Issue - meetings

To receive the report from the Corporate Director, Transformation, Customer and Cultural Services  

The Committee Chair introduced the item and invited questions and debate from members. The committee discussed the following topics:

·         The direction and approach to delivering transformation in the council.

·         Consultation with employees and unions, including carrying out Equality Impact Assessments and providing accessible documents.

·         Changes to the delivery of the Our Future Council programme compared to how it was being delivered initially, including how the appointment of the permanent Chief Executive has changed it.

·         Financial savings targets and how they would be met with slower staff reductions, including additional financial controls being implemented.

·         There would be an ongoing cost of £3.3m until these savings could be found. It was expected that the new Transformation Management Office could have a more efficient and organised approach to support savings proposals, compared to how transformation was operated previously.

·         Former involvement from PwC in initialising Our Future Council and the value that the council received from their involvement.

·         Centralisation of transformation staff in a new Transformation Management Office and the number of redundancies made to transformation staff.

·         Data and monitoring contacts and communications through the new Customer Hub, including how demand would be managed for peak times of contacts into the council.

·         How Our Future Council was using technology and the effect this would have on digitally excluded residents accessing services.

The Chair outlined a set of recommendations as a result of the discussion:

1.    The Place & Resources Scrutiny Committee receive Our Future Council progress reports with quantitative data on a 6 monthly basis.

2.    There should be clear, simple and consistent language through future committee reports.

3.    The progress reports should include comparisons with KPI’s.

4.    Data collected on communications and contacts through the Customer Hub should be presented to scrutiny through a future report.