Agenda and minutes
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Apologies for Absence and Named Substitutes Minutes: An apology for absence was received on behalf of Councillor S. R. Colella.
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Declarations of Interest and Whipping Arrangements To invite Councillors to declare any Disclosable Pecuniary Interests or Other Disclosable Interests they may have in items on the agenda, and to confirm the nature of those interests. Minutes: There were no declarations of interest or whipping arrangements. |
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Minutes: The minutes of the meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Board held on Monday 21st March were submitted.
The Chairman thanked Councillor K. J. May for chairing the meeting in his absence.
RESOLVED that the minutes of the Overview and Scrutiny Board meeting held on 21st March 2016 be approved as a correct record. |
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Annual Sickness Absence Performance Update 2015/16 Minutes: The Head of Business Transformation and Organisational Development and the Human Resources and Development Manager presented an update on the sickness absence statistics for Council staff covering the period April 2015 to March 2016. During the delivery of this update the following points were highlighted for Members’ consideration:
· An average of 5.33 days per full time equivalent (FTE) post had been lost due to sickness absence by Bromsgrove staff during the period. · There had been a decrease in the proportion of days lost due to short-term sickness. · The Council had worked hard, alongside Redditch Borough Council, to support staff experiencing stress, anxiety and depression. · Action to support people experiencing difficulties with stress had included the Time to Talk initiative, provision of counselling services and use of the Employee Assistance programme. · The Council’s process for reporting sickness absence was the subject of an ongoing review and a new approach had been trialled in a small number of departments. · In the trial managers were able to report staff sickness absences directly to the Human Resources team, rather than through Payroll. · A key finding of the trial had been that the Council’s existing Sickness Absence Policy was not supporting managers adequately. · The trial was due to be extended to other departments over the following months. · The data arising from the trial would be published on the dashboard and used to help managers to monitor and manage sickness absence levels within their teams more effectively.
Following the presentation a number of points were discussed by Members in further detail:
· The causes of stress and action taken by the Council to identify and address this problem. Members were advised that managers were being provided with training to enable them to identify behaviour which might indicate that a member of staff was suffering from stress. · The inclusion of statistics for staff employed in Housing, which was solely a Redditch service area. · The potential for further data to be obtained from the online Employee Assistance programme in order to appreciate the key sources of information required by staff. · The value of recent initiatives tackling problems with stress in the work place and the extent to which this had helped to address the social stigma associated with mental health difficulties. · The number of staff absent due to sickness and the size of the teams within which they worked. · The inclusion of sickness absence statistics for services hosted by Bromsgrove District Council and the extent to which this accurately reflected absences for the local authority in a shared service working environment. · The potential to reflect sickness absence statistics more accurately for the Council by calculating the proportion of absences in accordance with the division of funding between Councils to support those services. · The prevalence of musculo-skeletal illnesses within the Environmental Services team as a cause for sickness absence and access within the team to Occupational Health services. · The level of contact that the Council had with GP practices in cases where managers had concerns about the health of ... view the full minutes text for item 127/15 |
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Overview & Scrutiny Annual Report and Revenue of the Work of the Board Minutes: The Chairman presented a draft of the Overview and Scrutiny Annual Report 2015/16. In so doing he highlighted some of the key achievements of the Board and a number of Task Groups during the year and he thanked Members and Officers for their hard work supporting the scrutiny process.
In line with best practice Members were invited to consider action that could be taken to improve the scrutiny process in future years. A number of potential options to enhance the scrutiny process had been identified by the Chairman and Vice Chairman, in consultation with Officers, during briefings as well as following discussions at Board meetings. These ideas were discussed in turn by the Board:
(a) Finance and Budget Scrutiny Working Group
Members were advised that a small working group could meet in private to investigate budgetary matters in detail and report their findings back to the Board. Group members would develop expertise which would be helpful when considering the budget. Meetings could be scheduled to take place in a timely manner so as to enable Members to scrutinise both future budget proposals and information about progress in securing efficiency savings as and when the information became available.
