front-line
employees through ‘Head Start’- a televisual online learning programme which is an
introduction to mental health with hints and tips on how employees can look after their
own mental health and wellbeing, as well as spotting the signs that others around them
might be struggling and what they can do about that. Since February 2022,
approximately 1,100 employees have completed HeadStart online training.
cont/...
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Managers within Tayside Contracts continue to utilise the Work-Related Stress Policy and
associated risk assessment and action plan templates to identify, address and ideally
prevent stress-related absences. Tayside Contracts also continues to refer employees for
counselling through its occupational health provider. 
It is extremely encouraging to note that the since December 2020, stress, depression,
and anxiety-related absences have reduced by 10%.
Scottish Mental Health First Aid training was delivered during the year,
giving delegates general information surrounding mental health and
allows them to develop an understanding which will help them remove
the stigma and fear of dealing with employees who may be
experiencing poor mental health.
We introduced an Employee Benefits Platform in March 2023 which is designed to
improve employees physical, financial and mental wellbeing.  The platform gives
employees access to lifestyle savings, an Employee Assistance Programme (EAP), Your
Care, Cycle to Work Scheme, Home and Electronics and in the future, we will introduce;
car leasing, providing access to brand new, affordable fuel-efficient cars and a Salary
Sacrifice Shared Cost Additional Voluntary Contribution (AVC) scheme.
It also includes access to confidential external support via
the 24/7 Employee Assistance Programme and Your
Care, which is a dynamic wellbeing platform offering a
range of personal, emotional, and financial wellbeing
tools.
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CasestudySocial Media Performance for 2022-23
With the significant shift towards social media as the main communications means for
millions of people, we have focussed on developing or approach to ensure that Tayside
Contracts is maximising the benefits from engaging with employees, stakeholders and the
public across multiple social media platforms. The following analytics overview provides
examples of the effectiveness of our social media campaigns, audience engagement, and
overall social media presence. It provides valuable insights that will guide our decision-
making and help to optimise our future social media strategies.
Followers 2,022
Facebook Jobs
Account
lifetime March 2020
171,015Reach
The highest reaching posts were for the pre-
launch of the Apprentice Roadworker
applications in March 2023. These initiatives and
their successful reach supports the organisation
tackling the challenges we are facing with
recruitment
36,027
Followers 447
Facebook
Account
lifetime March 2020
Reach
The highest reaching post in the last 90 days of
2022 was the School Meals Parents Information
Newsletter, which also had the highest
‘reactions’. This is part of our approach to
promoting school meals to parents and pupils.
Tayside Contracts’ Procurement Team attending
the ‘Meet the Buyer’ event received the highest
number of comments, which were all positive.
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(previously known as Twitter)
Followers 1,536
The top tweets were for the School Meals
Parents Information newsletter and the
Scottish Apprentice Week.
Linkedin
Followers 155 Account
lifetime April 2022
Instagram
Followers 153 Account
lifetime August 2022
Youtube Channel
Subsribers 119 Channel
lifetime April 2018
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YEAR 2017/18 2018/19 2019/20 2020/21 2021/22 2022/23
ORGANISATIONAL
% DAYS LOST 5.9% 6% 6.2% 3.6% 5.9% 6.4%
Despite all the actions we have taken, the recruitment challenges Tayside Contracts, (and
employers in the UK and indeed globally), faced in 2021/22 have continued into 2022/23.
During 2022/23, the percentage of days lost due to sickness absence for the organisation as
a whole was 6.4%, an increase of 0.5% compared to 2021/22. This resulted in the organisation
failing to achieve our Business Plan Performance Indicator of 6.1%. This is the first time we
have not met this target.
Tayside Contracts continues to explore all available options in relation to improving
absence rates and managing this cost area.
Employee turnover for the organisation as a whole during 2022/23 was 14.5%, an increase of
1.6% on the previous year and 3% higher than the KPI target. Our turnover is at its highest
level in the last ten years:
Financial
Year
2013/
14
2014/
15
2015/
16
2016/
17
2017/
18
2018/
19
2019/
20
2020/
21
2021/
22
2022/
23
Turnover
(%) 9.1 10.6 11.8 10.8 11.6 12.3 11.5 9.6 12.9 14.5
Issues with high turnover are not confined to Tayside Contracts.  Price Waterhouse Cooper’s
national benchmarking study (June 2023) noted that, ‘the competition for talent and the
risk of high employee churn persists. Even amid recessionary pressures, rising interest
rates, and record-high inflation, employee turnover increased in 2022.’
Tayside Contracts has been addressing the ongoing employee turnover concerns through
our Recruitment and Retention Strategy Action Plan and we continue to explore other
ways to improve employee turnover and retention.
However, despite this intense activity, high turnover rates continue to remain a challenge,
with pay and conditions being identified as the main reason for people leaving the
organisation.
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Next Steps:
We have been reviewing our organisational structure as per of our ‘Future Thinking’
programme with a view to significantly reshaping our management and support
services costs and will be bringing forward proposals to ensure the organisations
structure is fit for purpose.
Positive and evident progress has been made with the Wellbeing Strategy Action Plan,
especially in relation to manager and employee mental health awareness training and
policy development. There is some evidence that these interventions may have
reduced stress, depression and anxiety related absences in 2022, but further work is
required around this, and benchmarking conducted, before any formal conclusions
can be drawn.
Investors in People (IIP) re-accreditation IIP is a nationally recognised standard for
people management, defining what it takes to lead, support, and manage people
effectively to achieve sustainable results. To ensure we maximise the benefits for our
employees, and maintain our IIP accreditation, we have developed an IIP Action Plan,
which summarises where the organisation believes it currently sits, and where it
aspires to be to achieve its organisational ambition. This includes a comprehensive
survey of all our employees taking place in the latter half of 2023.
Our focus on technology has great potential to release capacity, with transformation
projects in areas such as mobile working, working from home, streamlining former
paper-based processes, and moving to ‘digital by default’ – all of which are capable of
delivering great improvements. During 2022/23, we invested in new systems for
Financial Management and Human Resources and are implementing these to deliver
both productivity and efficiency improvements.
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Communities, Councils & Customers
‘Creating community wealth’
Introduction
As one of the largest employers in the area with a firm commitment to corporate
social, ethical and environmental responsibility, we are in a strong position to support
the wider ambitions of our constituent Councils and our communities, to enhance the
lives of everyone in Tayside.
As part of its Business Plan’s objectives, Tayside Contracts stated its commitment to
support the wider strategic aims of our constituent Councils, and their respective
Community Planning Partnerships, to share in delivering the Councils’ strategic aims
around community empowerment; equality and fairness; economy and education;
employability; tackling climate change and building community wealth.
Here are some of our highlights during 2022/23: -
Tayside Contracts provides a range of services, which could potentially be beneficial to local
community groups and charities, Examples include: -
Community Empowerment
Carrying out roads/footway improvements and repairs to community facilities such
as community hall car parks, or a local pathway.
Providing Catering for a community/charity event.
Provision of signage via our Sign Shop for a range of community needs.
Provision of Traffic Management for a community event.
In January 2023, we successfully launched our Community Fund, where we support local
community and charity groups, by carrying out these types of works for these groups. The
costs are paid by the Community Fund, with the income for the Fund provided by Brakes,
(one of our major national food suppliers), as part of their own community benefit
commitment.
In 2022/23 we approved nine Fast Track (lower cost) applications. We have also had a
positive 27 applications for full funding (up to £3,000) for community groups across
Tayside. We were able to say ‘yes’ to the vast majority of applications – some examples of
successful applications were: -
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The following comment from one of the successful applicants shows how much this help means to local groups:
“Thank you for the fantastic news – the works will make a significant difference to us, and more importantly the
children and families who use the service!”
In 2022 we achieved recognition as an approved official Young Person’s Guarantee
Employer which is a commitment to connect every 16 to 24 year old in Scotland to an
employment opportunity. This shows the commitment the organisation
has to developing and engaging with young people.
Since June 2022, we’ve attended 12 recruitment events hosted by local employability
teams across Tayside. By attending job fairs we’re increasing the public awareness of
Tayside Contracts and showcasing our organisation as a local employer of choice. Each
job fair is a great way to inform individuals of current job opportunities, answer queries
about our roles, the application process and finally to encourage applications.
Provision of a pathway
round the building for a
charity for the elderly in
Blairgowrie.
Laying a slabbed area for a
charity for children with
complex needs in
Rumbling Bridge.
Ground works to help a
community garden in
Dundee.
Seated shelter for a Stroke
Club in Montrose.
Education and Employability
The Tay Cities deal sets out an ambitious agenda to increase
employability and skills.in 2022 we teamed up with Council
employability teams and Skills Development Scotland to create
pathways to give job seekers guidance, training and employment
opportunities with Tayside Contracts. We also worked with Developing
the Young Workforce (Tay City Deals) to support young people to
prepare for work and the transition needed with support from schools,
colleges, and our managers.
During the year, we participated in the Developing the Young Workforce’s social media
campaign ‘#NoWrongPath’ which provides inspiration and reassurance to young
people receiving their exam results. The campaign aims to demonstrate that many
people in interesting job roles may not have taken a straight, obvious, or traditional path
to get there - that there is #NoWrongPath. Tayside Contracts will continue to
participate in this annual campaign to promote Tayside Contracts as a local employer of
choice.
We also attended careers events at Barnardos: Employability4All, Remploy and
Jobcentres in Angus, Dundee and Perth, Skills Development Scotland, Tayside Pace
Team and held our own event at Street Soccer Dundee.
Tayside Contracts’ success in working with partners in employability led to recognition
in Remploy’s case study: ‘The importance of working with Living Wage Employers,
like Tayside Contracts across Scotland’.
‘We have been working with Tayside Contracts in Dundee, Perth and Angus for the last year. They
have been in credibly supportive of our participants and everyone who has secured work with
them has loved it. They are a fantastic employer to work with.’
Amy Wilson, Regional Account Manager, Remploy
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1
We produced video employee testimonials and now have a Cleaning, Catering,
Construction and Transport testimonials published on our YouTube channel. Quotes
and photographs have also been published for a Facilities Assistant, Apprentice
Roadworkers and Erika and Debbie both School Crossing Patrollers. Weblinks to our
employee testimonials are available on our website, Facebook Jobs page and our
Indeed employer page.
An Apprenticeship webpage is now available on our website highlighting our
successful Apprentice Roadworker and Apprentice Mechanic programmes.
Casestudy
Our Business Plan commits the organisation to work with Councils’ Education Services, as
well as local schools and universities, to add value to the education experience, support
career paths and positive destinations, and potentially attract a new generation of local
talented people to work with us.
Tayside Contracts continues to work closely with our constituent Councils’ Education
Services, to offer work experience placements - 18 placements were offered during 2022/23.
During 2022/23 we attended nine school/career events, delivered talks, and targeted
supporting six local schools, working in partnership with Education Services of the three
Councils. We worked with Brechin High School, Arbroath High School, Braeview Academy
and St Johns High School in Dundee, and Bertha Park and Blairgowrie High School in
Perth and Kinross. In addition, we were also invited to attend school career events and
attended Arbroath Academy, Brechin Campus, Forfar Academy and Monifieth High School
in Angus. Grove Academy and Braeview Academy in Dundee and Blairgowrie High School
and Breadalbane Academy in Perth and Kinross.
Working with Education Partners to Support Employability
Casestudy
Tayside Contracts continued to engage with community and further education
establishments during 2022/23. One such example of this was John Curran, the Dundee
Roads Maintenance Partnership Manager acting as an industry expert assessor for the
Engineering Development trust. This involved spending a day assessing eight very well
prepared and presented projects at the Tayside region Industrial Cadets assessment day
for S2 level pupils held at Abertay University.
The event encourages participants to consider future careers in STEM subjects (Science,
Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) and cannot run without the support of
volunteers with STEM knowledge and the financial support of external industry. The patron
of Industrial Cadets is HRH Charles the 3rd and is directly comparable to the Duke of
Edinburgh scheme.
This positive engagement not only encourages pupils to enter into an engineering
profession but also promotes the career opportunities available at Tayside Contracts.
Working with Education Partners to Support Employability
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Fuel Used (L) Miles Travelled Fuel Spend (£) Overall MPG Year
700.7K 2,000K £992.5K 12.9 2022/23
688.8K 1,919K £761.4K 12.5 2021/22
Climate Change and Sustainability
Our first Climate Change Plan was introduced in 2021, setting out how the organisation
will move towards net zero, influence others to take action on climate change. Good
progress has been made with 12 items in the Climate Change Action Plan, with some
progress being made on 16 actions.
Transport is the biggest contributor to greenhouse gases in Scotland, and reductions in
emissions can only be achieved through significant changes to our reliance on fossil
fuel powered vehicles and plant. Although there were further miles travelled in 2022/23
compared to 2021/22 by Tayside Contracts (this is heavily dependent on work locations),
our overall fuel consumption performance improved by 3.2%. Given that fuel prices
increased by 19% over the period, our proactive management of consumption and
driver behaviour offset the impact of fuel increases in the year by £31k. This has also
benefitted the environmental impact of our fleet by reducing our average CO2
emissions per mile from 1.0 to 0.9.
In 2022 the Transport Services Team took the lead in reducing vehicle idling across
Tayside Contracts with our “TURN IT OFF" campaign. This campaign is aimed at
encouraging drivers to turn off their engines while parked, with the goal of reducing
emissions, improving air quality, and achieving substantial savings. The campaign
messaging was based on the following key facts, and was a key part of the reduced fuel
consumption in 2022/23
TURN
IT
OFF!
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Casestudy
Over the last 10 years, the Street Lighting Partnership teams have been working to install
LED lighting throughout the Council areas drive down energy consumption and reduce
the Councils’ carbon footprints. Our teams have achieved the following by the end of
2022/23.
68%
decrease in energy
consumption since 2012.
Dundee
each travelling
5,000 miles.
1,269
diesel cars
= travelling to the
moon
and back
Over 6.3m
diesel road miles
63%
decrease in energy
consumption since 2012.
Angus
47%
decrease in energy
consumption since 2012.
Perth & Kinross
vehicle miles
33 million
fridges
for a year
148,500
Operating
A key element in our transition to net zero will be to move our 250 commercial vehicle
fleet away from dependency on diesel fuel. In 2022/23 we developed a strategy for the
introduction of alternative fuelled vehicles and plant to Tayside Contracts fleet, which
was approved by the Joint Committee in November 2022.
We worked with constituent Councils, and partners including the Energy Savings Trust
and TACTRAN to explore electric and hydrogen fuelled alternatives for our fleet,
including sharing electrical charging points at depots.  We now have 27 Electric
Vehicle (EV) small panel vans on the fleet and a further 6 on order.
During the production of road construction materials at Collace Quarry, raw aggregates
are heated through a drying drum. We switched the fuel for this heating process in the
asphalt plant from the heavy polluting diesel to a cleaner burning liquid gas (LPG) in
May 2019. Since that time up to March 2023 this switch has reduced the Quarry’s
emissions by over 1.7 million kilograms of carbon dioxide.  This is equivalent to:
Street Lighting Partnership Leads the Way with Tackling
Climate Change
In totality, across the three council areas, we have achieved a saving of 13,500 tonnes of
CO2 This is the equivalent to;
from
CO2
emissions
81,000
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Casestudy
Health data shows that over one third of pupils in Primary 1 in the most deprived areas of
Scotland are overweight and at risk of obesity. Dundee is one of the Scottish Government’s
Early Adopter areas for its ‘Whole Systems Approach to Diet and Healthy Weight’. Tayside
Contracts was part of a Multi-Agency Health Weight Partnership, including Dundee City
Council Children and Families Service, NHS Tayside’s Public Health Directorate, working
together to tackle this issue.
In October 2022, Rosebank Primary School launched their Best Foot Forward initiative
which links with the ambitions of the local Child Healthy Weight Strategy ‘Helping
Tayside’s Children and Young People to Feel Great and Ready to Learn’. The ‘Best Foot
Forward’ was a whole school approach to an inclusive and health promoting environment,
which aims to help families take positive steps towards a healthier and sustainable
lifestyle.
Families were invited to join the 15-week programme with a series of interactive
workshops to develop knowledge around all aspects of health and wellbeing, including
screentime, sleep, regular physical activity and the development of a healthy eating and
snack policy whereby only fruit and water could be consumed as snacks during the school
day. Tayside Contracts delivered practical cookery sessions, including a ‘Fakeaway vs
Takeaway’ event. We provided recipes for batch cooking and freezing and gave advice on
healthy snacks at home.
Health and Wellbeing
Best Foot Forward Project – Rosebank Primary School
45
We were proud to have contributed to
this fantastic initiative, which should have
substantial community benefit. It is
especially encouraging to note that
school meal uptake at Rosebank Primary
School has increased since the start of
the project with average meals
increasing from 127 to 174.
The Best Foot Forward project was
nominated for an award at the Dundee
City Council OSCA’s (Outstanding Service
& Commitment Awards) in June 2023 for
‘Improving Services through Partnership
Working’.
Norrie, our Menu Development Chef sharing his
skills with parents
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Casestudy
Throughout 2022/23, Tayside Contracts has been involved in delivering various phases of
the Broughty Ferry to Monifieth Active Travel Route Upgrades. The works, which have a
total budget of £18million, aim to deliver transformational improvements for active travel
in the area, creating a high quality and fully inclusive walking and cycling route, with
associated public realm, biodiversity and landscape enhancements.
The project, all of which falls within the National Cycle Route 1, spans from Castle
Approach, Broughty Ferry to Marine Drive, Monifieth. The section of route going westwards
from Castle Approach to Douglas Terrace was also upgraded, as part of the Broughty Ferry
Flood Protection Scheme.
Tayside Contracts are proud to have assisted Dundee City Council as one of the
contractors of choice in the delivery of this exciting and ambitious project. Following an
open tender procurement process, the Dundee Road Maintenance Partnership (DRMP)
have delivered two phases of the project. Phases 2A, a value of £1.7M, was delivered in
conjunction with supply chain partners Kilmac Construction and most recently, Phase 3, a
value of £800k was delivered using internal resource. These works have allowed the entire
workforce to demonstrate the breadth of skills, knowledge and adaptability within the
DRMP, given the extremely varied and complex work types involved.
Future phases are planned throughout 2023/24 and Tayside Contracts will seek to assist
further in the delivery of this project.
Broughty Ferry to Monifieth Active Travel (BFMAT)
Route Upgrades
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Tayside is recognised - both nationally and internationally - as a place that produces the
finest food and drink, and as the largest catering organisation in the Tayside area providing
over 5 million meals to schools and communities every year, we are committed to using as
much locally sourced produce as possible. 
Economy
Supporting Local Food Producers
We also established a dedicated webpage to help local food producers become
suppliers to Tayside Contracts – click here
Market research is conducted prior to any procurement exercise to engage with local
suppliers. We hold a database which records all supplier enquiries to maximise
opportunities to local enterprises where possible.
We hold our annual Meet the Buyer event in conjunction with the Supplier Development
Programme to network with local suppliers.
We also worked with Perth & Kinross Councils Good Food Project, Eat and Drink
Dundee to share and collaborate with groups such as Nourish Scotland, GrowBiz
Scotland, to attract local suppliers.
47
meals; however, we are looking to extend that to ensure that we continue to provide
sustainable, high quality, healthy, nutritious, and delicious meals, whilst generating more
income for local businesses. The event was very successful with presentations by our
suppliers Total Produce, Brakes, Campbells Prime Meats, looking to take on local producers
as part of their supply chain.
Tayside Contracts in partnership with NFU Scotland, hosted an
event in November 2022 that brought together local food
producers across Tayside, to explore working together to support
Tayside businesses, and increase the levels of locally grown and
produced food served in school lunches.  Several local food
producers already supply produce for school and community 
In addition:
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Casestudy
We are proud to have work in partnership with the Dundee Bairns Fun and Food
Programme since April 2016. During that period, we have supported the provision of more
than 300,000 meals to children who need additional support, across the city of Dundee.
Children who received and indeed rely on free school meals during school term time,
often have no such provision during school holiday periods. It was this that inspired the
aptly named Dundee Bairns Fun & Food Programme, with our involvement. The activities
extended to include the provision of a Tea Club which is an after-school homework club
that runs between 3.30 and 5.00pm and includes a 2-course hot evening meal provided
by the hard-working Tayside Contract catering teams.
We have been able to evidence that, even within a short time frame, an after-school study
club with a hot meal provided, can have a positive impact on attainment, pupil
perceptions of health and happiness, and teachers’ perceptions of pupil confidence and
engagement with learning.
Genna Miller of Dundee Bairns pictured below stated:
‘I would like to thank you and all of the staff at Tayside Contracts for the provision of our Tea Club
meals. The 15 projects we delivered to over the course of the 5 month period were very grateful for
the meals, which fed children in football clubs, homework clubs, and 'cosy spaces' around the city
who might not have otherwise had access to a hot evening meal.’
Supporting Dundee Bairns
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Although good progress has been made with some Climate Change actions, several
others are still in progress. We had to prioritise attention to dealing with challenges,
and major supply chain shortages in essential goods and services. In addition, lengthy
recruitment challenges in filling vacant posts which were essential for taking forward
many of the actions in the Plan also contributed to implementation delays. All key
vacant posts have been filled, so we are in a much better position to progress the
actions that have not advanced as far as originally explained.
Despite our actions to attract local food producers to become suppliers for Tayside
Contracts, the uptake of local producers providing to Tayside Contracts has not
reached our target level for 2022/23. Further engagement is needed to understand
the barriers to local producers, and how these can be overcome.
Next Steps:
We are reviewing our Procurement Strategy to ensure that sufficient weight is given to
fair work, local producers, community benefit and procurement equality duties. We will
support this by reviewing our community benefit clauses on our tender
documentation, considering best practice from other organisations - to demonstrate
the power of effective procurement to lever social, economic and environmental
benefits to the local community, including building local community wealth.
Our Training team is currently working on a project with the three Councils’
employability teams, to pull together the employability information relevant to Tayside
Contracts (such as the various schemes available, funding available, and
contact/application details) into a central resource to share with our managers, so they
can take advantage of the opportunities to provide learning/training experiences for
people needing employment support within the Tayside area. This will be available in
2023/24.
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The table below details the target KPIs for 2022/23 from our Business Plan and the actual
results.
50
(not achieved)
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If you require any further information or you would like this
document in another language or format, please contact
communications@tayside-contracts.co.uk
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REPORT TO: TAYSIDE CONTRACTS JOINT COMMITTEE – 20 NOVEMBER
2023 
REPORT ON: SUPPORTED SELF ASSESSMENT OF TAYSIDE
CONTRACTS - OUTCOME 
REPORT BY: MANAGING DIRECTOR 
REPORT NO: JC35/2023 
1. PURPOSE OF REPORT 
1.1 The Chief Executives of Angus, Dundee City and Perth & Kinross Councils,
jointly with the Managing Director of Tayside Contracts, commissioned a
Supported Self-Assessment by an independent assessor into the activities of
Tayside Contracts. This report provides the outcome of that review work, and
the actions arising in response to the findings. 
2. RECOMMENDATIONS 
2.1 It is recommended that the Joint Committee:- 
a) notes the independent report into the Supported Self-Assessment of
Tayside Contracts,
b) Agrees to follow up engagement with Joint Committee members on the
future measures that Tayside Contracts will need to make, working in
partnership with the constituent Councils, to respond to the significant
financial pressures in the current year, and in future years. 
3. FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS 
3.1 There are no direct financial implications arising from this report. 
4. BACKGROUND 
4.1 With the significant challenges facing Scottish Councils, it is more vital than
ever to be reassured that public services are being provided through the most
appropriate service delivery models; and that maximum focus is given to
ensuring efficiencies, transformation and income generation, to mitigate
against reductions in public service delivery, as much as possible - as well as 
maximising the  advantages of greater collaboration between organisations
offering a route to reducing costs, whilst maintaining public services.   
4.2 Therefore, Tayside Contracts must satisfy ourselves and our constituent
Councils that we are as cost-efficient as we can possibly be, and that our
future plans to maximise our opportunities with our existing council partners,
and expand our business to other local authorities, and to a range of public /
private customers, will help reduce the costs of our services to our constituent
Councils, and help secure the jobs of our employees who provide those
services. 
Report No. 24/125
6(ii)
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4.3 Therefore, to test whether Tayside Contracts is taking appropriate steps to
meet these challenges effectively, the Chief Executives of Angus, Dundee City
and Perth & Kinross Councils, jointly with the Managing Director of Tayside
Contracts, commissioned a Supported Self-Assessment by an independent
reviewer into the activities of Tayside Contracts. The purpose of the Supported
Self-Assessment was to:
• build the capacity in Tayside Contracts to support evaluation of its own
performance,
• continuously improve the quality of services delivered for partner
authorities,
• offer independent evaluation and validation of Tayside Contracts’
efficiency and effectiveness, within a contracting public sector framework. 
4.4 This was to be achieved by establishing: - 
• Is Tayside Contracts currently fit for the intended purpose of the
organisation and as efficient as it can be?
• Is the quality of services provided by Tayside Contracts being delivered
at an optimal level and what level of service options could it provide to
the constituent Councils?
• Is the organisation taking appropriate steps to improve; and to secure
further business opportunities? 
4.5 An independent reviewer was engaged, to support the assessment, and work
with the Tayside Contracts Corporate Leadership Team and senior colleagues
within the constituent Councils, to assess and consider all the necessary
elements to undertake this assignment.   
4.6 The Chief Executives and Managing Director appointed Keith Winter to be the
independent reviewer for this activity. His experience and expertise were
considered to be appropriate for this commission, as he was formerly the
Executive Director for Enterprise and Environment for a large Scottish Council
and has extensive experience of local authority-based commercial activities,
having had the strategic responsibility for the commercial operating arm of that
Council. The project brief for this work is provided in Appendix 1. 
4.7 The value of having someone outside the organisation fulfilling this role
provided access to a trusted expert, who can challenge the organisation`s
leadership, by asking the questions we may not ask ourselves, and look at the
organisation through another perspective (using their own
expertise/experience), as well as offering an independent critique of the
organisation`s activities. It also gives an independent validation of the findings,
to give confidence to the three Councils and our Joint Committee that this
work has been thoroughly and independently undertaken. 
4.8 The brief for this work was agreed in April 2023. The review actively consisted
of: - 
• Scoping discussions with the three Chief Executives and the Managing
Director 
• Interviews with senior leadership of Tayside Contracts,
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• Interviews with members of the Governance and Strategy Group (Senior
representatives from each of the three Councils),
• Review of supporting documentary evidence submitted by Tayside
Contracts – this compromised over 130 documents in supporting
evidence,
• Meetings with Chief Executives, Governance and Strategy Group
members and with the Managing Director to present both the interim
findings, and the final report. 
4.9 The outcome report from this work by the independent assessor is provided in
Appendix 2. 
5. FINDINGS 
5.1 The key findings from this review work can be summarised as:- 
5.2 Is Tayside Contracts currently fit for the intended purpose of the
organisation and as efficient as it can be? 
• There are many strengths in the Tayside Contracts model as it currently
exists, which is consistent with a contracting led organisation model. 
• Tayside Contracts` structure and shape are not unexpected and appear
generally appropriate for the nature and scale of the organisation. 
• There are views from Council representatives that there should be some
financial savings made in the organisation`s structure, given the
approaches being taken in the Councils over reducing budgets. There
would need to be sensitivity in making savings to the organisations
structure as the management and support costs are not out of the norm,
and any push for growth or unexpected events may overstretch the
current model capacity, as well as affect the aims for further business
development and growth, as set out in the organisation`s Business Plan 
• There is considerable information and data capture in relation to
