Agenda item

To consider a report from the Executive Director for Corporate Development.

Members considered a report from the Executive Director for Corporate Development which set out a proposal to develop a value for money framework and timeline setting out how to implement value for money (vfm) benchmarking of all services to feed into a prioritisation exercise for conducting fundamental value for money reviews of the all the council’s services

The Executive Director for Corporate Development advised members that whilst at present the Council did not have a systematic approach to reviewing every service in relation to vfm, this did not mean that there was no work going on.  A range of work was underway to deliver value for money in different service areas but more work needed to be done to ensure this was consistent across the council so that effective assurance could be provided.

Following a comment from Cllr Christopher regarding the concept of best value he asked how many council officers were members of the Chartered Institute of Public Procurement.  The Head of Business Insight undertook to respond to this outside of the meeting.  She advised that the method being proposed was very similar to the approach of best value it was a sound basis of how to carry out fundamental reviews. A lot of this activity was already going on within the council, it just needed to be brought together to provide assurance and to give a consistent approach. Cllr Christopher felt it would be helpful to share the documents from the Chartered Institute for members.

Cllr Heatley would have liked to have seem some examples of measures but felt this would come in due course.  He noted that the introduction of the 4^th principle was not mentioned in the recommendation and questioned if this went wider than ongoing services i.e. climate change.  The Head of Business Insight advised officers were looking at service planning and how it linked to vfm along with equality impact assessments.  They were also looking at an equality and diversity strategy and there would be links between this and those actions.

Following a question from the Chairman about if following a decision from the Cabinet would this item come back to Audit for assurance, the Head of Business Insight advised that once the timeline was in place work would be undertaken regarding engagement with members and the links with performance reporting.

The Vice Chairman highlighted the need to challenge ourselves to perhaps think differently.  He asked about the need to challenge any part of our service that has been outsourced.   The Head of Business Insight confirmed outsourced activities would also be looked at.  She added that the matrix approach was helpful and enabled the process of asking questions to begin. 

Following a question from Cllr Christopher about engaging with local business and contractors to encourage them to tender for council work, the Executive Director for Corporate Development highlighted all the different ranges within the council along with differing procurement regulations but assured members officers were keen to spend local. The Resources Committee were looking at this and would feed into the procurement strategy.  He added that engagement events for local suppliers were held but the need to make the procurement framework accessible and low cost whilst securing vfm was vital.

Cllr Trite noted that members do sometimes receive a few adverse remarks from residents about the council contracting from outside the area. The Head of Business Insight advised that the intention was to try and remove as much bias as possible by implementing a systematic review to achieve a level of consistency.

Decision

That the Cabinet be asked to agree to develop a value for money framework and timeline setting out how it will implement value for money benchmarking of all services to feed into a prioritisation exercise for conducting fundamental value for money reviews of the all the council’s services.