Members concurred that a Finance and Budget Scrutiny Working Group would be useful to establish. There was general consensus that the financial situation for local government would continue to be challenging and under these circumstances detailed consideration by Members of budget proposals would be essential. Furthermore, Officers advised that the external auditors had recommended that there should be greater Member involvement in the budget setting process and this working group would help to achieve this objective.
(b) Performance Dashboard Scrutiny Working Group
Similarly it was proposed that the Board could establish a small working group to review the measures dashboard. To date Members had received limited information about the dashboard, though it had become clear during a presentation on this subject earlier in the year that this would become an increasingly useful tool for the Council. The dashboard contained a vast amount of complex information. A Working Group meeting regularly in private might be in a better position than the Board to develop familiarity with the dashboard and to identify ways in which this could be used to support the scrutiny process. As with the Finance and Budget Scrutiny Working Group the outcomes of these meetings could be reported to the Board.
Again there was general consensus that a working group dedicated to reviewing the measures dashboard would be a useful addition to the scrutiny process. Members noted that a lot of the content of the dashboard appeared to be focused on service performance. There was the potential that the group could help to widen the scope of the dashboard by suggesting content that would focus more on issues which mattered to local residents. Once familiar with the dashboard Members of the working group might also identify key areas of service performance which might be considered suitable for further scrutiny, whether by the ... view the full minutes text for item 128/15 |
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Budget Scrutiny - Lessons Learnt and arrangements for future years (presentation) Minutes: The Executive Director of Finance and Corporate Resources delivered a presentation on the subject of budget scrutiny arrangements for 2016/17 (attached at Appendix 1). Whilst presenting this report the following points were drawn to the attention of Members:
· Officers were keen to learn from and improve upon previous approaches to budget scrutiny at the Council. · In recent years there had been difficulties obtaining financial information in a timely manner that would enable scrutiny Members to challenge the Cabinet effectively. · There had also been limited public consultation about the Council’s budget and it was possible that the board and / or Finance and Budget Scrutiny Working Group could help to address this situation. · Assessing the extent to which expenditure was achieving value for money was challenging; outcomes could be difficult to quantify. · Officers were aiming in future to develop a budget covering a 4 year period rather than the traditional 3 years that had been covered in the past. · There was the potential to improve in year monitoring of budget expenditure. · In future Scrutiny Members might want to engage more with Heads of Service about expenditure. In recent years finance officers had tended to present budget reports, though did not have the level of familiarity with service delivery that Heads of Service had to explain any variances or to answer particular questions about service expenditure. · Improvements could be made to the presentation of the Council’s Statement of Accounts. The first 10 pages needed be written clearly and easy to comprehend. · The Council’s external auditors had made recommendations about the Council’s approach to monitoring the budget and had suggested that this needed to become more robust. · More detailed information could be provided in future to scrutiny Members about the budget, including a breakdown of the costs of service delivery. · Budget data needed to be made available to Members in a more timely fashion during the budget scrutiny process. In the past Members had often received updates in the form of presentations at meetings which provided limited time to digest the information and to identify both problems as well as possible opportunities available to the Council. · The Board was advised that many local authorities had bodies like the Finance and Budget Scrutiny Working Group and Officers welcomed the positive contribution that this body could make to the budget setting process. · In future Officers were intending to provide details of expenditure and income for all cost centres per service. This would enable Members to identify patterns where applicable. · Income levels would also be considered further in future and this would encompass not just fees and charges for Council services but also opportunities to obtain additional income from more creative delivery of services. · Further information about the capital programme would be provided in future as this had become an important element of Council finances. · Officers were hoping that the Government would provide more detail about Business Rate assumptions by the end of the year as this would also increasingly be a core element of local ... view the full minutes text for item 129/15 |
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Preventing Homelessness in Bromsgrove Task Group - Verbal update Minutes: The Chairman of the Preventing Homelessness Task Group, Councillor C. J. Bloore, provided an update on the progress of the review. The Board was advised that the group had interviewed the Chief Executive of Bromsgrove District Housing Trust (BDHT) and Officers from the Council’s Benefits team at consecutive meetings. The impact of the welfare changes at the local level and potential action that could be taken to address this had been discussed during these meetings.