performance management, however there is no consensus between the
Councils (as owners and primary customers) and Tayside Contracts (as
the delivery organisation), on the key measures for the organisation, nor
clarity from the Councils on the expected performance of the
organisation. The preparation of an agreed and targeted Performance
Framework, underpinned by dashboards suitable for the Governance &
Strategy Group and Joint Committee, is a priority to assist scrutiny, clarity
and monitoring of performance, and to build confidence and trust in the
organisation. 
• There remains a question over the capacity of the Joint Committee to
discharge its oversight role on performance and undertake appropriate
and proportionate scrutiny. This fits with a decision at the Joint
Committee in June 2023, to remit the Managing Director to carry out a
detailed engagement with Joint Committee members to identify their
opinions on the governance and scrutiny role of the Joint Committee
(Joint Committee report 16/23). 
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• The report proposes that to enhance links with the broader Council
political membership, Tayside Contracts should provide their Annual
Performance Report to respective Councils, through an appropriate
committee mechanism.
• To assist all parties and establish a forward-looking approach to activity,
performance and finance, Tayside Contracts should prepare a medium-
term financial strategy to be agreed with the Councils. 
5.3 Is the quality of services provided by Tayside Contracts being delivered
at an optimal level and what level of service options could it provide to
the constituent Councils ? 
• This high-level assessment has not identified significant issues with the
quality of services provided. This is an area where a more detailed level
of certainty is more problematic given the comments above regarding the
need for a focused, agreed, and shared performance framework with the
constituent Councils. 
• Currently different processes operate in relation to engagement with
Tayside Contracts.  This is most notable in a comparison of the
differences in engagement between the Roads and Facilities
Management activities undertaken by Tayside Contracts. On Facilities
Management, there is clear standardisation of approach which has
delivered customer and operational benefits, as well as significant
operational savings. However, in relation to Roads related activities there
appears far fewer standard approaches from the Councils. There would
be a benefit for all from standardisation across areas of delivery, and
acceptance from Councils, with a model based on outcomes not inputs. 
• There should be a 5-year cycle of Best Value reviews of Tayside
Contracts. This should avoid time consuming, piecemeal, and reactive
review processes, and allow a periodic step back and reflection for the
parties on the direction of travel. 
5.4 Is the organisation taking appropriate steps to improve, and to secure
further business opportunities? 
• A clear focus and expectation from colleagues from the Councils is the
pursuit of business growth for Tayside Contracts.  A good start already
exists for a focus on areas to pursue in the content of the Tayside
Contracts Marketing Strategy 2023 and the Commercialisation &
Collaboration matrix, which is a ranked list of potential collaboration and
commercial opportunities, that sets the priorities for the organisation to
pursue and review.   
• Tayside Contracts’ Business Plan outlines the priorities for improvement
and development. There is good, related activity in here, and with
endorsement by all as part of the focus for activity, performance, and
process, will assist understanding of the intended approach over the next
few years. 
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• The financial data, budget reports, cost models and income detail
displays a competency in reporting and analysis of the position of
Tayside Contracts. 
• The documentation, covering internal audit, council reporting, asset
registers, APSE information and around performance all came across as
acceptable and that bases are covered. 
• In relation to business plans, strategies and an up-to-date strategic plan,
no omissions  in approach were detected from that which would be
expected for an organisation in relation to the this review. 
5.5 Report Conclusions 
• The Tayside Contracts model based on the review undertaken is a valid
model for going forward. There are, some improvements and changes
which can help gain more from the model and the relationships involved. 
• Relationships across parties are not consistent, and the standing of the
relationship between the respective Councils and Tayside Contracts
needs affirmed i.e., that Tayside Contracts is an affiliate organisation to
the Councils collectively. This message will help foster closer working. 
• To achieve business development and growth requires some structural
adjustment in Tayside Contracts to free up resource to develop
opportunities, but particularly case manage this through to conversion of
opportunities into sustainable, profitable business. 
• All parties recognise that there are areas for improvement, though this
requires transparency, trust, and acceptance of some risk, by all
involved, to optimise the approach, and maximise returns from this
unique model in the Scottish landscape. 
• Overall, the report concluded that currently there is no benefit to any or
all the Councils stepping away from the Tayside Contracts model. 
The main headline recommendations were: 
• Review of Governance & Strategy Group remit
• Develop a Five Year working framework 
• Review Joint Committee reporting and use of digital tools
• Develop a Performance framework
• Develop a Medium Term Financial Strategy
• Review Partnership agreements
• Standardisation of standards across Roads activities
• Review the Business Development model
• Review of Tayside Contracts structure and focus 
• Periodic Best Value reviews (5 yearly)
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5.6 These findings are accepted by Tayside Contracts Corporate Leadership
Team, and the proposals have been incorporated into an action plan to be
implemented within the timescales set in the report. The Action Plan is
detailed in Appendix 3. It includes both the headline recommendations
mentioned above, and also other proposals detailed in the report. 
5.7 The review has identified several actions which require the collective input of
both Tayside Contracts and the constituent Councils. These will be actioned
through the Governance and Strategy Group. 
6. KEY CHALLENGES AND NEXT STEPS 
6.1 In addition to implementing the Action Plan detailed in 5.6 above, the report
highlights several key challenges relating to future financial sustainability.
These are being amplified by national factors which have intensified since this
report was initially commissioned. 
6.2 The Supported Self Assessment report highlighted the ongoing costs
pressures facing Tayside Contracts and the constituent Councils. Section
2.1.81 refers to the impact of 2022/23 pay award which added an additional
recurring cost to Tayside Contracts’ pay bill of £4.5m, as pay awards are
weighted to lower paid workers, and 73% of Tayside Contracts` employees
are on the lowest local authority pay levels. This cost pressure will be
accumulate, with the indications that the 2023/24 pay award will also be
greater than inflation, with the current pay offer increasing lowest paid
workers` pay by just under 10%. 
6.3 In addition, inflationary impacts on goods and services - particularly food
inflation- are compounding these financial pressures, both with the current
year, and accumulating into future years, with increased costs to Tayside
Contracts resulting in higher charges to constituent Councils for services
provided, at a time when Councils are already facing significant pressures.
The report highlights the pressures on public services, referring to the Scottish
Government`s Medium Term Financial Strategy which identified a spending
deficit of £1 billion in 2024/25 (section 2.1.7). A necessary outcome is
therefore to address the continued financial and organisational challenges
being faced by Tayside Contracts and the three Councils, with a need for
urgency in developing a sustainable model where services are provided, to
align with the funding that the constituent Councils can afford.   
6.4 Therefore, the focus both arising from the Supported Self-Assessment report,
and continued cost pressures, is how to achieve solutions to manage within
the available financial envelope. The report addressed several of these issues
through: - 
• The importance of generating income through developing business
opportunities (section 2.3)
• Improvements to productive working through enhanced collaboration and
standardised approached (section 2.2.1.2)
• Reducing costs through review and reduction of service delivery models
(section 4.13)
• The need for a Tayside Contracts Medium Term Financial Strategy
(section 4.7)
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6.5 The report recommended that the Governance and Strategy Group should
oversee progress on these issues. 
6.6 Tayside Contracts is already addressing these through a Change Plan of
transformational activities, and further areas for service review, and a
prioritised list of targeted commercial and collaborative opportunities. Actions
have been set out in terms of three categories: 
• Income generation - targeting priority areas to generate surplus through
providing services to other public and private sector customers,
• Efficiencies - reviewing all our service areas to identify cost reductions
through more effective and innovative ways of working,
• Service reductions - where insufficient savings can be realised through
the other categories, options have been identified for reductions in
services provided to constituent Councils. 
6.7 These issues are both complex and challenging and it is recommended that a
priority next step arising from this report will be further engagement with Joint
Committee members, to share information on the scale of the financial
challenges, as well as options to address these. It will be important to carry out
this work in the near future, to help inform Joint Committee members, and
other Councillors when developing both Council budgets, and Tayside
Contracts` budget, as well as the development of Tayside Contracts Medium
Term Financial Strategy. 
7. DATA PROTECTION IMPACT ASSESSMENT (DPIA) 
7.1 The issues considered within this report have, as required by legislation, been
the subject of consideration from a data protection perspective. 
7.2 A data protection assessment is not required. 
8. EQUALITIES ASSESSMENT 
8.1 The issues considered within this report have, as required by legislation, been
the subject of consideration from an equalities perspective. 
8.2 An equalities impact assessment (EqIA) is not required. 
9. CONSULTATIONS 
9.1 The Governance and Strategy Group along with the Clerk and the Proper
Officer to the Joint Committee have been consulted on the preparation of this
report. 
10. BACKGROUND PAPERS 
10.1 None. 
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Author(s)
Name Designation Contact Details
Keith McNamara  Managing Director  enquiries@tayside-
contracts.co.uk
Tel: 01382 812721 
Approved
Name Designation Date
Keith McNamara Managing Director 20 November 2023 
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Appendix 1 
Project Brief:  Supported Self-Assessment of Tayside Contracts
Commissioned by: Chief Executives of Angus, Dundee City and Perth & Kinross
Councils, and Managing Director, Tayside Contracts
Independent Reviewer: Keith Winter
Context
With the significant challenges facing Scottish Council’s over the next few years, its is
more vital than ever to be reassured that public services are being provided through
the most appropriate service delivery models; and that maximum attention is given to
ensuring efficiencies, transformation and income generation, to mitigate against
reductions in public service delivery, as much as possible, as well as  considering the 
advantages of greater collaboration between organisations offering a route to reducing
costs, whilst maintaining service quality (as recommended by the Scottish
Government, the Chartered Institute for Public Finance and Accountancy, and Audit
Scotland, amongst other bodies).  
Purpose of  Supported Self-Assessment
The assessment aims to
• build the capacity in Tayside Contracts to support evaluation of its own
performance,
• continuously improve the quality of services delivered for partner authorities,
• offer independent evaluation and validation of Tayside Contracts’ efficiency and
effectiveness, within a contracting public sector framework. 
It will do this by establishing: 
1. Is Tayside Contracts currently fit for the intended purpose of the organisation
and as efficient as it can be?
2. Is the quality of services provided by Tayside Contracts being delivered at an
optimal level and what level of service options could it provide to the constituent
Councils?
3. Is the organisation taking appropriate steps to improve; and to secure further
business opportunities? 
Detailed Brief
1. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the shared services delivery model
provided by Tayside Contracts, in terms of whether: 
• the organisation is effective and efficient, when benchmarked with other
organisations (e.g via APSE, ASSIST FM, or other benchmarking
networks),
• the strengths of the organisational model, organisational structure and
functional arrangements/relationships with constituent Councils are
being maximised,
• appropriate PIs are in place to monitor and hold the organisation to
account,
6(ii)
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• there is sufficient skillset and capacity to actively market, deliver and
expand Tayside Contracts services to other major customers,
• a risk based approach is adopted to future commercial and/or income
generating opportunities. 
2. Review the measures undertaken and the further proposals of Tayside
Contracts and the three constituent Councils to reduce costs, achieve
efficiencies, deliver transformational change, and generate additional income;
and provide conclusions on: 
a) The effectiveness of the measures carried out and the proposed actions;
b) Recommendations on any further measures that could be undertaken to
achieve savings, efficiencies, transformational change, or income
generation,
c) Identifying further measures that could be achieved, both led by Councils
(e.g. service levels and standards), and those that would be led by Tayside
Contracts (e.g. services provided to external customers/ new market
opportunities),
d) An assessment of the whole system approach, including interaction with and
direction given by the 3 constituent Councils and whether there is sufficient
clarity on the ask from each of the 3 Councils, individually and collectively,
for Tayside Contracts to work to an agreed set of realistic actions/desired
outcomes, 
e) Where there are further opportunities for collaboration with constituent
Councils (particularly efficiencies through standardisation of services with
constituent Councils) 
Deliverables
Production of report for Managing Director of Tayside Contracts and Chief Executives,
with recommendations
Timescales
• Project Brief agreed by commissioners by 20 March 2023
• Inception meeting (to set out reporting points, wider key contacts, initial
programme for data capture and interviews, desk review of relevant
documentation and materials) - week commencing 3 April 2023
• Interim meeting with Chief Executives – early June 2023
• Draft report to Managing Director, Tayside Contracts by 24 June 2023
• Final report to Chief Executives by 1 July 2023 
Contacts
The independent reviewer will need a key set of contacts to provide information and/or
direction to appropriate contacts in their organisations. The proposed contacts are the
members of the Governance and Strategy Group:-
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Angus Council   –  Mark Armstrong
Dundee City Council  –  Robert Emmott
Perth & Kinross Council  – Fraser Crofts
Tayside Contracts  –  Keith McNamara 
Reporting Arrangements 
The independent reviewer will produce a final report to the three Chief Executives
and the Managing Director of Tayside Contracts. 
The final report will be submitted to the Tayside Contracts Joint Committee with
recommendations and an action plan as necessary. 
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1 
Appendix 2 
Final Report 10/08/23 
Report for Chief Executives of Angus, Dundee, and
Perth & Kinross Councils, and Manging Director of
Tayside Contracts 
Supported Self-Assessment of Tayside Contracts
Keith Winter 
6(ii)
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2 
Executive Summary: Supported Self-Assessment of Tayside Contracts
The review undertaken consisted of a desk review, interviews of key parties and an assessment
of the information against a collectively agreed brief issued in April 2023
The main conclusions from the exercise  (leading to the key recommendations listed in the table
at appendix 1 with the timescales involved set out as targets), are stated as follows:
• The relationship between the respective Councils and Tayside Contracts needs affirmed
i.e., that Tayside Contracts is an affiliate organisation to the Councils collectively. 
• To assist matters all the Councils should achieve a standing partnership agreement with
Tayside Contracts for services across the undertaken activities. 
• There is a clear need and benefit for Councils to have more standardisation on service
delivery to assist effective and efficient, cost-effective delivery by Tayside Contracts,
and a focus on Outcomes. 
• An agreed medium term financial strategy looking out 3 to 4 years would assist all
parties. 
• There is a wide range of performance information, but there is not a single, performance
framework available to transparently review performance and scrutinise activities. To
see the overall picture and assess performance needs more focus and work. 
• The financial arrangements and expectations of Tayside Contracts is not consistent
across the three Councils. More needs done on this re the position on savings, paying
for pay awards and extracting any efficiency gains by savings. 
• The real focus for efficiency and finance must be the expansion of the activity turnover
and therefore the budget surplus return levels possible to the Councils annually. 
• To achieve business development and growth requires a different resource and focus
which requires some structural adjustment in Tayside Contracts to free up resource to
drive this, develop opportunities, but particularly case manage this through to
conversion of opportunities into sustainable, profitable business, and maintain client
relationships thereafter.  The organisation needs to review its structure periodically. 
• The possible areas for expansion, including any additional activity areas for the 3 local
authorities currently involved, need assessed and agreed but the start is in place for
this. 
• Post Covid, the review of services and delivery models needs reviewed and reset. This
needs consideration given the possible impacts on workforce and any mitigation
possible through any practical redeployment available. 
Overall, there is not any visible benefit, currently, for any or all the Councils stepping away from
the Tayside Contracts model. All parties recognise that there are areas for improvement,
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3 
though this requires transparency, trust, and acceptance of some risk, by all involved, to
optimise the approach, and maximise return from this unique model in the Scottish landscape.
1.0 SECTION 1 INTRODUCTION
1.1 This assessment activity commenced in February 2023, via a briefing by the Managing
Director of Tayside Contracts requesting an independent reviewer for a supported self-
assessment of Tayside Contracts, commissioned jointly by the Chief Executives of Angus,
Dundee City and Perth & Kinross Councils, and the Managing Director of Tayside
Contracts.  Through discussions and drafting between the client parties a finalised brief
was issued on 3 April 2023. The brief comprised:   
The assessment aims to: - 
• build the capacity in Tayside Contracts to support evaluation of its own
performance, 
• continuously improve the quality of services delivered for partner authorities,
• offer independent evaluation and validation of Tayside Contracts’ efficiency and
effectiveness, within a contracting public sector framework.   
This was to be achieved by establishing:   
1. Is Tayside Contracts currently fit for the intended purpose of the organisation and
as efficient as it can be? 
2. Is the quality of services provided by Tayside Contracts being delivered at an optimal
level and what level of service options could it provide to the constituent Councils? 
3. Is the organisation taking appropriate steps to improve, and to secure further
business opportunities?   
Detailed Brief 
1. Evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of the shared services delivery model
provided by Tayside Contracts, in terms of whether:  
• the organisation is effective and efficient, when benchmarked with other
organisations (e.g., via APSE, ASSIST FM, or other benchmarking networks), 
• the strengths of the organisational model, organisational structure and
functional arrangements/relationships with constituent Councils are being
maximised,
• appropriate PIs are in place to monitor and hold the organisation to account, 
• there is sufficient skillset and capacity to actively market, deliver and expand
Tayside Contracts services to other major customers, 
• a risk-based approach is adopted to future commercial and/or income
generating opportunities. 
2. Review the measures undertaken and the further proposals of Tayside Contracts
and the three constituent Councils to reduce costs, achieve efficiencies, deliver
transformational change, and generate additional income; and provide conclusions
on: 
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4 
a) The effectiveness of the measures carried out and the proposed actions. 
b) Recommendations on any further measures that could be undertaken to
achieve savings, efficiencies, transformational change, or income
generation, 
c) Identifying further measures that could be achieved, both led by Councils
(e.g., service levels and standards), and those that would be led by Tayside
Contracts (e.g., services provided to external customers/ new market
opportunities), 
d) An assessment of the whole system approach, including interaction with and
direction given by the 3 constituent Councils and whether there is sufficient
clarity on the ask from each of the 3 Councils, individually and collectively,
for Tayside Contracts to work to an agreed set of realistic actions/desired
outcomes,  
e) Where there are further opportunities for collaboration with constituent
Councils (particularly efficiencies through standardisation of services with
constituent Councils). 
Access to relevant documentation in confidence and access to key leaders and
managers would be arranged as part of the analysis activity.
1.1 It was set out that the data gathering, and interview activity should be complete by the
end of June and a resulting finalised report available by the 1 July 2023. This was
extended slightly, given the slight slippage in the commissioners   approving the final
brief and the annual holiday season. The final report was shared the week commencing
24th July 2023, given holidays.
1.2 A series of interviews with identified senior staff were carried out. 
- Doug McKay, Head of Operations, Tayside Contracts on 10th May 2023
- Frank Reilly, Head of FM and Human Resources, Tayside Contracts on    11th May 2023
- Diane Kidd, Service Leader Finance & Governance, Tayside Contracts on 11th May 2023 
- Leanne Reilly, HR Manager, Tayside Contracts on 22 May 2023
- Ibukun Strachan, Facilities Business Improvement and Development Manager, Tayside
Contracts on 22nd May 2023
- Mark Armstrong, Governance & Strategy Group member, Angus Council on 10th May
2023
- Robert Emmott, Governance & Strategy Group member, Dundee City Council on 12th
May 2023
- Fraser Croft, Governance & Strategy Group member, Perth & Kinross Council on 10th
May 2023
1.3 A substantial range of reports and documents were provided by Tayside Contracts
leadership (over 130 documents) under emails or via a shared Teams folder pathway
over the period from April 4th to June 20th, 2023. Three final pieces of evidence were
shared on 25th July.
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1.4 Several meetings were held between the independent reviewer and the Managing
Director of Tayside Contracts during the review to develop approach, assess progress,
and agree a format leading to the final report.
1.5 The final report was submitted on 26th July 2023, and reviewed by the Chief Executives
and Managing Director of Tayside Contracts.
1.6 Some starting points setting the context for the review.
- Tayside Contracts is a unique operational model in Scotland.
- Tayside Contracts works under defined terms of reference (a Minute of Agreement –
click here to view) set by the constituent Councils in 1996. The Minute of Agreement
was reviewed and updated in 2018.
- Tayside Contracts is an affiliate organisation of the three Councils collectively.
- None of the Councils host any of the services covered by the activities and staff at
Tayside Contracts
- There is some variation in approach between the Councils in their dealings with Tayside
Contracts, such as differing approaches to partnership agreements.
- There have been previous reviews of Tayside Contracts over recent years. A specific
activity in 2019 covered some of the activities contained in the brief for this review.
- This is not a Best Value review.
1.7 The report and assessment were carried out by Keith Winter, appointed on the basis of
his experience and knowledge of the operational areas involved, as well as a lengthy
period in senior leadership roles in local government, including the strategic
responsibility for the commercial operating arm of a large Scottish Council.  
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2.0 SECTION 2 AREAS COVERED
2.1 Is Tayside Contracts currently fit for the intended purpose of the organisation and as
efficient as it can be? 
2.1.1 There are many strengths in the Tayside Contracts model as it currently exists,
consistent with a contracting led organisation model. The model retains many of the
aspects established since its inception, and covered under the original Minute of
Agreement, by the Councils setting Tayside Contracts up in 1996.  The Minute of
Agreement states that the three Councils will operate through a Joint Committee for
the administration of the functions that the three constituent Councils delegate to the
Joint Committee. Further detail is provided in the Minute of Agreement (click here)  
2.1.2 A question which arises from the review is whether Tayside Contracts is seen as an
affiliate organisation to the Councils by the respective Council clients. In my opinion this
perception is variable between officers across the three Councils, and between different
levels within Councils, based on the discussions undertaken. This is expressed in the
differing way work is agreed and commissioned by the respective Councils.
2.1.3 A means of establishing a fit for purpose position would include the review of financial
data, performance documentation, dashboards and reporting into the governance
structure for the Governance and Strategy Group (see Appendix 2) and the Joint
Committee.
2.1.3.1 On the performance aspect `what does good look like and how do parties
tell?` I find from the document review, and the interviews and
discussions undertaken, that whilst there is considerable information
and data capture, there is no consensus between the Councils (as owners
and primary customers) and Tayside Contracts (as the delivery
organisation), on the key measures for the organisation, nor clarity from
different parties (i.e. the Councils) on the expected performance of the
organisation.
2.1.3.2 The Annual Performance reports prepared by the organisation from 2018
through to 2021/22 all carry key performance data and assess the
performance for the year. The 2021/22 Annual Performance Report
confirms the intention to establish a shared performance indicator
dashboard. However due to the impacts of Covid this has had to be
reprioritised with work to progress in 2023. This is progressing and a draft
set of performance measures are being finalised for shared use amongst
the Governance & Strategy Group.
2.1.3.3 Given the above therefore, it is perhaps understandable why different
parties in the Councils consider they are not as able as they would like in
assessing performance and applying a reasonable degree of scrutiny.
2.1.3.4 The preparation of an agreed and targeted Performance Framework,
underpinned by dashboards suitable for the Governance & Strategy
Group and Joint Committee, is a priority to assist scrutiny, clarity and
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monitoring of performance, and to build confidence and trust in the
organisation. 
2.1.4  The role of the Governance & Strategy Group is central to the operation and interaction
of the Councils with Tayside Contracts. However, the remit remains as that set originally
in 1996. Membership was then set as the Chief Executives, or their nominee. For many
years this has been respective Council nominee led. To my mind a review of the remit
of the Governance & Strategy Group is warranted given the passage of time, changing
operational circumstances, different ways of working, increasing continuing financial
pressures and performance led considerations. 
2.1.4.1  As part of any review I would suggest that the chairing model be
considered and perhaps a rotating chair across the membership come
into place. This would reinforce the shared partnership approach to the
operation of Tayside Contracts.  It is noted that the rotating partnership
model is adopted for the Street Lighting Partnership, and both the
Dundee Roads Maintenance Partnership, and Perth & Kinross Roads
Maintenance Partnership.
2.1.4.2  There is a high level of committed engagement by the representatives on
the Governance & Strategy Group. 
2.1.4.3  Much of the focus of the Governance & Strategy Group appears reactive
and operational in nature. A proactive agenda focus (strategy, finance,
people, current issues) would be expected and a forward work
programme of intention and matters to be covered would assist.
2.1.4.4  A suggestion along with the above is that the Governance & Strategy
Group prepare a five-year plan for activities and focus that can outline
the areas of growth, performance priorities and investment led areas, as
well as new areas for business development. This 5-year Plan would be
strategic rather than detailed and would complement the Tayside
Contracts Business Plan, which is due to be reviewed later this year.
2.1.4.5  The positioning of the Governance & Strategy Group in process and
governance could benefit from a review between all the participants, and
reaffirmation of its purpose, capacity to decide matters where
appropriate, and direction of items for the Joint Committee. This could
be covered through the review referenced at paragraph 2.1.4 above.
There is though no expectation of further powers for the Governance &
Strategy Group or any delegation increase to the Managing Director at
Tayside Contracts.
2.1.5  in terms of the Joint Committee, this is seen as the key decision-making body. Reporting
into the Joint Committee is led by Tayside Contracts primarily. In the absence of an
agreed performance focus model however, there remains a question over the capacity
of the Joint Committee to discharge its oversight role on performance and undertake
appropriate and proportionate scrutiny. A review of reports into the Joint Committee
may be of merit to ensure, as is good periodic practice, that these are relevant,
informative, and striking the balance on reporting good and poorer areas of
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performance, with the reasons why for each clear, and outline improvement steps
where appropriate.  This fits with a decision at the Joint Committee in June 2023, to
remit the Managing Director to carry out a detailed engagement with Joint Committee
members, to identify their opinions on the governance and scrutiny of the Joint
Committee, and this engagement will consider both reporting arrangements, and key
performance information required by the Joint Committee members to discharge their
functions.
2.1.5.1  There are 18 members appointed from across the three Councils on the
Joint Committee serving a 5-year term as normal, or a shorter period if
appointed within a political cycle. The Councillor engagement with
Tayside Contracts is primarily through the Joint Committee. It may be
helpful to continue reinforcing the initial induction process for new
committee members, both from a Tayside Contracts and a council
perspective, with periodic activities including visits to premises,
familiarisation with process and examples of service delivery. 
2.1.5.2 In addition to the formal business of the Joint Committee, various
engagement sessions and events have been held with Joint Committee
members. These are more informal events to allow in-depth interaction
and understanding on subjects which are strategic in nature or are of a
particular interest to Joint Committee members and have been well
attended by Joint Committee members. Examples include: -
• Developing the Business Plan 
• Climate Change
• Supporting Local Producers in our supply chain 
• Budget Proposals
• Visits to operational sites (e.g., Quarry, Tay Cuisine)
• School Meals service
• Tayside Contracts Community Fund
• Induction for new members of Joint Committee (offered to
Members on a 1 to 1 basis)
2.1.5.3 The process of Chair and Vice-Chair is considered to work well and
provide the continuance and stability in leadership for the operation of
the organisation and linking to the Managing Director at Tayside
Contracts.
2.1.6 The varying stances of individual Councils on the performance and interaction with
Tayside Contracts, away from the Joint Committee, brings in different approaches on
engagement and the level of trust and interaction. This has resulted in different
approaches to updates and committee engagement in the respective Councils on
occasion. 
2.1.6.1  A suggestion to enhance links with the broader Council political
membership would be that Tayside Contracts provide their Annual
Performance Report into respective Councils, through an appropriate
