Agenda and minutes
Venue: Council Chamber - Time Square, Market Street, Bracknell, RG12 1JD. View directions
Contact: Kirsty Hunt 01344 353108
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Minutes and Matters Arising PDF 183 KB To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Commission held on 5 July 2018. Additional documents: Minutes: RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting of the Commission held on 5 July 2018 be approved as a correct record, and signed by the Chairman.
It was noted that there were outstanding actions from previous meetings and these would be followed up at a future meeting. |
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Declarations of Interest and Party Whip Members are asked to declare any disclosable pecuniary or affected interests and the nature of that interest, including the existence and nature of the party whip, 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.
Any Member with an Affected Interest in a matter must disclose the interest to the meeting. There is no requirement to withdraw from the meeting when the interest is only an affected interest, but the Monitoring Officer should be notified of the interest, if not previously notified of it, within 28 days of the meeting. Minutes: Councillor Mrs Birch declared a personal interest as the spouse of the Executive Member for Adult Services, Health and Housing.
Councillor Mrs McCracken declared a personal interest as the spouse of the Executive Member for Culture, Resources and Public Protection.
There were no indications that members would be participating while under the party whip. |
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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 items of urgent business. |
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Public Participation To receive submissions from members of the public which have been submitted in advance in accordance with the Council’s Public Participation Scheme for Overview and Scrutiny. Minutes: No submissions had been made by members of the public under the Council’s Public Participation Scheme for Overview and Scrutiny. |
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Update on the Council's Financial Position PDF 213 KB To discuss with the Executive Member for Transformation & Finance and the Director: Finance the current financial position in preparation for scrutiny of the 2019/20 budget proposals. Minutes: Stuart McKellar, Director: Finance updated the meeting on the Council’s financial position since the Council set its budget in February 2018. He reminded Members that in order to bridge the 2018/19 budget gap 1% had been added to Council Tax and an additional £0.5m was taken from the General Reserves.
The latest reported position was that there had been significant increases in demand for social care services with a potential overspend of £0.5m in Adult Social care and £1.5m in Children’s Social Care. He advised that other potential variances would broadly balance. There was an expected underspend on Treasury Management due to additional income from capital receipts, Section 106 and Community Infrastructure Levy moneys. The Council would also benefit from a successful £2m VAT claim for leisure sites, that would provide additional one-off funds to support future budgets. The corporate contingency of £2.5m remained and Corporate Management Team (CMT) would keep spend under close review for the rest of the year.
The Director: Finance explained that the new Fair Funding review reset would recalibrate the distribution of funding across local authorities. There was therefore a risk that this would have a significant impact although it was anticipated that some dampening mechanism would be used to reduce the impact in the short term.
He explained the assumptions which had been made in order to start the budget planning process.
He reminded Members that the successful bid to establish a Business Rates Pool across all Berkshire Authorities as a pilot would both inform the new system in 2020/21 and had been financially beneficial for Berkshire as a whole and Bracknell Forest specifically.
He explained that CMT were in the process of re-assessing the assumptions used to calculate the predicted gap and that the gap in 2020/21 was large due to the impact of the new funding arrangements coupled with no significant transformation savings currently projected beyond 2019/20. The financial strategy was to use the Future Funding Reserve to manage the transition to the new funding system over time.
The Director: Finance advised the meeting that the original target of £11m of on-going savings had been achieved by the transformation programme. He reiterated that both Children’s and Adult Social Care were experiencing significant increases in demand which were impacting on the delivery of transformation projects. It was noted that CMT were considering how to balance a whole systems approach with targeted interventions.
In response to questions from Members the following points were made:
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Transformation Programme Update PDF 897 KB To consider a brief summary presentation on the progress of each review within the Transformation Programme.
The supporting information will be circulated as soon as it is available.
Minutes: Kellie Williams, Deputy Transformation Programme Manager updated the Commission on the progress of the Transformation Programme since the last update in March 2018. The programme’s original savings target of £11m on-going savings had now been delivered, with one-off programme costs totalling £2.2m. Although there remained significant momentum across the programme the Adults and Children’s programmes were the key focus due to the significant increases in demand for services.
She advised that the Corporate Management Team (CMT) were looking at prioritisation of ‘sub-projects’ to focus on greatest financial and strategic gain. It was explained that internal capacity to deliver the programme remained a challenge which made prioritisation of projects crucial.
Additional recognised achievements included excellent non-executive member engagement in the programme and that there had been no significant opposition or challenge to the changes from residents and very limited adverse press/reputational damage. It was noted that four projects were due to close shortly and two have already been closed.
The Deputy Transformation Programme Manager highlighted features within a selection of projects: · Within the Libraries project there had been technical issues but the team were working closely with ICT and the external provider so that the Council could be confident in the service being offered. Self-service kiosks were now installed and in use at Binfield, Birch Hill and Harmans Water branches. The remaining libraries would go live by October/November. · Within the Adults programme the increasing demand was a challenge but there were positive indicators. A projected overspend of £0.5m was lower than previously experienced. The change in practice was driving savings and targeted demand profiling was helping the service identify and prevent demand that has not yet happened. · Within the Children’s programme there was a potential overspend of £1.5m and demand was difficult to predict. £400K of savings had been achieved and this was due to increase to £880k by the end of the financial year. The updated position on Edge of Care was that nine young people were being supported and eight remained at home with one was in respite care. Of six young people with the potential to move out of residential care: one had moved out, two would move imminently and three were planned for before Christmas. The restructure to the Early Help team was due at the start of the financial year but was not implemented until December and therefore savings were delayed. The Family Safeguarding Model was not delivering the anticipated savings. There had been significant senior leadership changes and it was recognised that unrealistic targets had been set given the current social worker caseloads.
