Agenda and minutes

Consideration was given as to who should preside over the Joint meeting of the Performance Monitoring Panel and Policy Development Panel. 

AGREED:

That Councillor B Alcock act as Chairman for the duration of the joint meeting of the Performance Monitoring Panel and Policy Development Panel.   

Where a Councillor has a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest the Councillor must declare the interest to the meeting and leave the room without participating in any discussion or making a statement on the item, except where a Councillor is permitted to remain and a result of a grant of dispensation.

There were none.

Both Scrutiny Panels will commence their scrutiny of the Transformation Programme as follows:

·         A presentation will be given, providing an overview of, and reasons for the Transformation Programme.    

·         Councillors will split into four groups, spending some time considering each of the four themes (Digitalisation; Aligning Public Services; Organisational Design; and Commercialisation).  Officers will be available to provide information on each of the four streams of the Transformation Programme, to answer any questions, and to note issues raised.

·         The meeting will conclude with summaries from officers of issues raised by Councillors on each of the four themes. 

A copy of ‘Moving Forward: Our Plan for 2019’ is enclosed.

Members received a presentation from Greg Pearson (Corporate Improvement and Performance  Manager) on the Transformation Programme (Moving Forward: Our Plan for 2019) for South Holland District Council. 

Members formed four groups to look at and scrutinise the four themes of the Transformation Programme.  Each group took turns to look at each of the theme areas, which were as follows: (details of the four themes attached at Appendix A to these minutes).

·         Digitalisation;

·         Aligning Public Services;

·         Organisational Design; and

·         Commercialisation.

Senior Officers that were present lead the group discussions, providing details of plans and exploring ideas that fit into the theme areas.  

Issues/questions/ideas that arose from discussions were noted by officers and fed back to the joint Panel.

The main points arising from the four themes were as follows:

Organisational Design:

·         Concerns over security, were the systems ‘fit for purpose’?

·         Did the Council’s ICT need improvement and further investment?

·         Would re-aligning services for the need now mean they may not be fit for future requirements?

·         Members of the publics views on what they want should factor into how the organisation was designed.

Commercialisation:

·         Current contracts should be reviewed -  to ensure value for money and to ensure they are fit for purpose going forward;

·         What were the gaps in the market – could the Council provide a service that fills that gap?

·         The Council has a good name and reputation of being reliable – this should be harnessed and help as part of promoting any trading service;

·         Strong marketing would be needed, it would be important to have marketing and public relations experts on board to promote any services offered by the council;

·         There were concerns over using officers of the authority for undertaking the work of any trading service – it was important that there was a clear division in work force. 

Aligning Public Services:

·         Customers should be at the heart of the council;

·         Was the council owned buildings being used most effectively in providing the services the public wanted?

·         What were the long term intentions for the Priory Road site?

Members agreed that the presentation and discussions were very useful and would welcome regular updates on the progress of the Transformation Programme. 

Greg Pearson advised members that there were various timescales over all aspects of the programme working forward to 2019.  Updates would be provided via  performance reporting to the Performance Monitoring Panel.  Members requested that it would be, in addition to the feedback to the Performance Monitoring Panel, that updates were also provided to meetings of the joint Performance Monitoring Panel and Policy Development Panel, on a quarterly basis. 

AGREED: 

That quarterly meetings of the joint Performance Monitoring Panel and Policy Development Panel be held where updates on the Transformation Programme be provided. 

There were none.