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committee mechanism. This provides a presence for Tayside Contracts,
and an opportunity for scrutiny and update for elected members who are
not part of the Joint Committee. This could be put into action this
financial year, and build on the approach adopted by Angus Council,
which invites the Managing Director to attend its Audit and Scrutiny
Committee on an annual basis, to present the organisation`s Annual
Performance Report, and answer Members` questions. 
2.1.7  On finance, this is an area of particular focus given the financial pressures involved
currently, and looking ahead, for all organisations in the public sector. For example, in
May 2023, the Scottish Government`s Medium Term Financial Strategy highlighted the
gap between its spending and funding was a projected deficit of £1bn in 2024/25, and
£1.9bn in 2027/28.  The recent changes in staffing and roles at Tayside Contracts should
assist the process going forward. A suggestion is for more regular engagement across
finance representatives from the respective organisations on assessing, reviewing, and
planning forward finances. The Section 95 officer (termed the `Proper Officer` in the
Tayside Contracts Minute of Agreement) provides input and guidance as appropriate to
Tayside Contracts` Managing Director and the organisation`s senior Finance officer -
Service Leader (Finance & Governance). This could be developed further in the short
term to further enhance current relationships and assist with the ongoing challenges
facing the four primary bodies and across the multiple finance processes involved.
2.1.7. 1  To assist all parties and establish a forward-looking approach to activity,
performance and finance, Tayside Contracts should prepare a medium-
term financial strategy to be agreed with the Councils. This would set a
context and clarity of focus for all and working arrangement around
annual budget setting as occurs. As a start to this approach and strategy
a starting point may be a short- term plan to look at current pressures in
this year and looking to next.
2.1.8  There is an ongoing challenge regarding resources for the organisation both internally
regarding capacity, and certainty to deliver annually against Council led expectations,
and a focus on savings to be made as sought by the constituent Councils. 
2.1.8.1  These should helpfully be resolved, as mixed expectations and
requirements from the constituent Councils can only distract parties
from a delivery focus, take up time for all, in the absence of clarity on
what is sought, with short timescales (perhaps raised in-year, which
diverts capacity from other priorities). Because of the existence of
Tayside Contracts, the three Councils employ considerably fewer staff on
the Scottish Local Government Living Wage level compared to other local
authorities (73% of Tayside Contracts employees are on the lowest
hourly rate for local authority employees. The equivalent figure for
constituent Councils is 0 % of employees).  Thus, the impact of bottom
loading in annual pay awards, over several years, falls heavily on Tayside
Contracts and not the three Councils (for example the 2022/23 pay
award added additional costs of £4.5 million to Tayside Contracts` pay
bill - a 10% overall increase to the organisation`s pay costs). However,
the position on strategy and means of passing on Scottish Government
funded monies for such additional costs is not consistent across the
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Councils. Tayside Contracts, in meeting such increases, has limited
options to manage such increases, within its existing budget. 
2.1.9  Tayside Contracts structure and shape are not unexpected and appears generally
appropriate for the nature and scale of the organisation. A study by Ernst & Young on
costs of management and support services (2017) would confirm that the costs are in
line with, or lower than, expected level compared with other organisations (however it
is noted that this review work preceded further reductions in management and support
services headcount by participating organisations, and there would be benefit in
carrying out a follow up benchmarking exercise as part of a Best Value review, as
suggested in section 2.2.3). 
2.1.9.1  There are however views from Council representatives that there should
be some financial savings made in these areas, given the approaches
being taken in the Councils over reducing budgets. I take the view
however that this would need sensitivity as the management and
support costs are not out of the norm, and any push for growth or
unexpected events may overstretch the current model capacity as well
as affect the aims for further business development and growth as set
out in the organisation`s Business Plan, and as expected by the Councils`
Chief Executives for Tayside Contracts.
2.1.9.2  At the same time there must be an expectation that Tayside Contracts
review its shape and structure periodically, and advance this for
discussion through the Governance & Strategy Group, to remain
effective, and aligned with the business needs of the organisation. Form
follows function and thus any review of structures should relate to the
provided performance framework identified in this review, the medium-
term financial strategy identified and against the forward specifications
and priorities set by the engaging Councils.
2.1.10 Tayside Contracts also plays a role in supporting the three Councils` wider ambitions
around equality and fairness; economy and education; community empowerment;
tackling climate change and building community wealth.  ` Communities, Councils and
Customers` is one of the five Strategic Priorities in the organisation`s Business Plan:
• Confidence, People and Relationships; 
• Commercial Approach;  
• Collaboration and Sharing;  
• Continuous Improvement and Performance; and 
• Communities, Councils and Customers 
2.1.11 This highlights Tayside Contracts` commitment to corporate social, ethical and
environmental responsibility, to enhance the lives of everyone in Tayside.  For example: 
• Tayside Contracts works with the three Councils` employability teams, as well
as organisations such as Remploy, and Barnardos to support people who need 
additional support, into working with Tayside Contracts.
• The organisation worked in partnership with Dundee and Angus Developing
the Young Workforce (DYW) team and have been recognised as an approved
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official Young Person’s Guarantee Employer which is a commitment to
connect every 16- to 24-year-old in Scotland to an employment opportunity.
This accreditation was renewed in July 2023.
• The Tayside Contracts` Community Fund has now helped over 50 local
community groups and charities with support such as food provision, signage
and small construction works.   
2.1.12 It is noted that the Governance and Strategy Group have recently (August 2023) been
discussing what further activities Tayside Contracts` can undertake to support the wider
Community Planning and community empowerment ambitions of the Councils –
including holding a workshop with the relevant colleagues from the three Councils. 
2.2  Is the quality of services provided by Tayside Contracts being delivered at an optimal
level and what level of service options could it provide to the constituent Councils? 
2.2.1.  Although this high-level assessment has not identified significant issues with the quality
of services provided, this is an area where a more detailed level of certainty is more
problematic given the comments above regarding the need for a focused, agreed, and
shared performance framework with the constituent Councils. 
2.2.1.1  There is a need to gain a common alignment between the Councils and
Tayside Contracts. Currently different processes operate in relation to
engagement with Tayside Contracts.  This is most notable in a
comparison of the differences in engagement between the Roads and
Facilities Management activities undertaken by Tayside Contracts. On
Facilities Management, there is clear standardisation of approach which
has delivered customer and operational benefits, as well as significant
operational savings (e.g., common menus for school meals across
Tayside; standardised delivery of meals service through the Central
Processing Unit at Tay Cuisine), other than the correct consideration of
operational aspects in that area. Yet in relation to Roads related activities
there appears far fewer standard approaches from the Councils,
regardless of some clear geographic differences which apply to the
respective Council areas. There would be a benefit for all from
standardisation across areas of delivery, and acceptance from Councils,
with a model based on outcomes not inputs. It is noted that progress is
being made in relation to greater standardisation in Construction
through the Tri-Council Governance Group, and the Tri-Council
Maintenance Strategy Group, based on recommendations made as part
of the Tests of Change project commissioned by the Chief Executives.
2.2.1.2  For example, as well as a Tayside -wide Street Lighting Partnership, Perth
& Kinross Council and Dundee City Council have well established shared
Partnership agreements in place for Roads Maintenance.   Angus Council
appears an outlier, and the reasons for this relate to Angus Council
seeking further reassurance and evidence to demonstrate that this
Partnership model will deliver Best Value for the local authority.
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Discussions are ongoing in this with Angus Council to identify any
concerns and find a mutually agreed and beneficial way forward.
2.2.2  At the same time there is an acceptance across all interviewed that before any of the
Councils may commit to further service areas being delivered through Tayside
Contracts, and the requisite payment of budget for these, there is some prework
necessary to build confidence and trust across parties, show that this all represents a
best value and should be aided with a robust and informed business case approach for
any new area of activity, with a culture of joint working and sharing of information
between partners to develop a comprehensive, bespoke business case, which clearly
demonstrates the benefits. This is recognised by the leadership at Tayside Contracts and
the Managing Director Tayside Contracts will take this forward from the discussions to
date. 
2.2.3  Also to assist the engagement and provide a strategic overview for process and direction
of the organisation, a suggestion is for a 5-year cycle of Best Value reviews of Tayside
Contracts, starting before 2026. This should avoid time consuming, piecemeal, and
reactive review processes (the uncertainty of which are demotivating to employees and
consume resource from all parties), and tie in the other actions suggested in this report,
which will allow a periodic step back and reflection for the parties on the direction of
travel. This should also assist with concerns existing in Councils regarding retaining a fit
for purpose model for delivery of these services, as external environments, internal
strategies, and considerations develop over time. Whilst this would involve a greater
resource input on each review, this would be discounted against sporadic reviews that
may not provide all involved with a proper, considered, and strategic opportunity to
reflect and agree approaches for the next operational period to follow between reviews. 
2.3  Is the organisation taking appropriate steps to improve, and to secure further business
opportunities?   
2.3.1  A clear focus and expectation from colleagues from the Councils is the pursuit of
business growth for Tayside Contracts. There are, as accepted by all, capacities in
several of the processes and capability to undertake further external work.  A clearly
favoured area for this is Tay Cuisine (the Central Processing Unit for meal preparation).
Indeed, Tayside Contracts staff are in discussion with other parties re potential use of
the facility to provide services for these organisations.
2.3.1.1 Tayside Contracts leadership team are keen to pursue new external
opportunities. Any risk-based approach to new business whether in the
above activity area, or across other business elements, will consume
valuable resource, and some will be lost if the business opportunity does
not see conversion into a contract arrangement - and provide a
meaningful and sustainable business income stream The reference
above to a reshape of the structure at Tayside Contracts as a suggestion,
should focus on this area, and creating capacity for business
development, and then ongoing relationship management, in the first
instance.
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2.3.1.2 The tight financial circumstances mean that there is a need for this
activity to be largely self-financing. The organisation`s Improvement &
Innovation fund was introduced in 2021 as a means of working capital to
fund such activity as they arise.
2.3.1.3  For such an approach to deliver success requires some more front-end
work on what opportunities are available, which offer best return, by
criteria to be set, and for the Governance & Strategy Group to oversee
progress and retain oversight of the opportunities in flight for monitoring
conversion rates and, though can be hard, dropping those that are not
progressing. A good start already exists for a focus on areas to pursue in
the content of the Tayside Contracts Marketing Strategy 2023 and the
Commercialisation & Collaboration matrix, which is a ranked list of
potential collaboration and commercial opportunities, that sets the
priorities for the organisation to pursue and review.  This was introduced
in 2021 and is regularly monitored by the Corporate Leadership Team
and has been shared with the Governance & Strategy Group. Tayside
Contracts Leadership has also presented to the Governance & Strategy
Group and the Chief Executives (December 2022) its prioritised targets
for commercial expansion, including potential income generating
estimates. In the last year, Tayside Contracts has taken on the following
additional commercial and collaborative activities:
• Providing  winter maintenance service and sharing Tayside
Contracts depots with Amey (North East Trunk Road operator)
• Community Meals teatime service for Angus Health & Social Care
Partnership
• Provision of Community Resource Assistants service for Dundee
City Council
• Hosting Dundee City Council Construction Services team in
Tayside Contracts building, to allow demolition of DCC building,
with sharing of operating costs.
• providing gutter cleaning services for Perth & Kinross Council
schools, and window cleaning services for all three Councils`
schools
• Providing fleet management services for Dundee & Angus
College
• High value external commissions outwith the  “core” roads
maintenance services e.g.  in the last year, Cross Tay link,
Broughty Ferry Active travel, and Glenfernate Estate 
2.3.1.4 In the finance section above the quandary regarding the savings aspects
for Tayside Contracts given financial pressures on the Councils was
covered. It is the case that cuts of any scale in a model such as Tayside
Contracts will translate into a consequential reduction in income given a
reduction in resources. This does not include ongoing operational
efficiencies being pursued as part of day-to-day activities and
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opportunities or any specification alterations raised by an individual
council for example.
2.3.1.5  Therefore the Governance & Strategy Group as a suggestion should, as
part of the forward-looking programme approach mentioned at
paragraph 2.3.1.3 above, look to address the strategy and agree areas
for opportunity and then monitor progress on these, with a target
indicated for income and return. This can then be included in the
dashboard approach mentioned previously at paragraph 2.1.3.4 
2.3.2  Tayside Contracts have an active Business Plan for the period 21 – 24. This outlines the
priorities for improvement and development.  These priorities were established through
extensive engagement with the Joint Committee members, the Governance & Strategy
Group and also the employees of Tayside Contracts. There is good, related activity in
here, and with endorsement by all as part of the focus for activity, performance, and
process, will assist understanding of the intended approach over the next few years. 
2.4 Training and development
2.4.1    The organisation has a Leadership and Development Strategy last updated in May 2018;
this is mapped to EFQM criteria. Primary use of the Lombardo model underpins the
approach.  Covid has impacted on an update to the strategy, but this is now rising
through the priorities of the organisation. The training budget for 2023/24, as shared,
shows a budget of £220k for the organisation. A review though could cast a questioning
eye over the balance in the operational versus development approach involved in the
topics covered and proportion of spend on activities.  There is no separate leadership
training and development budget.
2.4.2 There may be opportunities for aspects of professional related training and leadership
development to occur with or through the different Councils and their programmes, to
assist provision and efficiency of delivery, whilst building further the relationships across
officers in the local geography. 
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3.0  DESK REVIEW
3.1  In carrying out the review I was provided with a copy of a report from June 2019
prepared for the Chief Executives with a purpose of covering: 
1) current governance arrangements as in place 
2) what savings has TC delivered 
3)where is TC in terms of growth of the organisation 
4) what other opportunities are available to TC 
3.2  These overlap with the current review to some degree.
3.3  I was provided with a range of financial data, including budget reports, cost models and
income detail. This displays a competency in reporting and analysis of the position of
Tayside Contracts. It may be helpful, through closer working, to enhance the
understanding of such, and build that confidence across officers and elected members,
to move to a more risk and key factor-based approach to reporting, issue coverage and
performance assessment.
3.4  The documentation, covering internal audit, council reporting, asset registers, APSE
information and around performance all came across as acceptable and that bases are
covered. This does not mean that there is no room for improvement, though further
analysis in this is not beneficial until all have an agreed performance framework and
dashboard.
3.5  Business plans, strategies such as referenced in this report and an up-to-date strategic
risk register were all helpfully made available. Again, there is nothing that stands out as
missing or awry in approach from that which I would expect for an organisation in
relation to the specifics of this review. 
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4.0  CONCLUSIONS
4.1  The Tayside Contracts model based on the review undertaken is a valid model for going
forward.
4.2  There are, as always, some improvements and changes which can help gain more from
the model and the relationships involved.
4.3  The key suggestions are listed in the table at appendix 1 with the timescales involved
set out as targets.
4.4  Relationships across players are decent - though not consistent - and the standing of
the relationship between the respective Councils and Tayside Contracts needs affirmed
i.e., that Tayside Contracts is an affiliate organisation to the Councils collectively. This
message will help foster closer working both ways between individuals in the Councils
and Tayside Contracts, at all levels.
4.5  To assist matters all the Councils should achieve a standing partnership agreement with
Tayside Contracts for services across the undertaken activities.
4.6  There is a clear need and benefit for Councils to have more standardisation on service
delivery to assist effective and efficient, cost-effective delivery by Tayside Contracts,
and a focus on Outcomes.
4.7  Year on year budget settlements assist no party, though is the current reality of
approach by the Scottish Government for the Councils, and therefore impact onto
Tayside Contracts. Therefore, an agreed medium term financial strategy looking out 3
to 4 years would assist all.
4.8  It is acknowledged that, although there is a wide range of performance information
shared with the Joint Committee, the Governance & Strategy Group, and the various
partnership/ client meetings at operational level, there is not a single, overt
performance framework available for Joint Committee, Governance & Strategy Group,
Tayside Contracts and others, to transparently establish an opportunity to review
performance and scrutinise activities. There are a host of measures- all relevant - but to
see the overall picture and assess performance needs more focus and work. This is
accepted by the Managing Director and a Performance Management Framework is
currently being developed.
4.9  The financial arrangements and expectations of Tayside Contracts is not consistent
across the three Councils. More needs done on this re the position on savings, paying
for pay awards and extracting any efficiency gains by savings.
4.10  The real focus for efficiency and finance must be the expansion of the activity turnover
and therefore the budget surplus return levels possible to the Councils annually.
4.11  To achieve business development and growth requires a different resource and focus
for Tayside Contracts which requires some structural adjustment in Tayside Contracts
to free up resource to drive this, develop opportunities, but particularly case manage
this through to conversion of opportunities into sustainable, profitable business, and
maintain client relationships thereafter.
4.12  The Improvement & Innovation Fund, established by Tayside Contracts, can provide a
base for this objective, along with an agreed approach on transformation of the
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17 
business through growth and optimising current capacity, recognising much of the
current model works on a marginal costing basis.
4.13  Post covid, the review of services and delivery models needs reviewed and reset.  For
example, office cleaning could be revisited by the respective Councils if properties are
now operating different occupancy and operating hours. This needs consideration given
the possible impacts on workforce and any mitigation possible through any practical
redeployment available.
4.14  Overall there no visible benefit, currently, for any or all the Councils stepping away from
the Tayside Contracts model. All parties recognise that there are areas for
improvement, though this requires transparency, trust, and acceptance of some risk, by
all involved, to optimise the approach, and maximise return from this unique model in
the Scottish landscape. 
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Appendix 1 – Table 1 Main Recommended Actions and Timescales
Theme* Action/timescale (months) 6  12 18  24  Lead for the
action stated
1 Governance & Strategy Group
remit review
*    Managing
Director Tayside
Contracts with
Governance and
Strategy Group
members
1,3 Five Year working framework
(Governance & Strategy
Group)
* *   Governance and
Strategy Group
1 Joint Committee reporting and
use of digital tools 
* *  Tayside Contracts
Leadership Team
1 Performance framework * * *  Governance and
Strategy Group
1 Medium Term Financial
Strategy
* * *  Tayside Contracts
Leadership Team
2 Partnership agreements * *   3 Councils and
Tayside Contracts
Leadership Team
2 Standardisation of standards
across Roads activities
* *   Tayside Contracts
Leadership Team
2 Business Development model  * *  Tayside Contracts
Leadership Team
1,3 Tayside Contracts structure
and focus review 
* * * Tayside Contracts
Leadership Team
2 Periodic Best Value review    * Tayside Contracts
Leadership Team
with involvement
of the 3 councils
*Themes
1. Is Tayside Contracts currently fit for the intended purpose of the organisation and as
efficient as it can be? 
2. Is the quality of services provided by Tayside Contracts being delivered at an optimal
level and what level of service options could it provide to the constituent Councils? 
3. Is the organisation taking appropriate steps to improve, and to secure further business
opportunities?    
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19 
Appendix 2   Governance and Strategy Group (GSG) 
The activity of the GSG is defined in the Tayside Contracts Minute of Agreement – summary
below.
This group consists of 3 Chief Executives of the constituent Councils (or their nominees) and
the Managing Director of Tayside Contracts. It has been established to consider both the
performance and development of Tayside Contracts as a shared service provider, and to
consider any of the functions of the Joint Committee  The Governance and Strategy Group
meets at regular intervals (at least 4 times per year)  The business of the Governance and
Strategy Group is conducted on the basis of majority voting, with  officers of the Constituent
Councils and Tayside Contracts having one vote each. 
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Appendix 3 
JC35 2023 - Supported Self-Assessment – Detailed Action Plan
Section of
Report
Action Lead Timescale Comments
2.1.2
4.4
Engagements between Council
officers and Tayside Contracts to
reach a common understanding of the
role of TC in relation to the Councils.
GSG
Chair
By April 2024 Engagement plan to be developed
2.1.3.4
4.8
Development of a Performance
Framework with dashboards for Joint
Committee (JC) and Governance and
Strategy Group (GSG)
Managing
Director,
Tayside
Contracts
June 2024 
2.1.4 Review of GSG remit, purpose,
capacity for decision, direction of items
for JC, including role of Chair
GSG Chair May 2024 
2.1.4.4 GSG to develop a 5-year plan for
activities, growth, performance
priorities and investment led areas
GSG Chair April 2024 
2.1.5 Review of reports for Joint Committee Managing
Director,
Tayside
Contracts
October 2023 
2.1.6.1 Tayside Contracts` Annual
Performance Report to be shared
through appropriate Council reporting
mechanisms
Council GSG
Leads
Annually 
2.1.7
4.2
Regular engagement between finance
representatives in Councils and TC to
assess, review and plan formal
finances via a medium-Term Financial
Strategy
GSG Chair March 2025 
2.1.9.2
2.3.1.2
4.11
Tayside Contracts to review its shape
and structure periodically, and
advance this through GSG, taking into
account the need for capacity in new
business development
Managing
Director,
Tayside
Contracts
April 2024 
2.2.12 Review opportunities for
standardisation in Roads, e.g., Roads
Maintenance Partnership, approach
Head of
Operations
TC/Director
of
June 2024 
6(ii)
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Appendix 3 
JC35 2023 - Supported Self-Assessment – Detailed Action Plan
(similar to Dundee and PKC for Angus
area
Infrastructure
and
Environment,
Angus
2.2.3 Establish a 5-year cycle of Best Value
reviews of Tayside Contracts
Managing
Director,
Tayside
Contracts
December 2025 
2.3.1.3 Oversee progress future plans and
retain of opportunities for new
business development, by GSG
GSG Chair September 2024 To be part of new performance
framework for GSG
2.4.2 Review opportunities for Tayside
Contracts to access Council
programmes for professional related
training and leadership development
GSG Chair April 2024 
4.5 Achieve a standing partnership
agreement with Tayside Contracts for
services undertaken by Tayside
Contracts
GSG Chair September 2024 
4.9 Review consistency of financial
arrangements and expectations of
Tayside Contracts across the three
Councils
GSG Chair March 2024 
4.13 Review of service delivery models post
COVID (e.g., cleaning specification)
GSG Chair February 2024 GSG has committed to this work, with
Tayside Contracts and Council staff
working together to review proposals 
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Perth And Kinross Council 
Scrutiny And Performance Committee - 24 April 2024 
Executive Sub-Committee of The Learning And 
Families Committee - 3 June 2024 
SUMMARY REPORT ON CARE INSPECTORATE AND 
EDUCATION SCOTLAND INSPECTIONS 
Report by Strategic Lead - Education and Learning
(Report No. 24/126) 
1. PURPOSE
1.1 This report provides an overview of the performance of Education and
Children’s services inspected and reported over the past year by the Care
Inspectorate and Education Scotland, since the previous report of this type
in 2023, and sets out the Service’s approach to implementing improvement
actions arising out of inspection.
2. RECOMMENDATIONS 
2.1 It is recommended that the Scrutiny & Performance Committee: 
• Scrutinises and comments as appropriate on the contents of the report. 
It is recommended that the Executive Sub-Committee of the Learning and
Families Committee: 
• Scrutinises and comments as appropriate on the contents of the report. 
3. STRUCTURE OF REPORT 
3.1 This report is structured over the following sections: 
• Section 4: Background
• Section 5: Summary of Inspections  
• Section 6: Conclusion
• Appendices 
4. BACKGROUND 
4.1 Care Inspectorate 
4.1.1 Regulated care services in Scotland are inspected by the Care Inspectorate
using a range of quality frameworks, each with key questions and quality
indicators.  Services are measured against the National Health and Social
Care Standards.
7
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4.1.2 Where inspected, each key question and contributing quality indicator is
graded on a six-point scale in which 1 = unsatisfactory, 2 = weak, 
3 = adequate, 4 = good, 5 = very good and 6 = excellent.   
4.1.3 An updated quality framework for day care of children, childminding and
school aged childcare, February 2022 was published by the Care
Inspectorate in July 2021 and was used in test inspections, without published
grades, before full implementation.  This framework is now in place for
inspections carried out since 1 June 2022.   
4.1.4  The framework is framed around four key questions.  Each of these include
a number of quality indicators for actual inspection which are: 
• How good is our care, play and learning?
• How good is our setting?
• How good is our leadership?
• How good is our staff team? 
The final key question is: What is our overall capacity for improvement?  This
requires a global judgement based on evidence and evaluations from all the
other key areas but is not evaluated specifically. 
4.1.5 The Care Inspectorate conducts unannounced inspections for all regulated
services as the main inspection method unless there are practical reasons
that this is not appropriate.  There are longer intervals between inspections for
better performing services and a greater focus on risk-based inspections for
poorly performing and high-risk services such as those which provide     24-
hour residential care. 
4.1.6 Following an inspection, the Care Inspectorate publishes a report that may set
out a series of: 
• Recommendations: statements that set out actions the care service
provider should take to improve or develop the quality of the service; and 
• Requirements: statements which set out what is required of the care
service provider to comply with relevant legislation. 
4.1.7 Care service providers must submit an action plan to the Care Inspectorate
addressing any requirements and recommendations identified.  Progress
against the action plan is monitored by the Care Inspectorate through annual
return and self-assessment forms submitted by the care service provider and
through subsequent inspection.   
4.2 Education Scotland 
4.2.1 Education Scotland inspects and reports on the quality of education in Early
Learning and Childcare (ELC) settings, primary schools, secondary schools,
special schools, community learning and development services, colleges, and
residential educational provision.
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4.2.2. Inspections resumed post COVID-19 pandemic in September 2022 across all
local authorities, selecting early years settings and schools for inspection on a
proportionate basis as previously, using a sampling approach.     
4.2.3 For ELC inspections, the How good is our early learning and childcare
(HGIOELC) framework is used.  For school inspections, a selection of the
How good is our school (HGIOS4) quality indicators are evaluated on a six-
point scale. 
4.2.4 A short letter is provided to report the inspection, highlighting strengths and
aspects for development, and includes a table indicating the quality indicator
evaluations against the six-point scale.  The inspection evidence gathered
during the inspection is published online as a document called the
Summarised Inspection Findings. 
4.3 Analysis of Inspection Outcomes 
4.3.1 There are a number of factors which can make the analysis of the inspection
gradings complex over long reporting periods.  These factors include: 
• Improvements and changes to the inspection models and quality
frameworks such that it is not possible to make direct comparisons
across years; 
• The number of inspections carried out within the local authority area
varies from year to year; and 
• The selection of quality indicators and themes can vary from inspection
to inspection. 
5. SUMMARY OF INSPECTIONS 
5.1 Services Providing Day Care for Children 
5.1.1 This section presents an overview of the performance of services providing
day care for children inspected over the past year where Perth and Kinross
Council (PKC) is the registered provider, and for services registered as
funded partners; this includes childminders with funded childcare places.  The
Care Inspectorate Inspection Reports are reported to the Executive Sub-
Committee of the Learning and Families Committee by exception, where any
grading has been awarded an evaluation of unsatisfactory, weak, or excellent. 
In the past year, one service has been reported for receiving excellent
gradings.  One service was graded as unsatisfactory or weak. 
5.1.2 All 28 inspections of services providing day care for children in 2023/24 were
unannounced.   
5.1.3 To date, in 2023/24, 88% of grades awarded were good or better, similar to
the previous year and above national and comparator benchmarks.  The
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proportion of excellent and very good grades awarded is at 50%, a similar
figure to the 52% in the previous year.   
5.1.4 Appendix A (Summary of performance, services providing day care of  
children inspected by the Care Inspectorate) provides further details and
interpretation of the overall figures as well as comparator and national
benchmarks.  The current inspection position of all settings indicates a