In response to questions raised by Members the following points were made: · Transformational projects were spread across the Council and could be delivered quicker if centralised and reprioritised to achieve more financial and strategic gains. · It was clarified that the figures related to what the transformation team could deliver by the end of the financial year and other projects with savings attached to them would deliver savings earlier if were delivered ... view the full minutes text for item 18. |
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Centre for Public Scrutiny - Health Check PDF 211 KB To update Members on the planned Health Check by Centre for Public Scrutiny. Minutes: Kirsty Hunt, Governance and Scrutiny Manager updated the Commission on the Centre for Public Scrutiny (CfPS) Health Check which had been commissioned to be delivered in November. The external and independent audit would be undertaken as a short and focused process looking at the factors that affect scrutiny performance and would conclude with recommendations on delivering effective scrutiny.
In response to a query about why CfPS had been chosen to deliver this and it was explained that a number of providers had been approached but CfPS were recognised as experts in the field of Scrutiny. It was confirmed that part of the research process would be to review best practice nationally and that Bracknell Forest Governance and Scrutiny officers would be facilitating the audit by providing requested information and scheduling appointments and meetings. It was raised whether consideration would be given to further joint scrutiny work and whilst it was anticipated that this may be addressed it was important not to pre-empt the proposals from CfPS.
The Chairman confirmed that he had requested the review was carried out as he considered it was essential to review the delivery of scrutiny as the current practices had been in place for a significant time with little change apart from the recent merger of two Panels. |
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Quarterly Service Reports (QSRs) PDF 812 KB To consider the latest trends, priorities and pressures in terms of departmental performance as reported in the Quarterly Service Report for the first quarter of 2018/19 (April to June) relating to Resources Directorate.
Panel members are asked to give advance notice to the Governance and Scrutiny Team of any questions relating to the Quarterly Service Report where possible. Minutes: The Commission noted the latest trends, priorities and pressures in terms of departmental performance as reported in the QSRs for the first quarter of 2018/19 (April to June 2018) relating to the Resources Directorate.
As a result of Members’ comments and questions, the following points were made:
Action: Executive Director: Delivery agreed to follow up how the current targets were set and whether they would be affected by the new data.
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ICT and Digital Infrastructure Strategy PDF 6 MB Steve Bruce, Assistant Director: ICT attending to facilitate a workshop on the ICT and digital infrastructure strategy. Minutes: Steve Bruce, Assistant Director: ICT presented the meeting with an overview of the current ICT Strategy explaining that in his first six months with the Council he had concentrated on key activities such as creating a workbook programme, gathering service metrics, embedding resource management and planning, improving the governance model, delivering a communications and engagement plan, developing a service catalogue, and a first draft of performance metrics, Service Level Expectations.
He explained that the use of TOTO, the new online query request system, had increased from 40% to 73% in it’s first few months. The migration to the Microsoft’s Office 365 cloud solution was now 35% complete but required a better internet connection to complete this. Microsoft were providing free consultancy many of the solutions that the Council are planning to roll out. Steve also talked about a 6 month ‘Proof of Value’ programme that will be looking at multiple business drivers and their potential technology solutions,
In response to questions from Members the following points were made:
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Executive Key and Non-Key Decisions PDF 200 KB To consider scheduled Executive Key and Non-Key Decisions of a corporate nature. Minutes: Members received and noted the scheduled Key and Non-Key Executive Decisions of a corporate nature. It was noted that items entered multiple times would only be presented once on future reports.
1074132: Easthampstead House – Demolition Project Award of the Works Contract which was due for decision on 10 August 2018
It was clarified that at the time of the agenda production the decision was outstanding from 10 August but as announced earlier in the meeting discussions regarding the future of Easthampstead House had moved on and the Council was pursuing ‘meanwhile use’. Members queried why this was outstanding and not updated on the work programme but no officers were present during this item to respond and a response was requested to be sought outside of the meeting.
Action: Decision to be updated and published on the work programme.
1078796: Sale of Land – Winkfield which was due for decision on 16 October 2018
Members queried whether the proposed sale of Winkfield Manor could be considered as a joint venture rather than a disposal. There was uncertainty about Silva Homes’ role in the sale. The Members present expressed the view that the Council should develop the land jointly with the partner, whoever it was and not sell the land. No officers were present during this item to respond and a response was requested to be sought outside of the meeting.
Action: Clarification sought on the proposed disposal.
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Work Programme and Panel Activity Update PDF 509 KB To note the progress against the Overview and Scrutiny work programme, and the reports from Overview and Scrutiny Panel Chairmen on each Panel’s progress against the work programme. Minutes: The Commission noted the update in respect of the developing Overview and Scrutiny (O&S) Work Programme for 2018-19 and Panel activity. |