Agenda and minutes

Members of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee are asked to consider whether they have an interest in any matters on the agenda and, if so, to formally declare that interest.

There were no declarations of interest made at the meeting.

Minutes of the last meeting, held on 4 April 2019, are attached.

It was agreed:

That the Minutes of the last meeting held on 4 April 2019 be approved as a correct record and signed by the Chair.

A period of 30 minutes has been set aside for members of the public to ask questions on matters considered at the last meeting and set out in the minutes or on the agenda for tonight’s meeting.

There were no members of the public present at the meeting

A report is attached. Departmental representatives will be in attendance to inform and assist Members in the development of a balanced work programme for the coming Municipal Year.

Councillor Caserta welcomed Andrew Baldwin, Head of Financial Management, Dave Brown, Director of Operations, Karen Dolton, Executive Director – Children’s Services and Paul Lakin, Director of Economic Regeneration to the meeting. It was explained that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee would be setting their work programme for the Municipal Year and in order to do this had invited the Officers to assist with this.

Andrew Baldwin provided a copy of the Corporate Core workshop slides and the Managment Action Plan for the forthcoming year. Andrew explained that the development of the Corporate Core would bring together and integrate support services from across the Council and the CCG, where possible, to one point of contact and in doing so would help the Council to gain more capacity, resilience and harness the knowledge and experience that staff have developed over the years within their own departments. Being part of the Corporate Core, staff will still be empowered to retain the relationships that they have built up and to be responsive to the needs of their customers within their respective functions. Benefits for the committee include one point of reference for each of the corporate core services to provide an easier and more accessible overview for the committee.

A Corporate Core workshop has been held which has identified 12 potential work streams. Each works stream will have a lead officer, a Project Board and Project Plan. The lead officer will report back to a Corporate Core Transformation Board each week from mid-June with the  first cut programme plan being produced by end July. The delivery strands for each work stream were explained as: Budget, Service Strategy, Customer, Infrastructure, Information and Systems, Policy and Process and Structure.

Andrew ran through the Corporate Core Management Action Plan for the forthcoming year and explained that each of the areas contained in the plan could be scrutinised separately by the Committee as and when requested. Andrew highlighted some of these areas as examples including Corporate Core Progress reports and corporate plan and community strategy development and roll out. He also reported that the Committee would receive the budget and finance reports throughout the year as in previous years.

Councillor Caserta referred to the Corporate Core project and asked whether a financial savings target had been set in relation to it.

Andrew explained that the baseline information was currently being brought together and once this had been completed a progress report would be produced which could be brought back to Overview and Scrutiny Committee and these would contain the objectives for each of the work streams.

Councillor Walker referred to the ongoing review of traded services and asked whether the Committee could receive an update of this work including a breakdown of each of the services concerned. Andrew said this was scheduled for Quarter 3 in the Management Action plan.

Councillor Stella Smith explained that for the last Municipal Year the Committee had requested a finance update at each meeting and asked whether this could continue. Andrew  ...  view the full minutes text for item OSC.24