Issue - meetings

CABINET MEMBER QUESTIONS - CABINET MEMBER FOR .......

Meeting: 08/06/2023 - Overview and Scrutiny Committee (Item 84)

CABINET MEMBER QUESTIONS - Leader of the Council

Verbal Update.

Minutes:

The Committee received a verbal update from Cllr Ahmet, the Leader of the Council, on her priorities for the next municipal year. This was followed by a questions and answer session with the Committee. The Chief Executive, Andy Donald was also present for this agenda item. The Leader set out her priorities which are summarised below:

  • The agenda that the administration is pursuing was about shifting the culture of the Council. The Leader characterised the approach as being collaborative, competent, and radical.
  • The administration had a string focus on how the Council worked, as well as what the Council did. This was packaged as the Haringey Deal. As part of the Haringey Deal, the administration was looking at getting the basics right.
  • There were also key manifesto commitments around climate, housing, and cost of living.
  • The Council has pledged to work better with communities and be more engaged. As part of this there have been Cabinet meetings held in the community.
  • The Committee was advised that the administration wanted to take every opportunity to make sure that councillors were involved in making changes, such as changes to the website, member enquiries and the housing improvement plan.  
  • Underpinning all of this was sound financial management.

The Haringey Deal was about how the Council would get things done and some of the key aspects of this were identified as:

  • Knowing our communities and the borough profile. There had just bene a census and it was acknowledged that things change over time. The Council needed to know who its residents were in order to be responsive to their needs in terms of both access and the services that are being delivered.
  • Getting the basics right. The Council had to ensure that it delivered services to the best of its abilities
  • Listening and prioritising relationships with residents. The Leader set out that she would like to hear the voices of people and groups that had often been overlooked in the past.
  • Getting to a position where the Council shared its power.
  • Learning from mistakes.

The Corporate Delivery Plan was described as the ‘what’ and this turned the manifesto into a set of tangible deliverables with dates and names attached to it. Some of the key aspects of this were around getting the basics right in the back office including HR, Finance, IT Procurement and reducing agency staff.

The Leader set out the key achievements of her administration:

·         Cost of living – the Here to Help campaign and the fact that the Council did its upmost to support people as part of the cost-of-living crisis.

·         Children’s social care has been rated good by Ofsted. The Leader characterised this as a watershed moment for Haringey and that the Council would be looking to build on this and achieve an outstanding rating going forward.

·         The SEND Safety Valve programme.

·         Haringey Learns was awarded a good rating by Ofsted.

·         Supporting Communities in crisis. The Leader advised that she had personally met with a number of communities across Haringey,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 84