Agenda and minutes

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Items
No. Item

10.

Election of Chairman

Minutes:

RESOLVED that Councillor Stuart Munro be elected Chairman of the Joint Committee.

11.

Appointment of Vice-Chairman

Minutes:

RESOLVED that Councillor Marc Brunel-Walker be appointed Vice-Chairman of the Joint Committee.

12.

Declarations of Interest

Members are asked to declare any personal or disclosable pecuniary interest in respect of any matter to be considered at this meeting.

 

Any Member with a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in a matter should withdraw from the meeting when the matter is under consideration and should notify the Democratic Services Officer in attendance that they are withdrawing as they have such an interest. If the Disclosable Pecuniary Interest is not entered on the register of Members interests the Monitoring Officer must be notified of the interest within 28 days.

Minutes:

There were no declarations of interest.

13.

Urgent Items of Business

Any other items which, pursuant to Section 100B(4)(b) of the Local Government Act 1972, the Chairman decides are urgent.

Minutes:

There were no urgent items of business.

14.

Minutes and Matters Arising from the Last Meeting pdf icon PDF 249 KB

To approve the minutes of the last formal meeting held on 22 January 2016 and receive updates on any issues not covered elsewhere on the agenda arising from the inquorate meeting on 22 July 2016, the notes of which are also attached..

Additional documents:

Minutes:

RESOLVED that the minutes of the last formal meeting held on 22 January 2016 were approved and signed by the Chairman.

 

In addition, the Committee received the notes of the inquorate meeting held on 22 July 2016.

15.

Elevate Project ESF Update pdf icon PDF 952 KB

To provide the Joint Committee with an update on the Elevate Berkshire European Social Fund Programme.

Minutes:

The Joint Committee received an update on the pan-Berkshire Elevate programme (Year 1 November 2015 to October 2016) by way of a presentation from Paul Gresty which along with the report also provided information on recent conversations with the managing authority, the Department for Work and Pensions, around current underperformance; and put forward a number of recommendations to members to mitigate the risk of claw-back during years 2 and 3.

 

The Joint Committee noted that, during the first year, the programme had continued to deliver the necessary systems change around the way the skills and employment agenda was being delivered operationally.  Across the local projects and collective programme, ‘real’ supported employment was the model of support that had added most value and delivered the best results for the hardest to reach young people.  Activity funded and managed centrally, such as that by the Prince’s Trust and Ways into Work, had also highlighted the value in providers working ‘pan-Berkshire’. However, the programme had fallen foul of a lack of guidance at its inception in November 2015 which had meant that partners had not been collecting evidence of engagement of those helped between then and May 2016 when the guidance had finally been released.  Whilst some retrospective gathering of the evidence including birth certificates and passports had been possible, this was not going to be possible in all cases.  Only the Royal Borough of Windsor & Maidenhead had evidence to confirm that it had met its target due to the tighter processes it had implemented from the outset.  Others were now being required to follow a consistent approach to ensure all numbers were covered.  Based on known figures, the year one targets had almost certainly been met but without the subsequently required evidence. Discussions were therefore taking place with the DWP about accepting the fact that the partners had acted in good faith and engaged with the required number of young people in the period in question without any guidance, with a view to allowing some flexibility in counting these participants.

 

The Joint Committee’s attention was drawn to the following key successes:

 

·                     System change and centralised Elevate system - Elevate had been the catalyst for conversations around the operational delivery of skills and employment activity and instrumental in culture change.

 

·                     Co-location of key partners - partners were now working together for mutual benefit and the partnership was growing as providers began to realise the value of being associated with something that had the capacity to draw down money.

 

·                     BASE project – the pan-Berkshire project focusing on employment for young people with disabilities.

 

·                     Elevate Brand – the Elevate brand was growing locally with visits by senior Civil Service leads and the Head of the ESF.

 

·                     Referral/Caseworker Model - Elevate had implemented a new person-centred pathway; whereby services delivered by the partners were wrapped around the individual via the holistic Elevate service.

 

·                     Central project management system and ESF workshops - the central team had been working with partners to operationalise compliance considerations.

 

·                     Partnership Working -  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15.

 

Contact Information

Democratic services

Email: committee@bracknell-forest.gov.uk