positive picture relative to national and comparator benchmarks, across all
Quality Themes. 
5.1.5 Overall, every theme shows consistently high performance and improvement
over the previous year, with only Quality of Leadership and Management
showing a slight decrease compared to last year. 
5.1.6 It is common for only certain key questions to be assessed during an
inspection.  When looking at individual indicators, care must be used in
interpretation as some may be evaluated less frequently than others and
therefore subject to greater change from year to year. 
5.1.7 Education and Learning continue to monitor, support, and challenge all
centres through a planned programme of improvement visits. 
5.2 Support and Residential Care Services 
Fostering Service 
5.2.1 There were no fostering service inspections carried out by the care
inspectorate in the year 2023/24.   
Adoption Service 
5.2.2 There were no adoption service inspections carried out by the care
inspectorate in the year 2023/24. 
Adult Placement Service 
5.2.3 There were no adult placement service inspections carried out by the care
inspectorate in the year 2023/24. 
5.3 ELC Settings and Schools – Education Scotland Inspections 
5.3.1 This section presents an overview of the performance of PKC ELC settings,
including partner providers, and schools inspected by Education Scotland and
reported to the Executive Sub-Committee of Learning and Families
Committee. 
5.3.2 A combined summary of achievement (2016/17 to date) as well as
performance against comparator local authorities and Scotland as a whole, is
shown in Appendix B (Overview and Comparison of Education Scotland
Inspections 2016/17 - 2023/24 by Performance Indicator.  PKC consistently
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outperforms both the comparator group of local authorities and the Scotland
average across both the primary school and ELC sectors.  Performance for
secondary inspections is generally lower than both our comparator authorities
and the Scotland average.  Only four secondary school inspections have been
carried out since 2016/17, these are Perth High School (Nov 2018), Perth
Grammar School (Nov 2019), Pitlochry High School (April 2023) and Perth
Academy (Nov 2023). 
5.3.3 Areas for improvement identified during an inspection are addressed through
a School Action Plan.  Progress against the plan is monitored and a report is
prepared for parents/carers within one year of the inspection report being
published.   
5.3.4 Broad themes for improvement are considered across all inspections and feed
into the overall Education Quality Improvement Framework.  They influence
the development of the annual Education Improvement Plan and the Raising
Attainment Strategy. 
5.3.5 Inspection reports are scrutinised by members of the Executive Sub-
Committee of the Learning and Families Committee. 
6. CONCLUSION 
6.1 The analysis of the gradings and reports by the Care Inspectorate and
Education Scotland provide positive confirmation that the standards and
quality in our services remain high and set a clear agenda for continuous
improvement. 
Author
Name  Designation Contact Details
James Chiles  Performance Officer ECSCommittee@pkc.gov.uk 
01738 475000 
Approved 
Name Designation Date
Sheena Devlin  Strategic Lead – Education
and Learning
15 April 2024 
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ANNEX 
1. IMPLICATIONS, ASSESSMENTS, CONSULTATION AND
COMMUNICATION 
Strategic Implications Yes / None
Community Plan / Single Outcome Agreement  Yes
Corporate Plan  Yes
Resource Implications  
Financial  None
Workforce None
Asset Management (land, property, IST) None
Assessments  
Equality Impact Assessment None
Strategic Environmental Assessment None
Sustainability (community, economic, environmental) None
Legal and Governance  None
Risk None
Consultation 
Internal  Yes
External  None
Communication 
Communications Plan  None 
1. Strategic Implications  
Community Plan/Single Outcome Agreement 
1.1 This section sets out how the proposals relate to the delivery of the Perth and
Kinross Community Plan/Single Outcome Agreement in terms of the following
priorities: 
(i) Giving every child the best start in life;
(ii) Developing educated, responsible and informed citizens;
(iii) Promoting a prosperous, inclusive and sustainable economy;
(iv) Supporting people to lead independent, healthy and active lives; and
(v) Creating a safe and sustainable place for future generations. 
This report relates to Objective No. (i) and (ii). 
Corporate Plan 
1.2 This section sets out how the proposals relate to the achievement of the
Council’s Corporate Plan Objectives: 
(i) Giving every child the best start in life;
(ii) Developing educated, responsible and informed citizens;
(iii) Promoting a prosperous, inclusive and sustainable economy;
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(iv) Supporting people to lead independent, healthy and active lives; and
(v) Creating a safe and sustainable place for future generations. 
This report relates to Objective No. (i) and (ii). 
1.3 The report also links to the Education & Children’s Services Vision, Values
and Priorities in respect of the following key Priority areas: 
• Best Start 
• Learning and Achievement 
2. Resource Implications 
Financial 
2.1 N/A 
Workforce 
2.2 N/A 
Asset Management (land, property, IT) 
2.3 N/A 
3. Assessments 
Equality Impact Assessment 
3.1 Under the Equality Act 2010, the Council is required to eliminate
discrimination, advance equality of opportunity, and foster good relations
between equality groups.  Carrying out Equality Impact Assessments for plans
and policies allows the Council to demonstrate that it is meeting these duties. 
3.1.1 The proposals have been considered under the Corporate Equalities Impact
Assessment process (EqIA) with the following outcome: 
(i) Assessed as not relevant for the purposes of EqIA. 
Strategic Environmental Assessment 
3.2 The Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005 places a duty on the
Council to identify and assess the environmental consequences of its
proposals.   
3.2.1 The proposals have been considered under the Act; however, no action is
required as the Act does not apply to the matters presented in this report. 
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This is because the Committee are requested to note the contents of the
report only and the Committee are not being requested to approve, adopt or
agree to an action or to set the framework for future decisions. 
Sustainability 
3.3 Under the provisions of the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003, the
Council has to discharge its duties in a way which contributes to the
achievement of sustainable development.  Under the Climate Change
(Scotland) Act 2009 the Council also has a duty relating to climate change
and, in exercising its functions must act: 
• In the way best calculated to delivery of the Act’s emissions reduction
targets.
• In the way best calculated to deliver any statutory adaption programmes.
• In a way that it considers most sustainable. 
3.3.1 The proposals have been considered but are not applicable for this report. 
Legal and Governance 
3.4 N/A 
3.5 N/A 
Risk 
3.6 N/A 
4. Consultation 
Internal 
4.1 Relevant Heads of Service and Service Managers within Education and
Learning have been consulted in the preparation of this report. 
External 
4.2 N/A 
5. Communication 
5.1 In the case of an initial Education Scotland inspection of a school, a public
meeting is held after the publication of the inspection report with invitations
going to parents, the local elected members, and members of the Learning
and Families Committee.  These meetings give parents, carers, and other
members of the community the opportunity to discuss the findings of the
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inspection and to be consulted on the areas for improvement to be taken
forward.   
5.2 Where further inspection activity is carried out, Education Scotland will report
publicly to parents and stakeholders.  Other continuing engagement activities
undertaken by PKC will also be reported to parents and stakeholders.  This
includes the publication of reports to parents on Extended Learning and
Achievement Visits and follow-up reports on the school’s website and on each
school’s page on the Council’s website (www.pkc.gov.uk). 
2. BACKGROUND PAPERS 
The following background papers, as defined by Section 50D of the Local
Government (Scotland) Act 1973 (and not containing confidential or exempt
information) were relied on to a material extent in preparing the above report: 
• Education Scotland Inspection reports, published by Education Scotland.
• Care Inspectorate Inspection reports, published by the Care Inspectorate. 
3. APPENDICES
3.1 Appendix A: Summary of performance, services providing day care of  
children inspected by the Care Inspectorate 
Appendix B: Overview and Comparison of Education Scotland Inspections
2016/17 - 2023/24 (to date) by Performance Indicator 
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Appendix A
Summary of performance1, services providing day care of children inspected
by the Care Inspectorate2 3 
Table A1: Summary of performance – 2023/24 (to date)4 
Number of services inspected = 28
Previous Themes Care and
Support
Environment Staffing Management
and
Leadership 
Quality Themes
Care, Play
and
Learning Setting Staff Team Leadership Total
Excellent 0 0 0 0 0 0%
Very Good 10 14 19 13 56 50%
Good 15 12 6 10 43 38%
Adequate 2 2 3 4 11 10%
Weak 1 0 0 0 1 1%
Unsatisfactory 0 0 0 1 1 1%
Total 28 28 28 28 112 
CHART A1: Performance 2023/24: PKC, Comparator Authorities and Scotland 
1 Note that rounding of percentage figures may mean totals reported elsewhere differ slightly.
2 Note that comparator and national proportions include all services for day care of children whereas Perth and Kinross figures
only represent local authority and partner provider services (it is not possible to distinguish these in national statistics). It also
restates previous gradings when quality themes are not assessed in every inspection.
3 Comparator local authorities are Argyll and Bute, Aberdeenshire, Stirling, Scottish Borders and Highland Council. Comparator
and national proportions currently available until January 2024.
4 Inspected, published and reported to Learning and Families Executive Sub-Committee                                                                                                                                                                                           
7
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CHART A2: Performance 2016/17 to 2023/24: PKC, Comparator Authorities and
Scotland 
Commentary: 
National and
comparator figures
show PKC out-
performing comparator
and national
benchmarks at both
Good and Better and
Very Good or Better
levels. 
Note: Vertical axis adjusted to emphasise differences
* Quality Indicators changed on 01/06/2022 by Care Inspectorate. 
CHARTS A3-6: Performance 2016/17 to 2023/24*: PKC 
CHART A3 CHART A4  
CHART A5 CHART A6   
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Current Position 
The charts above illustrate the aggregated individual results of inspections over several
years.  Some settings will be inspected more than once during this period, and some Quality
Indicators are not covered in every inspection.   
The accumulated result of all these inspections is the current position of all Early Learning
and Childcare services in Perth & Kinross - shown in the charts below. 
These summarise the proportion of settings that currently have a Good or better rating,
based on the latest inspection for each indicator. 
CHART A7: Current Quality Ratings - PKC           
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Appendix B 
Overview and Comparison of Education Scotland Inspections12 2016/17 –
2023/24 (to date) by Performance Indicator 
Table B1: ELC Settings Overview by Performance Indicator
Number of Pre-Schools inspected = 28 (2 Follow Through, 20 Full and 6 Short Inspections)
QI Grading
Leadership of
change
Learning,
teaching &
assessment
Securing
Children's
Progress
Ensuring
wellbeing,
equality &
inclusion
Self-
evaluation
for self-
improvement
All Quality
Indicators
Excellent - - - - - -
Very Good 5 6 7 7 - 25
Good 8 10 13 10 1 42
Satisfactory 5 7 3 1 1 17
Weak - 1 3 - - 4
Unsatisfactory - - - - - -
Total 18 24 26 18 2 88 
Chart B1: ELC Settings Comparison by Performance Indicator 
1 Inspected, published and reported to Learning and Families Executive Sub-Committee
2 Comparator Authorities are Argyll and Bute, Aberdeenshire, Stirling, Scottish Borders and Highland Council.
7
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Table B2: Primary Overview by Performance Indicator
Number of Primary Schools inspected = 35 (3 Follow Through, 21 Full and 11 Short Inspections)
QI Grading
Leadership of
change
Learning,
teaching &
assessment
Raising
attainment &
achievement
Ensuring
wellbeing,
equality &
inclusion
Self-
evaluation
for self-
improvement
All Quality
Indicators
Excellent 1 - - 1 - 2
Very Good 8 7 11 8 3 37
Good 6 13 13 10 - 42
Satisfactory 4 7 6 - 1 18
Weak - 1 2 - - 3
Unsatisfactory - - - - - -
Total 19 28 32 19 4 102 
Chart B2: Primary Comparison by Performance Indicator 
Table B3: Secondary Overview by Performance Indicator
Number of Secondary Schools inspected = 5 (1 Follow Through, 3 Full and 1 Short Inspection)
QI Grading
Leadership of
change
Learning,
teaching &
assessment
Raising
attainment &
achievement
Ensuring
wellbeing,
equality &
inclusion
Self-
evaluation
for self-
improvement
All Quality
Indicators
Excellent - - - - - -
Very Good - - - - - -
Good - - 1 1 - 2
Satisfactory 3 3 2 1 - 9
Weak - 1 1 1 - 3
Unsatisfactory - - - - - -
Total 3 4 4 3 - 14 
Chart B3: Secondary Comparison by Performance Indicator 
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Scrutiny And Performance Committee 
24 April 2024 
ARMS LENGTH EXTERNAL ORGANISATIONS: UPDATE ON FINANCIAL
PERFORMANCE AND BUSINESS TRANSFORMATION 
Report by Head of Culture & Community Services 
(Report No. 24/127) 
1. PURPOSE 
1.1 This report summarises current live issues and risks for our three arms-length
external organisations including an update on their current/projected year end
2023/24 financial positions. It also summarises work underway/planned by the
ALEOs and the Council to manage these issues/risks, and future areas of
focus for Scrutiny and Performance Committee in 2024/25. 
2. RECOMMENDATIONS 
2.1 It is recommended that the Committee: 
• Notes the summary of key issues/risks for each ALEO and the mitigating
actions to manage these which are planned/underway
• Notes the current financial position for each ALEO based on latest
management accounts. 
3. STRUCTURE OF REPORT 
3.1 This report is structured over the following sections: 
• Section 4: Background 
• Section 5: Summary of current live issues and risks and financial
summaries
• Section 6: Conclusion 
• Appendices: Management accounts to end January 2024 (Culture Perth
and Kinross) and February 2024 (Live Active Leisure, Perth Theatre and
Concert Hall). 
4. BACKGROUND 
4.1 Since 2016 the Council has commissioned all culture services and all
sport/leisure services (except school sport) from three ALEOs. These are
Culture Perth and Kinross (libraries/archives/local studies and
museums/galleries); Live Active Leisure (sport/physical activity) and Perth
Theatre and Concert Hall (performing arts). The total contract value of these
services in 2023/24 was £8.468M. In February 2024 Council approved total
budget savings of £1.03M from the 2023/24 baseline contract fees to be
delivered over the next 3 years.
8
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4.2 ALEOs are contractually required to submit monthly management accounts to
the Council. Key variances and any mitigating action required to address
financial risk are reported quarterly to Finance and Resources Committee. As
part of the 2023 ALEO Transformation Review Glasgow Audit recommended
that Scrutiny and Performance Committee also maintains oversight of
financial and wider performance monitoring on a quarterly basis. 
5.  CURRENT ISSUES, RISKS AND MITIGATION ACTIONS 
Culture Perth and Kinross 
5.1 On 30 March the Council and CPK opened Perth Museum as a major new
cultural tourism project within the Tay Cities Region Deal, majority funded by
the Council with £10M from UK Government via the Deal, and with a projected
annual visitor target of 140-160,000 visits by year 3 (2026/27). Since opening
Perth Museum has performed strongly; at the time of writing, it has attracted
over 20,000 visits and significant international, UK and national media
attention. A 6-month performance report on visitor numbers and income
generation at Perth Museum, and wider considerations for CPK’s future
operating model in light of this data, will come to Scrutiny and Performance
Committee later in 2024. 
5.2 Due to the high level of expenditure required close to 2023/24-year end
(aligned with the opening date of Perth Museum), Q4 management accounts
are still being prepared.  However, at end January 2024 CPK projected an
end year deficit of £79,000. This is largely attributable to a backdated pay
award approved by the Board in autumn 2023 to be funded through reserves
for 2024/25. 
5.3 CPK currently has £807,000 in restricted reserves and a forecasted year-end
position of £183,000 is general reserves. During 2023/24 CPK has generated
over £150,000 through fundraising for Perth Museum and more generally. 
Live Active Leisure 
5.4 LAL is currently focused on significant business transformation in light of
several factors including ongoing plans for the PH20 redevelopment project,
the redevelopment of Blair Recreation Centre which it will operate on behalf of
the Council and plans to relocate services from Bell’s Sports Centre to other
venues in Perth following flooding at Bell’s in October 2023. LAL is also
responding to other factors including unplanned closures at Perth Leisure
Pool largely attributable to the age of the building. 
5.5 Further advice to Council will be provided in May 2024 and thereafter on Bell’s
Sports Centre including ongoing work to identify future viable options for the
building. Council officers are working closely with LAL on these matters
including works required at Dewars Centre to enable health and fitness
facilities, which generate significant income for LAL, to re-start there by
summer 2024. Engagement by LAL with affected user groups is also
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underway. Council will also consider a revised scope for the PH20 project
later this year. 
5.6 LAL has a projected end year deficit of £334,000 which is an improvement
against the original projection of £630,000. Customer generated income has
performed well and above original expectations even allowing for service
disruptions at Bell’s and PLP. Utility costs and costs associated with Bell’s
have however contributed to the forecast deficit position. 
5.7 LAL’s reserves position is currently £5.3M of which £1.04M is general
reserves, £1.7 is lifecycle/maintenance reserves and £2.5M is the insurance
reserve. The remainder is held in a development reserve. 
Perth Theatre and Concert Hall 
5.8 Following the appointment of its new Chief Executive in autumn 2023 PTCH is
continuing to review and refine its operating model and artistic vision with a
clear focus on broadening community participation and representation within
programmes, and a strengthened approach to using audience data to inform
programming decisions. The current key priority is PTCH’s next Multi-Year
Funding application to Creative Scotland as the organisation’s second core
funder alongside the Council. If successful MYF will support core costs and
cultural programmes for April 2025-March 2028. Outcomes will be known in
October 2024. Meantime PTCH has been asked to model its 2025/26 financial
position on a best/mid/worst case scenario depending on the outcome of its
application. 
5.9 PTCH is currently projecting a year end deficit of £211,000 largely attributable
to implementation of a new pay award including implementation of Real Living
Wage from 1 April 2024; £90,000 overspend on programme and a shortfall of
£70,000 against net ticket income targets although ticket income continues to
improve from previous years.  Work is underway to reposition the
Friends/regular donations scheme more strongly. The Perthshire Box Office
initiative funded by the Council since February 2023 is now live and
generating a small income and is successfully operating ticketing
arrangements for the Stone of Destiny on behalf of CPK. 
5.10  PTCH currently has £893,000 in reserves of which £396,000 is general
reserves. 
Common issues/risks & mitigation actions 
5.11 As outlined above all three ALEOs are currently managing a range of issues
all with ongoing strategic and delivery impact. All three will need to address
significant financial pressures over the next 3 years arising from Council
approved savings plus pay, property and energy costs. All three have prudent
reserves strategies and provision in place but will still need to consider
savings and efficiencies to ensure the services they deliver on behalf of the
Council are financially sustainable and continue to adapt to changing
circumstances and audience/customer needs. 
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5.12 In December 2023 Council approved all recommendations from a
Transformation Review of the current ALEO delivery model. Report 23/347
refers. The recommendations are intended to help both the Council and the
ALEOs address major financial pressures over the next 3 years and include a
consolidation of corporate functions and a rationalisation of properties
currently operated by the ALEOs. 
5.13 Specific consideration of pay matters is a priority within the Transformation
programme. Analysis of pay cost pressures is ongoing with the ALEOs,
coordinated by the Council’s HR team. 
5.14 To inform and support transformation, the ALEOs have been asked to prepare
revised business plans/transition plans for 2024/25 onwards setting out: 
• Their approach to implementing savings/service reductions over the next
3 years
• Opportunities for commercialisation of services where appropriate
• Mitigating measures (e.g. co-location of services, partnering
arrangements, community asset transfer of properties)
• Public/stakeholder management and communications plans and
• Indication of one-off costs of change including workforce management 
5.15 Key Performance Indicators for the ALEO Service Level Agreements are also
being revised to align more strongly with the Council’s corporate priorities in
respect of tackling poverty and inequality. 
5.16 Alongside this work, the ALEOs are preparing their contributions to the
Council’s Annual Governance Statement. Key issues identified from the AGS
should be used to inform the future focus of Scrutiny and Performance
Committee in scrutinising the strategic risks in relation to the ALEOs.
Alongside updates on implementation of the Transformation programme,
these may include: 
• Procurement policies & practice
• Board governance and accountability
• Cybersecurity policies & practice
• Community engagement and use of customer/audience data to inform
services and programmes. 
6. CONCLUSIONS 
6.1 This report outlines current live issues, risks, mitigating measures and the
financial positions of our three ALEOs. 
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Author
Name  Designation Contact Details
Fiona Robertson  Head of Culture &
Community Services 
(01738) 475000
ComCommitteeReports@pkc.gov.uk 
Approved 
Name Designation Date
David Littlejohn  Strategic Lead, Economy,
Development & Planning 
15 April 2024 
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ANNEX 
1. IMPLICATIONS, ASSESSMENTS, CONSULTATION AND
COMMUNICATION  
Strategic Implications Yes / None
Local Outcomes Improvement Plan Yes
Corporate Plan  Yes
Resource Implications  
Financial  None
Workforce None
Asset Management (land, property, IST) None
Assessments  
Equality Impact Assessment None
Strategic Environmental Assessment None
Sustainability (community, economic, environmental) None
Legal and Governance  None
Risk Yes
Consultation 
Internal  None
External  None
Communication 
Communications Plan  Yes 
1. Strategic Implications  
Local Outcomes Improvement Plan 
1.1 This Review impacts on the following aspects of the Local Outcomes
Improvement Plan 
(i) Poverty and cost of living
(ii) Mental and physical wellbeing 
Corporate Plan 
1.2 This Review impacts on the following priorities withing the Council’s Corporate
Plan:  
Corporate Plan Priority: Developing a resilient, stronger and greener local economy - Perth &
Kinross Council (pkc.gov.uk) 
Corporate Plan Priority: Tackling climate change and supporting sustainable places
Corporate Plan Priority: Enabling our children and young people to achieve their full
potential
Corporate Plan Priority: Supporting and promoting physical and mental wellbeing 
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2. Resource Implications 
Financial 
2.1 There are no immediate financial implications to this report. 
Workforce 
2.2 There are no immediate workforce implications to this report. 
Asset Management (land, property, IT) 
2.3 The asset management implications are contained within the report.   
3. Assessments 
3.1 The report has been considered under the Corporate Equalities Impact
Assessment process (EqIA) with the following outcome: 
(i) Assessed as not relevant for the purposes of EqIA. Equalities Impact
Assessments will be prepared for any consolidation/disinvestment
recommendations if approved. 
Strategic Environmental Assessment 
3.2 The Environmental Assessment (Scotland) Act 2005 places a duty on the
Council to identify and assess the environmental consequences of its
proposals. 
3.3 The report has been considered under the Act and, no action is required as
the Act does not apply to the matters presented in this report.  This is because
the Committee are requested to note the contents of the report only and the
Committee are not being requested to approve, adopt or agree to an action or
to set the framework for future decisions. 
Sustainability 
3.4 Under the provisions of the Local Government in Scotland Act 2003 the
Council has to discharge its duties in a way which contributes to the
achievement of sustainable development.   Under the Climate Change
(Scotland) Act 2009 the Council also has a duty relating to climate change
and, in exercising its functions must act: 
• in the way best calculated to delivery of the Act’s emissions reduction
targets;
• in the way best calculated to deliver any statutory adaptation
programmes; and
• in a way that it considers most sustainable. 
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3.5 If approved the recommendations from this report will support the Council’s
discharging of its duties in relation to the Act. 
Legal and Governance 
3.6 There are no immediate legal and governance implications to this report. 
Risk 
3.7 Strategic risks in relation to the ALEOs are assessed and managed based on
the Council’s Annual Governance Statement.   
4. Consultation 
Internal 
4.1 The Strategic Lead, Finance and Business Resources, Strategic Lead,
Economy Planning & Place and Corporate HR Manager have been consulted
in the preparation of this report. 
External 
4.2 Culture Perth and Kinross, Perth Theatre and Concert Hall and Live Active
Leisure have been consulted in the preparation of this report. 
5. Communication 
5.1 Not applicable.   
2. BACKGROUND PAPERS 
2.1 Appendices: Management accounts to January/February 2024 
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Culture Perth and Kinross Limited 10
Financial Summary - 31st Jan 2024 12
Profit & Loss Summary:
2023/24
Budget
Budget to
January
Actual to
January Variance vs budget
Year End
Forecast
CHARITY:
Total Income 3,557,920 2,949,933 3,031,430 81,497 3,649,646
Total Expenditure 3,586,455 2,965,385 3,082,792 117,406 3,736,516
Surplus/(Deficit) (28,535) (15,452) (51,362) (35,910) (86,870)
TRADING:
Total Income 110,507 92,089 85,709 (6,380) 106,407
Total Expenditure 97,637 81,364 74,920 6,444 98,335
Surplus/(Deficit) 25,764 10,725 10,789 64 8,072
Reserves
Position at 31st Jan 24 Year end forecast position
CHARITY: £ £
Unrestricted 418,614 331,744 *
Designated 198,655 198,974
Restricted (grants) 190,266 358,435
TRADING:
Reserves 33,998 31,281
* £200k of unrestricted funds allocated to underwriting Perth Museum Fundraising
Income Sources to 31st January 2024: Expenditure to 31st January 2024:
£ £
Perth & Kinross Council SLA 2,826,763 77% Staffing 2,533,467     59%
Restricted Income (Grants) 575,552 16% Restricted Expenditure (Grants) 1,143,721     27%
Other Internally Generated 191,609 5% Supplies & Services 356,063        8%
Bank Interest 72,367 2% Property 67,026          2%
Unrestricted Fundraising/Donations 26,400 1% Transport 83,420          2%
Total Income to 31st Dec'23 3,692,691 Trading Company 74,920          2%
Governance 41,737          1%
Finance 1,079             0%
Total Expenditure to 31st Jan'24 4,301,433    
Group Cash Balance:
0
500000
1000000
1500000
2000000
2500000
3000000
Group Cash Balance
8
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Culture Perth and Kinross Limited 10
Unrestricted Profit and Loss to 31 January 2024 All white cells to be updated - start payment run 12
Income
2023/24
Projected
Outturn
2023/24
Budget
Budget to
January
Actual to
January Variance Comments
Donations and Legacies
General Donations 17,438 17,438 14,532 13,650 (882) PM patrons income in restricted
Fundraising Income 15,000 15,000 12,500 12,750 250
32,438 32,438 27,032 26,400 (632)
Income from charitable activities
Prison Reading Service 13,170 13,170 10,975 10,677 (298)
Archives/Local Family History 750 1,000 833 614 (219)
Miscellaneous Income 56,506 14,687 12,239 48,584 36,345 Includes FGIC income
Event/Exhibition Ticket Sales including art classes 15,000 20,000 16,667 12,311 (4,356) Cost of living impacting on additional spend
PKC Service Fee 3,392,116 3,392,116 2,826,763 2,826,763 (0)
3,477,542 3,440,973 2,867,478 2,898,949 31,472
Investment Income
Bank Interest 81,367 25,000 20,833 72,367 51,534
81,367 25,000 20,833 72,367 51,534
Other Income
Museum and Galleries Tax Relief 18,000 18,000 0 0 0
Library Charges (book requests/lost tickets) 1,000 1,760 1,467 832 (635)
Makerspace 300 750 625 208 (417)
Book Groups 2,500 2,500 2,083 2,263 180
Recharge to Trading 36,499 36,499 30,416 30,416 0
Shorts/Overs 0 0 0 (5) (5)
58,299 59,509 34,591 33,714 (877)
TOTAL INCOME 3,649,646 3,557,920 2,949,933 3,031,430 81,497
Expenditure
Staff Costs
Salary Costs - including NI/Pensions 2,913,869 2,765,019 2,304,183 2,428,224 (124,042)
Supply Staff 56,585 70,000 58,333 47,154 11,179
Consultancy 70,000 70,000 23,333 30,437 (7,104)
Training 15,000 12,000 10,000 13,618 (3,618) Further costs in last Q for new PM staff
Recruitment 12,750 2,000 1,667 12,321 (10,654) includes Head of Finance recruitment
Disclosure Scotland 2,000 1,000 833 1,713 (880) Further costs in last Q for new PM staff
3,070,204 2,920,019 2,398,349 2,533,467 (135,118)
Property Costs
Rent 8,017 8,017 6,681 6,681 (0) Birnam Library rent
Property Maintenance 13,000 13,000 10,833 10,659 174
Cleaning 60,585 60,585 50,488 49,686 802
81,602 81,602 68,002 67,026 976
Supplies & Services
Library supplies (books, periodicals, newspapers) 75,000 75,000 62,500 62,792 (292) Spend weighted towards year end
Equipment & Materials 22,500 17,000 14,167 18,498 (4,331) includes Perth Museum spend
Health & Safety Materials 6,000 6,000 5,000 4,604 396
Printing, Stationery, Photocopying and postage 10,000 9,000 7,500 6,645 855
Computer and IT costs 70,000 70,000 58,333 48,866 9,467
Telephone Costs 5,000 5,000 4,167 4,409 (242)
Marketing 23,000 20,000 16,667 21,447 (4,780)
Events 20,000 20,000 16,667 16,657 10 Events planned for last quarter
Depreciation Charge 8,000 10,000 8,333 6,562 1,771
Licences & Subscriptions 73,000 69,000 57,500 67,290 (9,790)
Exhibitions 40,000 40,000 33,333 26,415 6,918 Spend weighted towards year end
Insurance 35,000 33,000 27,500 28,905 (1,405)
Other Fees 20,000 11,000 9,167 18,637 (9,470)
Irrecoverable VAT 0 4,100 3,417 0 3,417
Fundraising Costs 20,000 20,000 16,667 16,653 14 includes Perth Museum fundraising costs & assets
Other Expenses 10,000 10,000 8,333 7,683 650
437,500 419,100 349,250 356,063 (6,813)
Transport Costs
Fuel 12,000 24,000 20,000 8,536 11,464 Reduction due to removal of 1 vehicle
Lease 72,000 82,000 80,006 70,700 9,306
Subsistence 250 250 208 26 182
Travel Costs 5,000 9,000 7,500 4,158 3,342
89,250 115,250 107,715 83,420 24,295
Finance Costs
Bank Charges 1,600 1,600 1,333 1,079 254
1,600 1,600 1,333 1,079 254
Governance Expenses
Accountancy Fees 10,000 6,774 5,645 5,645 0 includes finance support costs
Audit Fees 10,000 6,750 5,625 5,625 (0) Audit accrual
Health & Safety Advice 9,975 9,975 8,313 8,313 0
Employment Law 8,825 8,825 7,354 7,354 0
HR Software 5,760 5,760 4,800 4,800 0 Bright HR software
Payroll 11,800 10,800 9,000 10,000 (1,000) Includes one off set up costs
56,360 48,884 40,737 41,737 (1,000)
TOTAL EXPENDITURE 3,736,516 3,586,455 2,965,385 3,082,792 (117,406)
Surplus/(Deficit) (86,870) (28,535) (15,452) (51,362) (35,910)
Backdated pay award paid in Dec 23
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Culture Perth and Kinross Limited
Restricted Profit and Loss to 31 January 2024
Restricted Balance as at 1st April 2023 758,435
Restricted Income 575,552
Restricted Expenditure 1,143,721
Surplus/(Deficit) (568,169)
Restricted Balance as at 31st January 2024 190,266
Culture Perth and Kinross Limited
Designated Profit and Loss to 31 January 2024
COVID Fund Library Development Organisational Change Perth Museum Total
Designated Balance as at 1st April 2023 3,822 60,000 100,000 63,000 226,822
Transfers 0 (60,000) 40,000 20,000 0 agreed at June FRC
Designated Income 0 0 0 0 0
Designated Expenditure (3,185) 0 (24,982) 0 (28,167)
Surplus/(Deficit) (3,185) (60,000) 15,018 20,000 (28,167)
Designated Balance as at 31st January 2024 637 0 115,018 83,000 198,655
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Culture Perth and Kinross Limited
Balance Sheet as at 31 January 2024
Jan-24 Mar-23 Notes
Fixed Assets
Investments 1 1
Tangible Assets 56,570 50,158
56,571 50,159
Current Assets
Debtors 1,359,619 293,926
Cash 765,445 1,913,442
2,125,064 2,207,368
Current Liabilities
Creditors (1,109,099) (537,294)
Net Current Assets / (Liabilities) 1,015,965 1,670,074
Pension Liability 3,541,000 3,541,000
Total Net Assets/(Liabilities) 4,613,536 5,261,233
Represented By:
Restricted Funds 190,266 758,435
Unrestricted Funds 418,614 469,976
Designated Funds 198,655 226,822
Pension Reserve 3,806,000 3,806,000
4,613,536 5,261,233
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Page 137

