Issue - meetings

An opportunity for the Committee to question Councillor Arthur on the Resources and Culture portfolio:

-           Customer Services and Customer Transformation Programmes

-           Corporate Infrastructure Programme

-           Information Technology

-           Procurement and Commercial Partnerships

-           Council Budget

-           Council Tax, Benefits and Taxation

-           Human Resources and Staff well-being

-           Governance Services

-           Arts and Culture

-           Libraries

The Chair welcomed Councillor Arthur to the meeting.

Councillor Arthur updated the Committee on aspects of his portfolio:

·                This was a significant time of challenge and change for the authority.  Over the next three years, the Council was seeking to manage the cuts, whilst pushing for growth in the borough, and delivering value for money services.  Officers were looking at where savings could be made in their services, not just by cutting services down, but by looking at how services can be transformed. 

·                The new budget proposals would be published on 5 December 2014, and signed off in February 2015.

·                The Council was looking to make c.£20m savings in 2015/16.  There were some challenging overspends in Childrens and Adults services, but there plans in place to manage these, and reduce them.

·                Customer Services Transformation programme – a key driver was the increase in expectations and demands from residents.  Whilst the digital offer to residents would be increase, it was as important to ensure that face to face and telephone services were just as effective.

·                Work was to be carried out on the current Procurement Strategy to ensure that there were better systems in place to procure services and become more outcome focused, with a commercial outlook to the process.

·                Libraries were a critical plan of the customer services provision, and it was important that they provided other services as well as library services.  There were a number of recommendations made as part of the Libraries review, and these would be followed up.

Councillor Arthur responded to questions from the Committee:

·                The Council would not implement a completely commissioning strategy.  Officers would be encouraged to look at what outcomes a service or project needed to deliver, whether this could be delivered internally, what other local authorities were doing, and if it was the case that this could be better achieved by going outside of the organisation, then it was crucial that value for money was achieved.

·                The new procurement strategy would focus on how flexibility of contracts to suit the demands, as opposed to fitting in with a framework, and there needed to be a strategic overview.  There were a higher number of failed procurements than there should be.  A specialist company had been brought in to review the current strategy.

·                In terms of digitalising customer services, it was accepted that there would be a group of people in the borough who would still require face to face or telephone services.  However, statistics show that 92% of residents in the borough had access to the internet, and it was estimated that there would be an 80% take up.

·                No libraries would close as a result of the cuts.

·                The last time the pay system was properly reviewed was in 2008.  There had been a small review in 2011.  A plan should be place by April 2015.

·                The costs of the Customer Services Transformation were still to be determined.  The delivery would be phased, and fully tested before it was implemented.

·                Diversity  ...  view the full minutes text for item 44