Issue - meetings

The Committee will be requested to approve the centralisation of management of all Council complaints, Member’s Enquiries, Freedom of Information (FOI) and Data Protection enquiries functions. In addition,  to approve an information governance function to be established and be based within the new centralised Feedback and Information Governance team.

The Committee considered proposals for the centralisation of the management of all Council complaints, Member’s enquiries, Freedom of Information and data protection enquiries function. In addition, an information governance function would be established to be based within the new centralised Feedback and Information Governance team. There were currently 26 officers located across the Council covering feedback and complaints functions and following the centralisation this function it would be reduced to 13. The Committee noted the consultation exercise undertaken and the inclusion of the Records Management functions and staff into this restructure. The Committee were further referred to the findings of the equalities impact assessment and union responses which were  appended to the report.

The restructure was estimated to make savings of £270k, a majority of these savings had already been achieved due to directorates making reductions to these posts as part of their own  restructures, and pre agreed savings and reviews. Therefore these savings were not cashable as they had already been taken by individual services.

The Committee were advised that the inclusion of the additional  posts allocated to Records Management was a positive step as it would enable the Council to keep this expertise and help ensure that information is managed as legally required; enable effective filing/archiving practices to be developed, where needed, and used consistently across the Council.

The Committee enquired about how the priority of improvement and efficiency would be kept to given the reduction in posts dealing with Member’s enquiries and complaints. In answer to this, the Committee noted that existing processes would be reengineered to ensure that efficiency was the key priority. This was exemplified  by the changes made to the complaints process,  the  three stage complaints process  would be reduced to two with all stage two complaints to be investigated by the centralised team. There would now also  be a  single centralised port for receiving  and processing complaints from across the Council.

RESOLVED

That the proposed centralisation of feedback and information governance functions as outlined in the report and appendices be agreed.