Culture Perth and Kinross Limited 10
Profit and Loss Account to 31 January 2024 12
Income
2023/24
Projected
Outturn
2023/24
Budget Budget to January Actual to January Variance Comments
Venue Hire including catering 45,107 45,107 37,589 37,260 (329) Venue hire picks up last Q of financial year
Retail Sales 28,000 33,000 27,500 20,833 (6,667) PAG sales lower than budgeted
Coffee Cart Sales 12,500 12,000 10,000 10,408 408
Photocopying Charges 11,000 11,000 9,167 9,025 (142)
Charges -images, copyright, postages etc 1,500 2,000 1,667 1,164 (503)
Misc Income- book sales etc 6,000 7,000 5,833 5,331 (502)
Bank Interest received 2,300 400 333 1,688 1,355
TOTAL INCOME 106,407 110,507 92,089 85,709 (6,380)
Expenditure
Recharge from Charity 36,499 36,499 30,416 30,416 (0)
Coffee Cart Stock 8,500 5,208 4,340 4,566 (226)
Catering for Venue Hire 8,000 11,994 9,995 9,079 916
Cost of Retail Goods 24,444 24,444 20,370 13,652 6,718
Licences & Subscriptions 6,185 6,185 5,154 3,893 1,261
Miscellaneous 2,000 600 500 1,686 (1,186)
Bank Charges 3,100 3,100 2,583 2,708 (125)
Irrecoverable VAT 100 100 83 0 83
Accountancy Fees 4,557 4,557 3,798 4,395 (598)
Audit Fees 4,950 4,950 4,125 4,525 (400)
TOTAL EXPENDITURE 98,335 97,637 81,364 74,920 6,444
Surplus/(Deficit) 8,072 25,764 10,725 10,789 64
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Culture Perth and Kinross Limited
Balance Sheet as at 31 January 2024
Jan-24 Mar-23
Fixed Assets
Tangible Assets 1 1
Current Assets
Stock 36,082 26,145
Debtors 6,842 10,755
Cash 87,202 41,808
130,126 78,709
Current Liabilities
Creditors (96,129) (55,500)
Net Assets / (Liabilities) 33,998 23,209
Represented By:
Called Up Share Capital 1 1
Reserves 33,997 23,208
33,998 23,209
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Live Active Leisure
Group Summary (excluding funded activity)
February 2024 - Highlights
Notes
*
Due to the timing of the Finance and Governance meeting, it is not possible to have the full
draft figures for February 24.  Whilst the income can be fairly accurate, the expenditure has
still to be recorded. The budget figures for the month have been used as a prudent
alternative.
*
Customer generated income was 86% of budget for February 24.  YTD it has decreased to
99% of budget.  The increased income in the first six months of the fiscal year has
compensated for the loss of income in the last five months with 99% of YTD income achieved
with just one month until the end of the year.  All venue usages for Febuary 24 were 84k,
compared with 110k for the same period in the previous year. 
*
Casual swimming income at Perth Leisure Pool for February is 81% of February 23.  Usage for
the venue was 24k compared to 30k for the same period in the previous year.  Olympia in
Dundee has been partially closed since early February.
* During February 24 there was a net member loss of 145.  At the end of the month we had
2,588 members, 72% of our pre-flood level at the start of October 2023.   Membership
income has stabilised at £72k, again at 67% of the pre-flood level.
*
The PKC contract fee for February was reduced by approximately £7.5k.  This was to account
for a repayment to Sportscotland relating to an underspend of grant income on 2022/23. 
Other income includes £34k of bank interest.
* Budget figures have been used for all expenditure categories. As most of the categories have
been underspent YTD, it is possible that these costs are inflated. 
*
Based on the draft position to February 24, the company is still performing ahead of the fiscal
year budget deficit of -£630k. Year to date we have a deficit of -£339k against a budgeted
deficit of -£711k. This position is in line with our forecast deficit for the year end of -£334k
used for the budget process.
8
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LAL excluding funded activities
February YTD
April May June July August September October November December January Draft Budget Total Budget %age against %age against
Income £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ £ Budget Budget
Pay and Play / Bookings income 189,425 139,982 179,773 139,350 140,462 154,994 133,905 150,760 125,600 159,168 175,365 1,688,784
Casual Swimming Income PLP only 97,419 64,358 53,764 160,157 118,275 63,844 57,873 28,561 27,534 50,111 61,499 783,395
Membership income - DD 95,132 101,864 98,344 99,510 102,626 107,621 102,784 87,529 78,015 71,645 71,650 1,016,719
Swimming lesson income - DD 55,181 60,660 60,380 60,720 60,300 64,645 61,761 61,524 61,435 58,487 60,998 666,092
Total customer generated Income 437,157 366,864 392,261 459,737 421,663 391,104 356,323 328,374 292,584 339,411 369,512 425,276 4,154,990 4,215,511 87% 99%
PKC Contract 398,278 398,278 398,278 398,279 398,279 398,279 398,279 398,279 398,279 398,279 390,777 398,278 4,373,563 4,381,063 98% 100%
Other  19,534 12,660 20,826 27,232 35,500 25,217 22,081 25,532 20,227 35,188 38,597 6,875 282,594 162,562 561% 174%
Total Income 854,969 777,802 811,365 885,248 855,442 814,600 776,683 752,185 711,090 772,878 798,886 830,429 8,811,147 8,759,136 96% 101%
Expenditure
Staff Costs 552,738 545,343 547,628 568,695 568,710 519,214 542,924 528,958 526,829 520,082 544,973 544,973 5,966,094 6,243,633 100% 96%
Supplies & Services 45,262 71,695 115,779 72,337 70,118 137,087 74,820 68,807 99,996 40,652 78,450 78,450 875,003 931,749 100% 94%
Property costs 71,771 84,730 99,303 68,584 67,411 248,239 73,183 71,172 99,593 75,470 79,557 79,557 1,039,013 1,208,293 100% 86%
Utilities 104,693 97,780 91,692 83,993 91,551 113,504 112,033 129,240 119,713 136,002 134,647 134,647 1,214,848 1,086,005 100% 112%
Bell's Centre Flood Costs 22,266 28,699 4,283 231 55,479
Total Expenditure 774,464 799,548 854,402 793,609 797,790 1,018,044 825,226 826,876 850,414 772,437 837,627 837,627 9,150,437 9,469,680 100% 97%
Surplus/-Deficit 80,505 -21,746 -43,037 91,639 57,652 -203,444 -48,543 -74,691 -139,324 441 -38,741 -7,198 -339,290 -710,544
22-23 Operating Income 333,828 291,984 290,917 330,852 329,093 316,925 377,610 446,620 313,731 361,489 394,048 3,787,097 Better than budget
131% 126% 135% 139% 128% 123% 94% 74% 93% 94% 94% 110% On Budget
22-23 Surplus/ -Deficit -25,324 -153,014 -260,600 -226,635 -119,928 -132,282 -106,296 -136,582 -105,863 -15,433 7,328 -609,971 Worse than Budget
-318% 14% 17% -40% -48% 154% 46% 55% 132% -3% -529% 56% Budget used
19-20 Operating Income 438,182 428,911 339,492 366,817 390,674 436,625 417,921.00 404,781 343,884 423,998 456,433 4,441,745
100% 86% 116% 125% 108% 90% 85% 81% 85% 80% 81% 94%
19-20 Surplus/ -Deficit 107,913 56,765 -107,120 -56,519 35,386 61,828 -5,492 -12,748 -199,823 39,985 42,724 36,514
75% -38% 40% -162% 163% -329% 884% 586% 70% 1% -91% -929%
February YTD
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Perth Theatre and Concert Hall
PTCH I&E Feb-23
Income Budget Actual Variance Actual Variance
Creative Scotland funding 44,500 44,444 (56) 133,334 (88,890)
Trusts and foundations 22,000 29,183 7,183 7,092 22,091
PKC SLA 88,540 88,540 0 88,540 0
External Job funding 0 0 0 0 0
(Net) Ticket income 116,798 107,045 (9,753) 13,471 93,574
PBO 0 1,618 1,618 0 1,618
Rental Income 18,667 42,958 24,291 3,600 39,358
Learning & engagement 3,000 3,628 628 7,924 (4,296)
Fundraising/sponsorship 6,642 5,725 (917) 3,657 2,068
Initiatives 0 0 0 0 0
Theatre Tax Relief 0 0 0 0 0
Other Income 3,332 2,963 (368) 0 2,963
Commercial GP 43,311 48,916 5,605 6,506 42,410
Total Income 346,790 375,021 28,231 264,124 110,897
Expenditure
Payroll costs 196,835 201,823 (4,989) 165,962 (35,861)
Programme costs 26,612 77,189 (50,577) 36,348 (40,842)
PBO 0 2,731 (2,731) 0 (2,731)
Utilities 31,653 29,409 2,244 26,032 (3,378)
Rates 6,108 6,108 0 0 (6,108)
Irrecoverable VAT 0 0 0 0 0
Depreciation 8,333 6,353 1,980 7,233 880
Other costs 28,908 26,673          2,235 60,205 33,533
Total Expenditure 298,449 350,287 (51,838) 295,779 (54,508)
Month Surplus/ (Deficit) 48,340 24,734 (23,607) (31,655) 56,389
Main points to note:
Feb-24
Trusts & Foundations - Income from both The Gannochy Trust & Creative Scotland has been
spread evenly over the year - in 2022-23 it was included in full in the month it was received. More
funding applications have been submitted and are ongoing, including some substantial multi-year
applications, with an emphasis on covering core costs in addition to project costs. An additional
£10,000 was received in December from Forteviot Trust - not included here as the income relates to
future periods. January includes a £25,000 grant from the Green recovery Capital fund relating to
the BMS system. September includes £5,768 final payment re: the Youth Music Initiative (moved
from Creative Scotland).
Creative Scotland - Spread evenly over the year.
Net Ticket income - Includes Dundein Consort, Paul Lewis, two lunchtime concerts, Jekyll & Hyde,
The Time Machine Connor Burns, Jason Foxx and Rob Brydon.
Rental Income - Rentals included HM Royal Maries, BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, The
Scottish Fiddle Orchestra, Rock Choir, The Famer's Choir and Scotland Sings Bacharach in
Aberdeen and Edinburgh.
Fundraising/sponsorship - Work is being carried out to make our "Friends" regular giving scheme
more attractive inc. the addition of a new Patron level, to encourage new donors and increase Gift
Aid. We have also implemented our new reusable cups scheme. The income from this was £1,724
in February.
8
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Programme Costs - These include costs relating PYT Antigone (approx £17k), additional design
work for Perth Theatre subscription and Scotland Sings Bacharach.
PBO - Our PBO Manager commenced work in October 2023. Additional adaptations were required
to the new web platform, which launched in January 2024, to optimise ticketing for the Stone of
Destiny. Our new Ticketing Services Assistant was appointed in February.
Depreciation - Fewer assets have been purchased during the year so far than anticipated.
Other costs - YTD figures include the recruitment costs for Head of Finance & HR and Director
positions. No refunds will be received relating to the HoF post. October 2023 includes £4.5k re:
Director recruitment + £2.75k re: unbudgeted technical repairs. December 2023 includes a further
£4.5k re: Director recruitment.
Payroll Costs - Most permanent posts are now filled.
Learning & Engagement - Mainly block payments for classes taking place from January - March
2024.
Other Income - Mainly ice cream.
Commercial GP - Conferences this month include NHS Fusion, Scotland Imporvement Districts
Conference, East Young Farmers Cabaret Competition, PKC Creative Day of Dance and the
Elevator Conference.
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Perth Theatre and Concert Hall
PTCH I&E FEB YTD
Income Budget Actual Variance Actual Variance
Creative Scotland funding 495,268 494,657 (611) 775,767 (281,110)
Trusts and foundations 178,000 181,833 3,833 162,279 19,554
PKC SLA 973,940 973,940 0 885,400 88,540
External Job funding 0 0 0 22,975 (22,975)
(Net) Ticket income 1,135,112 1,065,935 (69,176) 934,194 131,741
PBO 49,976 58,014 8,038 0 58,014
Rental Income 253,078 272,700 19,622 280,638 (7,938)
Learning & engagement 31,500 32,249 749 28,177 4,072
Fundraising/sponsorship 63,358 42,185 (21,173) 39,330 2,855
Initiatives 10,000 10,525 525 30,404 (19,879)
TTR 0 15,163 15,163 0 15,163
Other Income 35,268 42,696 7,428 0 42,696
Commercial GP 475,848 476,755 908 418,317 58,439
Total Income 3,701,348 3,666,652 (34,696) 3,577,481 89,171
Expenditure
Payroll costs 2,168,165 2,201,061 (32,896) 1,783,385 (417,676)
Programme costs 698,567 752,249 (53,682) 877,582 125,333
PBO 51,765 35,301 16,464 0 (35,301)
Utilities 281,864 299,434 (17,570) 254,258 (45,176)
Rates 67,188 67,187 1 45,230 (21,957)
Irrecoverable VAT 97,500 83,870 13,630 78,407 (5,463)
Depreciation 91,667 74,641 17,025 75,538 897
Other costs 375,962 394,050 (18,087) 355,332 (38,718)
Total Expenditure 3,832,678 3,907,793 (75,115) 3,469,732 (438,061)
YTD Surplus/ (Deficit) (131,330) (241,141) (109,811) 107,749 (348,890)
FEB YTD
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Page 145