The group had recently met to discuss the next steps in their review. It had been agreed that visits to external service providers would be helpful and the group was aiming to visit both St Basils and the Basement Project in May. Members were also hoping to interview Officers and Councillor C. B. Taylor about Planning Policy matters in June.
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Quarterly Recommendation Tracker Minutes: The Board considered the latest update on progress that had been made to implement recommendations which had been made through the scrutiny process. A number of issues were discussed in particular detail during consideration of this update:
(a) Evening and Weekend Car Parking Task Group
The group’s recommendations had been added to the tracker in the amended form of wording that had been agreed by Cabinet. A copy of the background report referred to at Cabinet together with the economic priorities for Bromsgrove was requested to enable Members to appreciate the reasons why Cabinet had amended the group’s first recommendation.
(b) Leisure Provision Task Group
The majority of the Leisure Provision Task Group’s recommendations had been implemented and could be removed from the tracker. However, in respect of recommendation 4 Members noted that the negotiations with BAM remained ongoing. For this reason it was agreed that this recommendation should continue to feature on the tracker document.
(c) Youth Provision Task Group
The majority of the recommendations that had been proposed by the Youth Provision Task Group had also been implemented and could be removed from the tracker. The Chairman requested that the Board’s thanks be reported to the former Chairman of the Task Group, Councillor J. M. L. A. Griffiths, who had attended a meeting of CALC to present the group’s findings. One final recommendation from the group remained to be implemented; an investigation of services that could be provided to young people not in education, employment or training (NEETs). This would remain on the Board’s Work Programme.
RESOLVED that, subject to the comments detailed in the preamble above, all implemented recommendations be removed from the tracker and the report be noted. |
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Worcestershire Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Update Minutes: Councillor B. T. Cooper, the Council’s representative on the Worcestershire Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee (HOSC), advised that there had been no meetings of the Committee since the last meeting of the Board.
The next meeting would take place on 27th April. The main items on the agenda for this meeting would be:
· An update on the position of Worcestershire Acute Hospitals. · The quality of acute hospital services.
Discussions about the outcomes of the acute services review would remain on hold during the purdah period for local elections.
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Cabinet Work Programme 1st May to 31st August 2016 Minutes: Officers advised that the following edition of the Cabinet Work Programme would be amended to include the correct title for the Preventing Homelessness Task Group. The group’s findings would be reported for the consideration of Cabinet on 5th October 2016. |
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Worcestershire County Council Overview & Scrutiny Work Programme Item for discussion – Members were sent a link to a survey from WCC who were keen to receive any suggestions from partners, including district councils in Worcestershire, for items that could be included on their scrutiny panels’ work programmes next year.
Minutes: The Chairman noted that every member of the Board had been sent a link to a survey that had been launched by Worcestershire County Council in order to obtain suggestions for the content of their Overview and Scrutiny Work Programme. No Members of the Board had completed a copy of this survey and the deadline had passed. However, Members concurred that it would be useful for a county Scrutiny Committee to assume responsibility for holding the Health and Wellbeing Board to account. There was general consensus that the Worcestershire HOSC would be in a suitable position to undertake this role. Councillor Cooper, in his capacity as the Council’s representative on the Worcestershire HOSC, was therefore asked to report this suggestion for the consideration of partners at the Committee’s next meeting.
During consideration of Worcestershire County Council’s Overview and Scrutiny Work Programme Members questioned progress with the Joint Increasing Physical Activities Task Group. The Board was advised that no date had been set for the group’s final report to be presented for Members’ consideration. However, Officers reported that the Redditch representative on the review had recently reported at a meeting of the Borough’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee that a meeting had been held at the end of March to consider the group’s draft recommendations and a date was being investigated for the presentation of their final report to the County Council’s Cabinet. Members thanked officers for this update though expressed disappointment in the slow progress that had been made with this review.
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Overview and Scrutiny Board Work Programme Minutes: Officers advised that the deadline for the Preventing Homelessness Task Group would be recorded in the following edition of the Board’s Work Programme as 19th September. The work programme would also be amended to reflect discussions at the following meeting of the Board about the membership of the 2 new working groups. |
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BDC O&S Budget Scrutiny presentation April 2016 [Compatibility Mode] |