PERTH AND KINROSS COUNCIL 
Scrutiny and Performance Committee 
24 April 2024 
PERTH AND KINROSS HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE PARTNERSHIP (HSCP)
CLINICAL AND CARE GOVERNANCE ASSURANCE REPORT 
Jacquie Pepper, Chief Officer, Perth and Kinross HSCP
(Report No. 24/128) 
1. PURPOSE OF REPORT
1.1 This purpose of this report is to provide assurance to Perth & Kinross Council’s
Scrutiny and Performance Committee on the Clinical Care and Professional
Governance of the Perth and Kinross HSCP. 
2. REPORT SUMMARY
2.1 Situation 
This report is being brought to the meeting to provide assurance on the clinical and
care governance activities and arrangements across the Partnership as outlined in
the Getting It Right For Everyone (GIRFE) Framework in accordance with the
Partnership integration scheme. Clinical Governance is a statutory requirement to
report on, at Board level, from Scottish Government as per NHS MEL (1998) 75.   
The Care Governance Committee is being asked to provide their view on the level of
assurance this report provides and therefore the level of assurance regards clinical
and care governance within the Partnership.  The timescale for the data within this
report are the four months between 1st November 2023 and 29 February 2024. 
As Lead Officer for Perth & Kinross HSCP I would suggest that the level of assurance
provided is: Reasonable Assurance; due to the following factors: 
• Several recent annual reports received from P&K HSCP services at the P&K
HSCP CPGF which demonstrated reasonable levels of assurance. 
2.2 Background 
The role of the Perth & Kinross HSCP Governance forum is to provide assurance to
the Perth & Kinross HSCP Integration Joint Board (IJB), NHS Tayside Board (through
the Care Governance Committee) and Perth & Kinross Council, that there are
effective and embedded systems for Clinical, Care and Professional Governance in
all services within Perth & Kinross HSCP. 
The GIRFE Framework is an agreed tool used by all three HSCPs to ensure
consistency of approach between Local Authorities, Tayside NHS Board and the IJBs
for the three HSCPs; quality assurance is assessed against an agreed, prioritised
common data set for each of the governance domains as detailed below.  A GIRFE
9
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Steering Group continues to meet, with representatives from each of the three
Partnerships and part of its remit is to support additional common assurance
measures and this template. 
The six domains continue to evolve over time and must be adaptable and responsive
to the changes in legislation and external support and monitoring.  The domains
reflect the principles set out in the Health and Social Care Standards, My support, My
life; Scottish Government, 2018 and the Quality of Care Approach, HIS and Care
Inspectorate, September 2018. The domains are: 
Information Governance
Professional Regulation and Workforce Development
Patient/Service user/Carer and Staff Safety
Patient/Service user/Carer and Staff Experience
Quality and effectiveness of care
Promotion of Equality and Social Justice 
2.3 Assessment 
2.3.1 Exceptions 
A risk with regards to staffing in Tay Ward, PRI has been reassessed as a red risk on
DATIX. 
A risk has existed on DATIX for staffing challenges across Tay and Stroke Wards for
many years, as the stability of staffing levels and skill mix within these areas has
fluctuated over time. 
The overall risk level has recently increased in Tay ward specifically due to the high
number of supplementary staff being used on the ward who may not know the
patients and routine of the ward.  This may lead to the potential of patients being
harmed, not receiving acceptable levels of care, or extending their length of stay.
The funded staffing levels for the ward are for 14 beds, and there are currently 21
beds.  This is in combination with a vacancy which has been advertised on three
occasions.  A series of controls are in place to manage safe staffing levels, and a
process of bed modelling is in progress to help inform future bed numbers.   
A risk with regards to Occupational Therapy staffing across the PRI site has been
reassessed as a red risk on DATIX. 
A risk had previously existed on DATIX regarding OT staffing challenges across the
PRI site, and this risk had been archived due to positive progress being made and the
situation going through a period of stability. 
The OT service currently has 2 vacancies which were permanent with non-recurring
funding.  Due to there being no identified funding for these posts, they were required 
to be absorbed by the service.  This exacerbates a historical staffing situation,
impacting on service resilience and staff morale as well as on a patient access to the
service for those who have not been identified as a priority.  Controls are in place to
manage the risk, and the service identifies and communicates at the PRI site huddle
on a daily basis specific wards that may not have adequate OT cover.
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2.3.2 Clinical and Care Risk Management 
The risk registers for Health and for Adult Social Work and Social Care (appendices
2 & 3) are discussed monthly at the P&K HSCP Care & Professional Governance
Forum.   
Managers of red risks provide a written update at every meeting, and managers of
amber risks are asked for update at every other meeting. 
This supports assurances that the relevant risks are being regularly monitored;
what measures are in place to minimise the risk; what alternative mitigations plans
and actions are in place to minimise the risk; that where the risk affects, or is
impacted by, other parts of the health or social care system, or indeed other
agency, we are assured that they are fully informed and engaged in the process.   
P&K HSCP health red risks as at 15th March 2024: 
DatixRef
Risk
Exposure –
No controls
Current Risk Exposure Rating Planned
Risk
Exposure
Risk
Trend
(↑/→/↓) Please include data from previous four reporting periods
April 2023 Aug 2023 Nov 2023 Mar 2024 
L C RER L C RER L C RER L C RER L C RER L C RER 
829 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 2 5 10 →
701 5 3 15 5 4 20 5 4 20 5 4 20 5 4 20 1 4 4 →
1321 5 4 20 - - - 5 4 20 5 4 20 5 4 20 2 4 8 →
886 5 4 20 - - - - - - - - - 5 4 20 2 4 8 → 
L = Likelihood   C = Consequence  RER = Risk Exposure Rating 
Risk 829 - Challenges in relation to accommodation for clinical and non-clinical staff
across P&K 
Accommodation walkrounds have been completed across Health & Social care
sites with a view to mapping sites to accommodate future teams. 
Short life working group has now met twice, and new estates manager is taking
forward the work, and is currently reviewing the timelines to allow the different
moved to happen. 
IDART will move to accommodation previously used for the Birnam Day Centre at
Murray Royal, CCATS to Drumhar, Adult Mental health team to the Murray Royal
site, and the CAMHS team to Cairnwell. Timelines for this are being finalised, and
all information has been entered into Smartsheet. The first team to move will be
IDART. 
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Smartsheet is being used to capture the current situation at each site where
accommodation required review, and supporting SBAR’s being used. 
Risk 701 - Mental Health Waiting Times within the Prison Healthcare Service 
New Patients (routine) are waiting over 18 weeks to be assessed by the Mental
Health Team, as a result of demand higher than resource, high acuity of case load,
this may lead to patients deteriorating, not improving and or not being provided
follow up care on liberation from prison. 
Listening service has now commenced and it appears clear that it will have an
impact on the waiting list for lower level anxiety / depression
Trainee ANP for MH in post 
Risk 886 - Staffing challenges within the OT service at PRI 
This is a new risk added as a result of the OT service at PRI having three posts
which are permanently recruited with non recurring funding.  This means when a
vacancy comes up, these will require to be absorbed by the service.  This will
exacerbate a historical staffing situation within the service, leading to service
resilience and staff morale being low, staff sickness increasing, as well as a
significant impact on patient access to the service for those who have not been
identified as a priority. With increasing pressures within PRI, this increases the
overall risk level. 
Risk 1321 - Inadequate environment for the Perth City CCATS service 
This risk was added in April 2023, as in relation to the current CCATS service which
is located within Beechgrove House, Perth.  A recent Infection Prevention and
Control team visit to the site found numerous environmental Infection Control
concerns.  A site visit has taken place from the current cleaning contractor, soft
facilities and PKC estates to explore gaps and potential solutions within current
provision.  There is in place a Short Life Working Group regarding accommodation
across P&K HSCP, and the CCATS service in Perth City is part of this working
group.
CCATS continue to undertake risk mitigation such as additional cleaning and
handwashing.  Property application for CCATS submitted to short life working
group. 
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P&K HSCP Adult Social Work & Social Care red risks as at 15th March 2024: 
Risk
Risk
Exposure –
No controls
Current Risk Exposure Rating Risk
Trend
(↑/→/↓) Please include data from previous four reporting periods
April 2023 Jul 2023 Nov 2023 Mar 2024 
L C RER L C RER L C RER L C RER L C RER 
1 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 →
2 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 4 5 20 → 
L = Likelihood   C = Consequence  RER = Risk Exposure Rating 
Adult Social Work and Social Care Risk 1 – Lack of Care at Home capacity,
especially around rural P&K. 
Care at Home Transformation group and workstreams in action. Automated
scheduling went live 20 September. HART rotas in Perth updated and efficiency
realised. North and South in progress. PinPoint system will be live end of March.
Alliance contracting with independent sector progressing. 6 International staff
starting with Living Well in April. 1 start date in April for HART. Waiting on 4 further
start dates for HART and 1 x for LWC going through the recruitment. 
Adult Social Work and Social Care Risk 2 – Lack of OT capacity 
0.5 North OTs out to advert.  Not meeting priority targets and no M and H reviews
getting done. 1 admin advert liveDuty Team have had a resignation which will
impact on signposting and advice 
2.3.3 Clinical & Care Governance Arrangements 
Lead Partners Services 
Each HSCP is a Lead Partner for a number of services. These services report through
to the Clinical Care and Professional Governance Forum for that HSCP. At the
Clinical Care and Professional Governance Forum the Lead Partner Service reports
receive the relevant level of scrutiny as other reports. 
Systems and processes are being established to ensure that all three HSCPs receive
copies of reports from other Lead Partner Services to support integration, and
effective whole system working. 
Full details of the Clinical & Care Governance Arrangements in P&K HSCP are
provided within appendix 1.   
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Summary of key exceptions raised at recent CPGF meetings: 
Key exceptions identified within the exception reports from the CPGF meetings
held in November 23, December 23, January 24 and February 24: 
• North Locality:
o Critical Staffing levels North Locality CRT & LInCS.  The LInCS AP’s,
Physio and admin teams have been affected by high levels of long and
short term sickness reporting continuous Amber and sporadic Red status
despite working flexibility across P & K. This has significant impact on
the wider system. 
o Storm Impact – BCPs/ Winter contingency plans evoked and tested on
three occasions – services maintained despite exceptional
circumstances. 
• Urgent Care:
o Medical cover on Red from 19/01/24 – 04/02/24.  this has had an impact
on Hospital at Home’s ability to accept referrals. Vacant medic post
recruited to; candidate coming from overseas – plan to be in post and
orientated by spring. GP Locum/Medical Bank not available. PRI
Consultant cover limited in ability to support. Lead ANP unable to
support as supporting PCH. 
o Impact on Advanced Nurse Practitioner capacity due to demand for
service, reduced staffing, vacancies and unplanned leave. Current
staffing on Hot Amber. 
o Non Mandatory CPD time has been cancelled due to staffing levels and
demand on services. CPD time being reviewed as part of ANP service
review to support protected time for CPD. 
• Podiatry:
o At end December 23, there is an active caseload of approx 7,000
patients.  607 people on the Podiatry waiting list with 241 Podiatry MSK -
577 referrals on waiting list with 406 waiting over 12 weeks. 
• Primary Care:
o The Carse Medical Practice is currently operating from temporary
accommodation with limited space.  Both GPs are part-time and have
highlighted that they may retire within the next 3 years. Future capital
investment monies will be difficult to secure if there is any dubiety in
relation to sustainable GMS in that area. 
• Public Dental Service:
o Awaiting input from Property Department to progress essential
ventilation and building works. Work has been approved in principle by
AMG and funding in place. 
• Medicine for the Elderly, AHP and discharge services at PRI:
o Risk in Tay Ward related to ongoing 50% bed increase and high usage
of agency nursing. Risk added to DATIX.
o AHP OT core staffing affected re budget controls on vacant posts. Risk
had previously been archived due to investment in the substantive
workforce in 2021 however this had never been supported with a
permanent funding solution .
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Key exceptions identified within the annual reports from the CPGF meetings held
in November 23, December 23, January 24 and February 24: 
• Perth City
o Adverse events; the highest number over the past year were with
regards to Pressure Ulcers, five of these were graded as being
moderate, the remainder were graded as minor. Two of the five
moderate incidents were deemed to be avoidable, and pressure ulcer
reviews have been undertaken for all pressure ulcer incidents. Learning
from Angus has shown a process to review Pressure Ulcer incidents.
This involves a six monthly in-depth review of incidents that involve
pressure ulcers to collate and share the learning and improve the
identification and understanding of any themes. The Perth City CPTM
will work with the District Nursing Team Leads to apply this process in
Perth City. 
o As part of the induction for the Associate Director of Nursing visits to a number
of Perth City Teams was undertaken with the Lead Nurse. 
o Care Opinion is rolled out across all teams and continues to provide the
opportunity for people to communicate their experience through this
digital platform. It provides valuable feedback and helps us to
understand when we are doing well and also when we can improve.
Towards the end of the year a report was scheduled to run monthly
enabling the collation of stories to be shared within the Locality
Governance Meeting and wider teams. In 2023, 30 stories were told and
at the time of the report to date, have been viewed on Care Opinion
2,348 times in all. Further work is planned in 2024 to promote the use of
Care Opinion across the teams and explore other ways for our client group to
provide feedback as the digital interface is not always the preferred method of
feedback. 
• South Locality
o The frailty and complexity of the patient groups has presented challenges
across the locality and particularly within the inpatient areas. Core staffing
levels have struggled to maintain safety with increased delirium, falls and
distress behaviours, requiring additional staffing resource to maintain patient
and staff safety. 
o The shortage of care at home across the locality has resulted in longer waits
than we would want for some to access the support they have been assessed
as requiring. This has had a significant impact on many clients and their carers
waiting for care, particularly those who are waiting in care home placements
for a care package, sometimes for many months. However we are supporting
more clients than ever before, many of whom have complex needs, and
whose wish is to remain in their community. Well established and some new
multi-disciplinary forums and partnership working have enabled workers to
develop bespoke packages of care, in many cases enabling people to remain
in their own homes for longer. 
o Media reports in September 2023 highlighted the lack of Healthcare
Improvement Scotland (HIS) inspections of community hospitals. Taking a
proactive approach, the HSCP commenced a short life ‘Inspection Ready’
group to scope and agree preparatory work and set up peer walk around
inspections. 
o With Care Opinion rolled out across all teams this has continued to provide the
opportunity for people to tell their story in their own words. It provides valuable
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feedback and a level of dialogue with families and service users that helps us
understand what we do well and what needs to improve. 
Adverse Events:   
Systems are in place for services/localities to review DATIX incidents.  
The Nursing & AHP leads meet along with the Clinical Governance Coordinator on
monthly basis to review the top 5 incident categories.  This helps to identify any
trends or any appropriate action and supports closing the loop. 
Regarding adverse events, the main themes reported during the months between
November 2023 and February 2024 were: 
Highest frequency events: 
1. Slips, Trips and Falls 
2. Medication 
3. Clinical Challenging behaviour
4. Pressure Ulcer
5. Violence & Aggression 
Harm is defined as an outcome with a negative effect. Harm to a person or groups
of people may result from worsening of a medical condition, the inherent risk of an
investigation or treatment, system failure provider performance issues, service
disruption, financial loss or adverse publicity. 
Slip, Trip & Falls
During the time period between November 2023 and February 2024, there were
165 incidents recorded, of which 23 involved harm.  74 occurred at MRH, 34 at PRI,
51 in Community Hospitals and the remaining 6 in other areas. 
The Psychiatry of Old Age inpatient wards at Murray Royal Hospital experienced a
higher than usual number of falls at the end of 2021 due to several patients who
had multiple falls (many of which were controlled).  Ward staff were doing all they
could to manage the falls, and they had support from the Falls coordinator during
this time.  
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In addition, the Falls Coordinator continues to: 
▪ review all of the wards in-patient falls Datix reports and provide feedback to
the ward with a breakdown of their falls, outlining any trends, highlighting
patients who fall repeatedly and enquiring if further information is required 
▪ Supports all of the HSCP wards to have strength and balance exercise panels
fitted on their walls and suitable patients also receive a set of strength and
balance cue cards which they can take home with them. Along with that they
receive a Care About Walking booklet and record charts for recording activity /
steps. 
Medication
During the time period between November 2023 and February 2024, there were 75
incidents recorded, of which 5 involved harm.  6 occurred at MRH, 8 at PRI, 13 in
Community Hospitals, 34 within a Prison Establishment and the remaining 14 in
other areas. 
The majority of medication adverse events occurred with the Prison Healthcare
service.  The prison healthcare service manages and administers a high volume of
medication across three sites across Tayside - HMP Perth, HMP Castle Huntly and
HMP & YOI Bella.   
Violence & Aggression
During the time period between November 2023 and February 2024, there were 35
incidents recorded, of which 3 involved harm.  18 occurred at MRH, 5 at PRI, 2 in
Community Hospitals, and the remaining 10 in other areas. 
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All but one of the 18 incidents within Murray Royal Hospital were within the
Psychiatry of Old Age wards. All three of the incidents involving harm involved
physical aggression, and two were in an inpatient setting.  Two were graded as
green and one as amber (due to the level of injury sustained by a patient after
being pushed by another patient and falling) 
Clinical Challenging Behaviour (such as patient unable to understand risks,
sexual disinhibition, general agitation)
During the time period between November 2023 and February 2024 there were 55
incidents recorded, of which 2 involved harm.  45 occurred at MRH, 3 at PRI, 5 in
Community Hospitals and 2 others. 
The vast majority of these incidents were within the Psychiatry of Old Age wards at
Murray Royal Hospital.  The rise in incidents (albeit of negligible grading) in October
2023 have been noted by the service.  This appears to be attributable to a small
group of patients in one particular POA ward who are exhibiting these behaviours. 
The wards have sought input from the NHST PMVA team regarding the ongoing
management of Violence & Aggression and Clinical Challenging Behaviour. 
Pressure Ulcers 
During the time period between November 2023 and February 2024, there were 47
incidents recorded, of which 40 involved harm.  32 were within the patients home, 7
within Care Homes, 5 within Community Hospitals, and the remaining 3 in other
areas. 
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The yellow graded events are discussed at the relevant locality Care Governance
meeting.  It should be noted that some of these pressure ulcer incidents are
regarding patients who have been discharged from hospital to the community with
a pressure ulcer, which has then been picked up and reported by a service in P&K
HSCP. 
Each geographical locality in P&K is provided with a summary of adverse events
specific to their locality to enable them to identify trends and any learning.   
Adverse events are regularly reviewed and form a standing agenda item at the
locality governance groups to identify learning, improvements, training needs or
themes. 
It has been identified and acknowledged by the CPGF that further performance
improvement is required regarding the timescales for reporting and verifying DATIX
incidents.  This continues to improve and to be monitored at CPGF meetings. 
Adult Social Work & Social Care Incident Summary: 
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Page 156

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Page 157

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2.3.4 Significant Adverse Event Reviews 
There are currently no pending SAER’s in P&K HSCP. 
2.3.5 Pressure Ulcers & Falls 
Details regarding both of the types of Adverse events has been provided above in
section 2.3.3. 
Pressure ulcers are reviewed on an individual basis to ensure that all mitigating
actions are in place and any themes in relation to learning are identified. 
2.3.6 Complaints 
Current Health Complaints as at 15/03/2024 - Stage 1
Service Area 0-4 Days 5-9 Days Total
Perth & Kinross HSCP 2  0 2 
Current Health Complaints as at 15/03/2024 - Stage 2
Service Area 0-5
days
6-10 days 11 or more
days
Total
Perth & Kinross HSCP 1 1 7 9 
HEALTH COMPLAINT SUMMARY FOR FEBRUARY 2024: 
Number of complaints closed by month: 
• Total number of complaints received in Feb 2024  = 33
• Total number of complaints closed in Feb 2024  = 38
• Stage 1 = 16 (6 upheld or partially upheld)
• Stage 2 = 22 (6 upheld or partially upheld) 
• % Stage 2 completed within timescales = 73%
• % Stage 2 not completed within timescales = 27% 
• Services
o Prison Healthcare – 31
o Mental Health - 4
o Public Dental – 1
o AHP – 1
o Perth City - 1 
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
Feb-22
Mar-22
Apr-22
May-22
Jun-22
Jul-22
Aug-22
Sep-22
Oct-22
Nov-22
Dec-22
Jan-23
Feb-23
Mar-23
Apr-23
May-23
Jun-23
Jul-23
Aug-23
Sep-23
Oct-23
Nov-23
Dec-23
Jan-24
Feb-24
Stage 1
Stage 2
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• Top themes for Feb 24 (Prison Healthcare): 
▪ Overall (more than one theme can be applicable per complaint) 
• Medication – 12
• Disagreement with treatment plan or outcome - 9
• Lack of support - 5
• Wait times / delay - 4
• Communication -1 
▪ Upheld or Partially Upheld complaints (more than one theme can be
applicable per complaint) 
• Medication – 2
• Disagreement with treatment plan or outcome - 2
• Lack of support - 2
• Wait times / delay - 2 
• Top themes for Feb 24 (other HSCP services): 
▪ Overall (more than one theme can be applicable per complaint) 
• Disagreement with treatment plan or outcome – 2
• Wait time – 2
• Lack of support - 2
• Care and treatment - 1 
▪ Upheld or Partially Upheld complaints (more than one theme can be
applicable per complaint) 
• Wait time – 1
• Lack of support - 1
• Care and treatment - 1  
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PKC COMPLAINT SUMMARY FOR February 2024: 
• Total number of complaints received in Feb 2024  = 4
• Total number of complaints closed in Feb 2024  = 3
• Stage 1 = 3 (2 resolved, 1 upheld)
• Stage 2 = 1
• % Stage 2 responded to within timescales = 0%
• % Stage 2 not responded to within timescales = 100% 
• Services the complaints relate to as below
o Perth City SW  (South) - 1
o HART and EIAP – 1
o Access Team – 1
o HDT - 1
• Top themes 
▪ Overall (more than one theme can be applicable per complaint)
• Waiting Times/delays – 1 
• Staff Conduct - 1
• Entitlement to service – 1
• Service Provision - 1 
▪ Upheld or Partially Upheld complaints (more than one theme can be
applicable per complaint)
• Staff Conduct - 1 
Actions taken from upheld/partially upheld stage 1 complaints: 
Fact finding conducted, following a fully upheld complaint, social care staff member
was reminded how to conduct themselves while in the community and behave in a
respectful manner by reinforcing code of conduct expectations. 
0
2
4
6
8
10
April May June July Aug Sept Oct Nov Dec Jan Feb
Complaints Closed
Stage 1 Stage 2
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2.3.7 Scottish Public Services Ombudsman Reports
There have been no complaints referred to the SPSO during the time period. 
The last complaint which was referred to the SPSO was from December 2021, and
SPSO found that the Boards complaint response was reasonable and decided not
to investigate further. 
2.3.8  External Reports & Inspections
HM Inspectorate of Prisons for Scotland undertook  an inspection to HMP Bella on
during March 2024, and the visit report is awaited by the service. 
2.3.9 Adult Support & Protection 
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It should be noted that the above data collected and available nationally has not
been updated since March 2023.  However, it shows a significant increase in both
AP concerns and VPRs up until that time.  This is, at least partly, a result of
increased awareness due to ongoing information campaigns and improved multi-
agency working. Extra social worker posts have been recruited to respond to this
increased demand.
Responding to concerns about adults at risk of harm is prioritised and, despite this
increase in referrals, 97% of all concerns are screened within 24-hours. This
indicator, together with the wider performance framework, is monitored at locality
governance meetings, the Public Protection Group, Chief Officers Group and the
Adult Protection Committee. 
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MAT Standards
Current RAG scores as at Feb 2024 are: 
Standard
1
Standard
2
Standard
3
Standard
4
Standard
5
Standard
6
Standard
7
Standard
8
Standard
9
Standard
10
RAG
Score           
Standard 1 – All people accessing services have the option to start MAT from the
same day of presentation. 
GREEN   
Standard 2 – All people are supported to make an informed choice on what
medication to use for MAT, and the appropriate dose. 
GREEN   
Standard 3 – All people at high risk of drug-related harm are proactively
identified and offered support to commence or continue MAT. 
GREEN 
Standard 4 – All people are offered evidence based harm reduction at the
point of MAT delivery. 
GREEN 
Standard 5 – All people will receive support to remain in treatment for as long
as requested. 
GREEN 
Standard 6 – The system that provides MAT is psychologically informed (tier
1); routinely delivers evidence-based low intensity psychosocial
interventions (tier 2); and supports individuals to grow social networks. 
AWAITING ASSESSMENT – EVIDENCE BEING GATHERED AND SUBMITTED 
Standard 7 – All people have the option of MAT shared with Primary Care. 
AWAITING ASSESSMENT – EVIDENCE BEING GATHERED AND SUBMITTED 
Standard 8 – All people have access to advocacy and support for housing,
welfare and income needs. 
AWAITING ASSESSMENT – EVIDENCE BEING GATHERED AND SUBMITTED 
Standard 9 – All people with co-occurring drug use and mental health
difficulties can receive mental health care at the point of MAT delivery. 
AWAITING ASSESSMENT – EVIDENCE BEING GATHERED AND SUBMITTED 
Standard 10 – All people receive trauma informed care. 
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AWAITING ASSESSMENT – EVIDENCE BEING GATHERED AND SUBMITTED 
2.3.10 Mental Health 
P&K HSCP Mental health waiting times (1st December 2023 – 31st December
2023) 
The following is waiting time data for team’s where their referral to assessment or
their assessment to treatment intervention wait time standard has breached. Work
is progressing to enhance this data over the coming weeks and months and future
data will evolve to showcase month-on-month data and a more comprehensive
analysis of the data presented.  
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Team  Wait Time
Standards
Breach
Status
Adult Mental Health Occupational Therapy Team P1 – 5 Working Days
P2 – 6 Weeks
P3 – 12 Weeks 
Community Learning Disabilities Team (Wait times
currently being explored for Dietetics, Speech & Language,
Clinical Psychology)
12 Weeks 
Clinical Psychology, Adult Community Mental Health
Teams 
18 Weeks 
Consultant Psychiatrists, Psychiatry of Old Age Service 12 Weeks 
Garry Ward, Psychiatry of Old Age Inpatients 0 Days 
Integrated Drug and Alcohol Recovery Team 3 Weeks 
Learning Disability Intensive Support Service 12 Weeks 
Leven Ward, Psychiatry of Old Age Inpatients 0 Days 
Mental Health Officers 0 Days 
Mental Health Physiotherapy P1 – 3 Working Days
P2 – 5 Working Days 
P3 – 10 Working
Days 
MoveAhead 12 Weeks 
North Perthshire Adult Community Mental Health Teams Urgent – 72 Hours
Routine - 12 Weeks 
North Perthshire Primary Care Mental Health and
Wellbeing Team
12 Weeks 
Perth City Adult Community Mental Health Team Urgent – 72 Hours
Routine - 12 Weeks 
Perth City Primary Care Mental Health and Wellbeing
Team
12 Weeks 
SCOPE AP Concerns – 24 hrs
ASP Inquiry – 10
days
ASP Investigation –
28 Days 
South Perthshire Adult Community Mental Health Team Urgent – 72 Hours
Routine - 12 Weeks 
South Perthshire Primary Care Mental Health and
Wellbeing Team
12 Weeks 
Therapeutics & ECT Team 0 Weeks 
The Wellbeing Support Team  
Tummel Ward, Psychiatry of Old Age Inpatients 0 Days 
No Wait Time Breaches                   Wait Time Breached              Data Pending    
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Clinical Psychology – Adult CMHTs 
Clinical Psychologists provide psychological therapies for people with complex
mental illness who are working with the North Perthshire, Perth City and South
Perthshire CMHTs. All patients on the Clinical Psychology waiting list will have
received an initial mental health assessment, will be engaged in treatment
interventions with another member(s) of the Adult CMHT and will have access to
the CMHT Duty Worker. Clinical Psychology is a Dundee HSCP hosted service and
monthly wait times are reported via this route. Further engagement with our Clinical
Psychology colleagues is required to understand current and future mitigation and
this will be explored in the second phase of this work. 
Clinical Psychologists work to a 12 week waiting time target. The number of months
waiting is shown along the bottom axis with the number of people waiting along the
horizontal axis. The number of patients waiting within the stipulated 12 weeks are
shown in green and all others breaching shown in red. 
South CMHT                               North CMHT                            Perth City CMHT
Total Patients – 7                        Total Patients – 11                   Total Patients – 55
Within 3 Months – 1                    Within 3 Months – 4                 Within 3 Months –
10
Outwith 3 months – 6                  Outwith 3 months – 7               Outwith 3 Months –
45
Adherence to Standard– 14%   Adherence to Standard–36%   Adherence to
Standard–18% 
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Adult Mental Health Occupational Therapy Team 
Adult Mental Health Occupational Therapists provide OT interventions for people
with complex mental illness who are working with the North Perthshire, Perth City
and South Perthshire CMHTs. All patients on the OT waiting list will have received
an initial mental health assessment prior to being referred on to the Mental Health
Occupational Therapy and will have access to the CMHT Duty Worker. OT wait
times have been impacted by a range of vacancies over a number of years. 
Adult Mental Health OT’s work to priority bandings with a 12 week waiting time
target for patients requiring routine interventions (Band 3). Safer Staffing Workforce
Planning Tools will be undertaken for a two week period in February 2024 and this
will inform an SBAR for EMT which is currently in development. Critical staffing
issues and wait time breaches are logged within DATIX as an organisational risk.
The number of months waiting is shown along the bottom axis with the number of
people waiting along the horizontal axis. Patients waiting within the stipulated 12
weeks are shown in green and all others breaching shown in red. 
North CMHT OT                          South CMHT OT                       Perth City CMHT OT
Total Patients – 9                         Total Patients – 10                     Total Patients – 16
Within 3 months – 0                     Within 3 months – 0                   Within 3 months – 0
Outwith 3 months – 9                   Outwith 3 months – 10              Outwith 3 months – 16
Adherence to standard–0%         Adherence to standard–0%       Adherence to standard–
0%  
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Mental Health Physiotherapy 
Mental Health Physiotherapy provides interventions for people with complex mental
illness who are currently engaged in treatment with the Adult and Older People’s
CMHTs within North Perthshire, Perth City and South Perthshire (6 Teams), to all
inpatients within the Perth and Kinross Psychiatry of Old Age Inpatient Unit (3
wards) and the General Adult Psychiatry Inpatient Unit (3 wards). The Team is also
currently assisting Secure Care services with a small number of inpatient referrals
due to their inability to recruit to their vacant post. The Team has a wide remit and a
small staffing resource consisting of 1.4wte Specialist Physiotherapy staff and
1.0wte Community Support Worker staff. 
Safer Staffing Workforce Planning Tools will be undertaken for a two week period in
February 2024 and this will inform an SBAR for EMT which is currently in
development. The number of weeks waiting is shown along the bottom axis with the
number of people waiting along the horizontal axis. The number of patients waiting
within the stipulated banding priorities are shown in green and all others breaching
shown in red.   
Priority 1                                          Priority 2                                     Priority 3
Total Patients – 0                             Total Patients – 6                  Total Patients – 14
Within 3 months – 0                         Within 3 months – 0              Within 3 months –
1
Outwith 3 months – 0                       Outwith 3 months – 6            Outwith 3 months
– 13
Adherence to standard–100%         Adherence to standard– 0% Adherence to
standard–7% 
North Perthshire Adult CMHT – ADHD Wait Times
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The Adult CMHTs have seen a significant increase in referrals for people with
potential ADHD and are overwhelmed by the demand. This correlates with the
emerging data across Scotland and rates are expected to increase exponentially.
All patients on the ADHD waiting list have received baseline screening tools to
determine whether they require to be assessed by a CMHT, self help information to
access whilst they wait for initial assessment and will have access to the CMHT
Duty Worker. The number of months waiting is shown along the bottom axis with
the number of people waiting along the horizontal axis. Patients waiting within the
stipulated 12 weeks are shown in green and all others breaching shown in red. In
the absence of a Tayside Neurodevelopmental Pathway, we are currently
developing a Neurodevelopmental Pathway proposal which will be presented to the
Mental Health Steering Group on the 6th February 2024. 
ADHD Assessment 
Total Patients – 24  
Within 3 months – 0 
Out with 3 months – 24 
Adherence to standard – 0% 
Perth City Adult CMHT – ADHD Wait Times 
The Adult CMHTs have seen a significant increase in referrals for people with
potential ADHD and are overwhelmed by the demand. This correlates with the
emerging data across Scotland and rates are expected to increase exponentially.
All patients on the ADHD waiting list have received baseline screening tools to
determine whether they require to be assessed by a CMHT, self help information to
access whilst they wait for initial assessment and will have access to the CMHT
Duty Worker. The number of months waiting is shown along the bottom axis with
the number of people waiting along the horizontal axis. Patients waiting within the
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stipulated 12 weeks are shown in green and all others breaching shown in red. In
the absence of a Tayside Neurodevelopmental Pathway, we are currently
developing a Neurodevelopmental Pathway proposal which will be presented to the
Mental Health Steering Group on the 6th February 2024. 
ADHD Assessment  
Total Patients – 160   
Within 3 months – 17  
Out with 3 months – 143  
Adherence to standard – 11% 
South Perthshire Adult CMHT – ADHD Wait Times 
The Adult CMHTs have seen a significant increase in referrals for people with
potential ADHD and are overwhelmed by the demand. This correlates with the
emerging data across Scotland and rates are expected to increase exponentially.
All patients on the ADHD waiting list have received baseline screening tools to
determine whether they require to be assessed by a CMHT, self help information to
access whilst they wait for initial assessment and will have access to the CMHT
Duty Worker. The number of months waiting is shown along the bottom axis with
the number of people waiting along the horizontal axis. Patients waiting within the
stipulated 12 weeks are shown in green and all others breaching shown in red. In
the absence of a Tayside Neurodevelopmental Pathway, we are currently
developing a Neurodevelopmental Pathway proposal which will be presented to the
Mental Health Steering Group on the 6th February 2024. 
ADHD Assessment
Total Patients – 149  
Within 3 months – 6 
Out with 3 months – 143 
Adherence to standard – 4% 
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Perth City Adult CMHT – Consultant Psychiatrist Referral to Assessment 
Wait times for Consultant Psychiatrist/Medical assessments are primarily due to
recruitment issues and a reliance on temporary locum staff alongside outdated
models of practice where Consultants primarily undertake outpatient clinics largely
for people with less complex needs. Work to review models of practice and existing
caseloads will progress over the coming year in line with the Tayside CMHS
Redesign programme. The number of months waiting is shown along the bottom
axis with the number of people waiting along the horizontal axis. Patients waiting
within the stipulated 12 weeks are shown in green and all others breaching shown
in red.
Consultant Psychiatrist Referral to Assessment
Total Patients – 149  
Within 3 months – 75 
Out with 3 months – 74 
Adherence to standard – 50% 
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Page 172

South Perthshire Adult CMHT – Consultant Psychiatrist Referral to Assessment 
Wait times for Consultant Psychiatrist/Medical assessments are primarily due to
recruitment issues and a reliance on temporary locum staff alongside outdated
models of practice where Consultants primarily undertake outpatient clinics largely
for people with less complex needs. Work to review models of practice and existing
caseloads will progress over the coming year in line with the Tayside CMHS
Redesign programme. The number of months waiting is shown along the bottom
axis with the number of people waiting along the horizontal axis. Patients waiting
within the stipulated 12 weeks are shown in green and all others breaching shown
in red.
Consultant Psychiatrist Referral to Assessment 
Total Patients – 36  
Within 3 months – 15 
Out with 3 months – 21 
Adherence to standard – 42% 
Development of HSCP Mental Health KPIs 
The development of the suite of KPIs for MH across Tayside has continued with initial
approval for the indicator suite having been reached. We are now in a data
source/discovery phase. For data which sits within NHST systems we have
agreement that the Business Unit will produce a data report covering each of the
KPIs. This will be produced for Tayside, and each of the HSCPs and will therefore
allow us to report independently but using the same suite of KPI data. We were due to
receive the first draft of that data report by the end of Feb and so this is now overdue.
This may be due to additional work which has been undertaken within NHST to
produce NHST’s Annual Delivery Plan and 3 year Strategic Plan. 
In terms of the KPIs which are based on Local Government based data we have met
recently with colleagues in Dundee and Angus to discuss the approaches that need to
be taken to extract the data. Largely this will relate to our use of Social Care systems.
In P&K with the move to MOSIAC upon us it may take a little longer to work through
the detail and extract a first draft.
Page 172 of 200

Page 173

We have made good progress on this piece of the work but there are some pieces
that still need to be completed. As we move forward we will insert a relatively short
time horizon for us to review what’s all been included in the suite of KPIs and make an
assessment of the value and impact of including each of the indicators. This work will
link with the NHST Strategic Plan, Scottish Government Mental Health Quality
Indicators and the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental
Health Services(NCISH). 
3. QUALITY/PATIENT CARE
There are a number of ongoing risks (summarised within Appendices 2 &3) which,
if not mitigated, pose a risk to the provision of safe care which is of high quality. 
The HSCP continues to manage these risks proactively.  In addition: 
o Reduction of bed numbers in Garry Ward, MRH to help manage the risk
to risk to patient safety and staff wellbeing. 
▪ From February 2024, Garry ward has had a deficit of 4.75 WTE
Registered nursing staff through a combination of rolling vacancies,
maternity leave and further exasperated by long term sickness. 
Additional hours, overtime and temporarily increases of working hours
has been offered to all staff to mitigate the risks on a short-term basis. 
NHST nurse bank have offered short term contracts to all RMN
employed by NHST nurse bank and we have had no success with this
approach to recruitment.  The decision was made to reduce the ward
bed compliment by 5 beds which supports the RCN recommendation for
a 1:7 registrant/patient ratio.  The temporary closure of these beds has
been agreed until the end of October, but is under continual review and
the beds may be opened if the staffing situation improves before then. 
Drug related deaths: 
Numbers of suspected drug related deaths are recorded across the three HSCP’s,
and is used to inform learning and context within and across the HSCP’s. 
The following shows data regarding confirmed drug deaths in P&K as compared to
across Scotland (please note the two y-axes): 
3 5 8 3 9 10 11
19
30
25
34
20
21485 584 581 527 614 706 868 934
1187 1280 1339 1330
1051
0
500
1000
1500
0
10
20
30
40
2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Confirmed DD
Year
Confirmed Drug Deaths
P&K Scotland
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Page 174

The following shows data regarding confirmed drug deaths in P&K as compared to
across Scotland (please note the two y-axes): 
• Local actions to mitigate risks in Perth and Kinross include:
• Implementation of Medication Assistant Treatment (MAT) Standards 1-5 by
April 2023
• Implementation of MAT Standards 6-10 by April 2024
• National Mission to reduce drug deaths funding utilised to increase IDART
staff compliment to reduce waiting times and enhance service provision e.g. –
provision of an OT service and the creation of a new psychology assistant
post to provide low level psychological interventions.
• Creation of a multiagency referral pathway for all new substance use referrals. 
• Creation of a near fatal overdose pathway and multiagency group to review all
reported near fatal overdoses with funding provided to third sector partners to
employ assertive outreach workers to actively engage with service users.  
• Creation of a residential rehabilitation pathway and funding panel to facilitate
access to rehabilitation services for service users. 
4. WORKFORCE
There are a number of ongoing risks regarding workforce challenges (summarised
within Appendices 2 &3) which, if not mitigated, pose a risk to the provision of safe
care which is of high quality.  The HSCP continues to manage these risks
proactively. 
5. FINANCIAL 
The composition of the Executive Management Team allows for a discussion of any
financial issues from the perspective of Care & Professional Governance. 
6. RISK ASSESSMENT/MANAGEMENT 
Key risks and risk assurance process is detailed under section 2.3a. 
7. EQUALITY AND DIVERSITY, INCLUDING HEALTH INEQUALITIES 
Equality, diversity and health inequalities are core to the Getting it Right Framework
and the domains within. Each service provides exception reports which include this
aspect. Currently there are no exceptions requiring to be escalated to CGC. 
8. OTHER IMPACTS 
N/A 
9. COMMUNICATION, INVOLVEMENT, ENGAGEMENT AND CONSULTATION 
All HSCP Staff have been invited to complete the latest iMatter survey, and teams
will  meet to discuss the results of these and create actions to take forward. 
The use of Care Opinion continues to expand within the HSCP, and during
reporting this reporting period, we have continued to be the most active HSCP in
Scotland, and are ranked 18th within the top 35 most active Care Opinion
Page 174 of 200

Page 175

subscriptions across the UK.  There were 102 stories between Nov 2023 – Feb
2024, viewed a total of 4191 times. 
To date we have had 4 changes planned; these changes were promised before this
reporting period and as you can see 2 of the changes have been made and 2 are
being worked on and are yet to be completed.   
In this bar chart below, you can see month by month how many stories we received
over the reporting period.  Currently we have a 98% response rate to the last 100
stories. 
Looking at the most common word tag added by the authors, we can see by the total
number of reactions that people have responded positively when sharing their story; 
What's good? - 149 responses
What could be improved? – 29 responses
Feelings - 89 responses
This is how Care Opinion have
rated our stories;
94 stories – not critical (0)
1 story – minimally critical (1)
7 stories - mildly critical (2)
Page 175 of 200

Page 176

9 ROUTE TO THE MEETING
This has been previously considered by the following groups as part of its
development. The groups have either supported the content, or their feedback has
informed the development of the content presented in this report. 
• P&K HSCP Care & Professional Governance Forum members
• P&K HSCP Professional Leads and Heads of Service
• P&K HSCP Executive Management Team (final draft) 
10 RECOMMENDATION
This report is being presented for:
• Reasonable Assurance 
As Lead Officer for Perth & Kinross HSCP I would suggest that the level of assurance
provided is: Reasonable Assurance 
Please ✓ the level of assurance you are providing:
Level of Assurance System Adequacy Controls ✓
Substantial
Assurance 
A sound system of governance, risk
management and control exists, with
internal controls operating effectively
and being consistently applied to support
the achievement of objectives in the
area audited
Controls are applied
continuously or with only
minor lapses. 
Reasonable
Assurance 
There is a generally sound system of
governance, risk management and
control in place. Some issues, non-
compliance or scope for improvement
were identified which may put at risk the
achievement of objectives in the area
audited.
Controls are applied
frequently but with evidence
of non-compliance. 
✓
Limited
Assurance 
Significant gaps, weaknesses or non-
compliance were identified.
Improvement is required to the system of
governance, risk management and
control to effectively manage risks to the
achievement of objectives in the area
audited.
Controls are applied but
with some significant
lapses. 
No
Assurance 
Immediate action is required to address
fundamental gaps, weaknesses or non-
compliance identified. The system of
governance, risk management and
control is inadequate to effectively
manage risks to the achievement of
objectives in the area audited.
Significant breakdown in
the application of controls. 
Page 176 of 200

Page 177

Appendix 1
List of services within P&K HSCP 
The P&K HSCP works within a locality model to deliver the following delegated
services and hosted services: 
Perth City Locality
Community Nursing, 
Community Mental Health Teams 
(Adult and Older Peoples), 
Community Allied Health Profession Teams
Integrated Drug & Alcohol Recovery Team, 
Advanced Nurse Practitioners, 
Community Hospitals (x4), 
Community Care & Treatment Teams, 
Community Learning Disability Services, 
Adult Social Work Teams
Respiratory Team
Care Home Liaison (Mental Health)
Access Team
Mental Health Officer Team
Wellbeing Team
Hospital Discharge Team
Discharge Hub
Delegated
North Locality
Delegated
South Locality
Delegated
Perth Royal Infirmary
Stroke Ward
Medicine for the Elderly Ward
Discharge Liaison Team
Allied Health Profession Team (Inpatients)
Allied Health Professions (Outpatient Teams)
Delegated
Murray Royal Hospital 3 Older Peoples Mental Health Inpatient Wards Delegated
Commissioned Services Care at Home, 
42 Care Homes, 
Supported Accommodation
Delegated
Registered Services Dalweem & Parkdale Care Homes, 
Day Care, 
HART
Delegated
Equipment & TEC Joint Equipment Loan Store,
Community Alarm
Delegated
Mental Health Officer
Team
Mental Health Officers across P&K Delegated
Prison Healthcare
Across 2 sites – HMP Perth and HMP Castle Huntly
Pharmacy Team
Primary Care Medical & Nursing Team
Integrated Mental Health & Substance Misuse Team
Occupational Therapy Team
Physiotherapy
Clinical Psychology
In-reach Podiatry
In-reach Dental
In-reach Blood Borne Virus
Hosted
Public Dental Service Tayside wide Services Hosted
Podiatry Tayside wide Services Hosted 
9
Page 177 of 200

Page 178

Page 178 of 200

Page 179

Appendix 2
DATIX service risks within P&K HSCP health services
(as at 15th Mar 2024) 
Current service risks within health services (31): 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
829 P&K HSCP
wide
Challenges in
relation to
accommodation
for clinical and
non-clinical staff
across P&K
20
RED
20
RED
06-12-23
Evelyn
Devine 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
701
Prison
Healthcar
e
Mental Health
Waiting Times
within the Prison
Healthcare Service
15
AMBER
20
RED
15-01-23
David
Hope 
9
Page 179 of 200

Page 180

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
132
1 Perth City
Inadequate
environment for
the Perth City
CCATS service
20
RED
20
RED
17-01-24
Andrew
Parker 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
886 AHP
Staffing challenges
within the OT
service at PRI
20
RED
20
RED
09-01-24
Terrianne
Thomson 
Page 180 of 200

Page 181

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
145
8 P&K wide
Staffing levels
within the P&K
HSCP Community
Nursing Evening
Service
20
RED
16
AMBER
29-02-24
Julie
Dunn 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
145
5 POA
Registrant
workforce
vacancies within 3
POA IP wards at
Murray Royal
Hospital Perth.
20
RED
16
AMBER
19-02-24
Zara
Borthwic
k
Page 181 of 200

Page 182

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
272
MFTE,
POA /
Intermedi
ate Care
Tay ward –
workforce
20
RED
16
AMBER
15-03-24
Sharron
Johnston
e
Ref
Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
143
2
Inpatient
MFTE and
Intermedi
ate Care
PRI Stroke Unit -
Workforce
20
RED
16
AMBER
22-12-23
Sharron
Johnston
e
Page 182 of 200

Page 183

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
135
1 P&K Wide
P&K HSCP of
framework agency
use and impact on
services
20
RED
16
AMBER
10-07-23
Valerie
Davis 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
133
5
Public
Dental
Risk due to ageing
decontamination
equipment at
Broxden Dental
Centre
16
AMBER
16
AMBER
29-01-24
Gillian
Elliot 
Page 183 of 200

Page 184

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
126
7 P&K wide
Capacity and Flow
Older Peoples
Services
20
RED
16
AMBER
17-01-24
Amanda
Taylor 
Page 184 of 200

Page 185

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
122
6
Prison
Healthcar
e
GP Cover for HMP
Perth
15
AMBER
16
AMBER
15-01-24
Angela
Cunningham 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
117
0
MFTE, POA
/
Intermedi
ate Care
P&K HSCP Hand
Therapy Service -
Waiting Times
20
RED
16
AMBER
08-09-23
Terrianne
Thomson 
Page 185 of 200

Page 186

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
115
7
Public
Dental
service
Failure to meet
statutory levels of
ventilation within
Dental Surgeries in
Angus & Dundee
20
RED
16
AMBER
20-02-23
Gillian
Elliott 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
115
1 P&K wide Mental Health -
Capacity & Flow
20
RED
16
AMBER
6-12-23
Chris
Lamont 
Page 186 of 200

Page 187

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
105
5
Primary
Care
Risk regarding long
term GP Practice
sustainability
16
AMBER
16
AMBER
13-02-24
Ruth
Buchan 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
982
Mental
Health
P&K wide
Workforce 20
RED
16
AMBER
06-12-23
Chris
Lamont 
Page 187 of 200

Page 188

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
657 South
P&K HSCP
Community
Hospital
Registered Nurse
Staffing Levels
20
RED
16
AMBER
04-12-23
Tia Dixon 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
132
9 P&K wide
Workforce
Capacity risk to
support Inpatient
Areas
15
AMBER
15
AMBER
04-12-23
Amanda
Taylor 
Page 188 of 200

Page 189

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
983
Mental
Health
P&K wide
Ligature Anchor
Points
20
RED
15
AMBER
21-02-24
Zara
Borthwic
k
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated /
Manager
Mitigations
145
7
Primary
Care
Risk regarding
sustainability of
GMS services in
Carse of Gowrie
15
AMBER
12
AMBER
28-02-24
Caitlin
Charlton 
Page 189 of 200

Page 190

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
129
3
Mental
Health
P&K wide
Mental Health
Nursing and AHP
workforce risk
20
RED
12
AMBER
01-03-24
Lindsey
Griffin 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated /
Manager
Mitigations
125
4
Prison
Healthcar
e
Non Emergency
Transfer of
Patients to
Hospital
12
AMBER
12
AMBER
10-10-23
Angela
Cunningha
m 
Page 190 of 200

Page 191

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
103
8 Podiatry
Excessive patient
waiting times
within Tayside
Podiatry service
16
AMBER
12
AMBER
12-10-23
Mark
Finnon 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
980
Mental
Health
P&K wide
Environment and
Infrastructure
16
AMBER
12
AMBER
06-12-23
Chris
Lamont 
Page 191 of 200

Page 192

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
613 Perth City
Excessive wait
times for Adult
Mental Health OT
intervention
20
RED
12
AMBER
01-03-24
Lindsey
Griffin 
Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
565
Prison
Healthcar
e
Prison Healthcare
Staffing levels
(nursing)
15
AMBER
12
AMBER
04-03-24
Angela
Cunningh
am 
Page 192 of 200

Page 193

Ref Locality/
Service Title of risk
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Inherent
)
Risk
Score &
Grading
(Current)
Last
updated
/
Manager
Mitigations
569
Prison
Healthcar
e
Medication
administration
within HMP Perth
15
AMBER
10
AMBER
04-03-24
David
Hope 
981
Mental
Health P&K
wide
Pathways of Care 8
YELLOW
15-08-23
Chris Lamont 
136
9
South
Locality
P&K HSCP South
locality inpatient safe
means of escape for
bariatric patients
6
YELLOW
28-07-23
Tia Dixon 
985
Mental
Health P&K
wide
Stakeholder and
Partnership
Engagement
4
YELLOW
15-08-23
Chris Lamont 
Page 193 of 200

Page 194

Page 194 of 200

Page 195

Appendix 3
Risks within Adult Social Work & Social Care services
(as at 15th Mar 2024) 
9
Page 195 of 200

Page 196

Page 196 of 200

Page 197

Appendix 4 
Clinical & Care Governance Arrangements 
The P&K Care & Professional Governance Forum (CPGF) has responsibility to ensure that
there are effective and embedded systems for Clinical, Care & Professional Governance in
all services within the partnership.  This includes seeking assurances from all partnership
localities and hosted services within the context of the six domains of Clinical, Care &
Professional governance.  Localities and Hosted Services have regular Governance Forums
within their own services attended where appropriate by HSCP professional leads.  
The HSCP remain committed to improving Care & Professional Governance.  Work is
progressing to develop governance and performance dashboards to support Care
Assurance across agreed professional standards.  Although delayed due to the Covid
response, work to progress this has now resumed and is being tested in one of the localities. 
Additionally, work is underway to improve availability of locality performance data. 
The HSCP has also commenced a Mental Health Clinical Care & Professional Governance
Group, which reports directly to P&K CPGF and the Tayside Mental Health Quality &
Performance Review.  This will allow targeted improvement to improve Mental Health
performance data, mitigation of Mental Health risks and to support scrutiny on progress
made in respect of HIS Improvement Plan and Listen, Learn, Change work streams. 
Exception reporting is a mechanism for services to quickly and easily flag up where
work or events vary significantly from that which would be expected. 
Exception reports were provided by all HSCP service grouping and localities (including
hosted services) at each meeting of the previous bi-monthly Care & Professional
Governance Forum (CPGF). Now that these meetings are occurring monthly such
exception reports are now expected from half the services at each meeting, thus
continuing the service reporting every 2-months. 
Exception reports received during the previous year have been: 
SEP
2022
OCT
2022
NOV
2022
DEC
2022
JAN
2023
FEB
2023
MAR
2022
APR
2022
MAY
2023
JUN
2023
ACCESS TEAM &
MHO ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED
COMMISSIONED
SERVICES ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
RECEIVED
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED
EQUIPMENT & TEC
NOT
REQUIRED NOT
RECEIVED
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NORTH LOCALITY
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
PERTH CITY
LOCALITY
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED NOT
REQUIRED
MFTE/POA IN-
PATIENTS & 
INTERMEDIATE
CARE
NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
RECEIVED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
PODIATRY
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
NOT
REQUIRED
✓
9
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Page 198

PRISON
HEALTHCARE ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED
PUBLIC DENTAL
SERVICES ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED
REGISTERED
SERVICES
NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
RECEIVED
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
SOUTH LOCALITY
NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
RECEIVED
NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
REQUIRED
NOT
REQUIRED ✓
* non submission of reports highlighted to manager for action 
Annual reports are provided by all HSCP services and localities (including hosted
services). 
The structured annual reporting template brings together the six domains of Clinical, Care
& Professional Governance outlined in the Getting it Right Framework, and also seeks to
incorporate the new Health & Social Care Standards. Managers submit report and attend
Care Governance Forum to present report, give assurance and answer questions.  The
HSCP have now completed cycle four and is reviewing the report schedule for cycle 5. 
2nd Cycle 3rd Cycle 4TH Cycle
ACCESS TEAM & MHO November 2020 April 2022 Jan 2023
COMMISSIONED SERVICES July 2021 July 2022 Nov 2023
EQUIPMENT & TEC June 2021 May 2022 Jun 2023
NORTH LOCALITY July 2021 June 2022 May 2023
PERTH CITY LOCALITY April 2021 February 2022 Apr 2023
MFTE/POA IN-PATIENTS &
INTERMEDIATE CARE May 2021 April 2022 Jun 2023
PODIATRY September 2021 September 2022 Aug 2023
PRISON HEALTHCARE March 2021 March 2022 Mar 2023
PUBLIC DENTAL SERVICES November 2020 January 2022 Feb 2023
REGISTERED SERVICES August 2021 August 2022 Aug 2023
SOUTH LOCALITY September 2020 November 2021 Dec 2022
POA Inpatients (added in cycle 3)  November 2021 Aug 2023
MENTAL HEALTH (added in
cycle 4)  
Aug 2023
PRIMARY CARE (added in cycle
4)  
Oct 2023 
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Wider governance arrangements: 
• Integrated Locality Care Governance Groups (bi monthly)
• Prison Healthcare Medicines Management Governance Group (monthly)
• Prison Healthcare Business & Governance Group (monthly)
• Nursing and Allied Health Profession Forum (bi-monthly) to explore pertinent
professional issues with CPTMs and other relevant colleagues.
• Senior Nurses, AHP Professional Leads, and the Clinical & Professional Team
Managers meet regularly on an individual 1:1 basis with the Lead Nurse and also the
AHP Lead to discuss relevant professional and governance issues.
• Mental Health Portfolio Lead contributes to the Mental Health QPR Forum
• Partnership Short Life Working Group commenced to improve care governance for
mental health services 
• Health Senior Management Team Huddle weekly to review Datix risks and red adverse
events 
• Clinical Governance Coordinator supports locality groups to undertake Local Adverse
Event Reviews (LAER’s) where required.  All LAER’s are signed off by a senior
manager.
• Care Home Oversight Group meeting at times daily to monitor and provide support to
Care Home resident and staff safety wellbeing.
• The P&K CPGF co-chairs contribute to the NHST Getting It Right For Everyone
(GIRFE) group.
• Adult Social Work and Social Care Forum (monthly) 
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