Agenda and minutes

An apology for absence was received from Councillor D Day.  Councillor Winslade was present as substitute.

At this point Members must declare whether they have an interest, whether personal or prejudicial, in any of the items on the agenda. Members must also declare if they are subject to their party group whip in relation to any items under consideration.

No declarations of interest were made.

The minutes of the meeting held on 18 January 2010 were accepted as an accurate record, subject to Councillor Winslade being added to those members who had submitted apologies.

The decision notice for each decision will bear the date on which it is published and will specify that the decision may then be implemented on the expiry of 3 working days after the publication of the decision (not including the date of publication), unless a request for call-in of the decision is received from any two Members of a Scrutiny Committee or Scrutiny Commissions..  If a request for call-in of a decision is received, implementation of the decision remains suspended for consideration by the relevant Scrutiny Committee or Commission.

There were no requests for call-in to consider.

To consider the Council’s Use of Consultants.

Councillor Fletcher read out a statement about the background to this item, including his concerns that the questions submitted at the meeting on 18 January 2010 had not been answered.

Councillor Seaton responded by saying that the questions previously submitted by the Committee had not been avoided but it was unclear at what they were trying to achieve and should not be seen in isolation.  The Executive Director of Strategic Resources asked for it to be minuted that he had answered some of the questions supplied at the last meeting in a telephone conversation with the Chairman.  Councillor Fletcher stated that he did not agree with that statement.

The first task any review would need to undertake would be to define the term ‘consultancy’ as there was a huge range of definitions used and the review would be useful in identifying an approach for the future.  Once this definition had been agreed then officers would be able to provide a like for like comparison on how much we actually spend in the organisation and where these consultants were employed.

Councillor Seaton introduced the report by saying that he welcomed the proposed review and its outcomes would help to inform future decisions on the use of consultants.  This would be a very important review and he would offer his assistance to the Committee in undertaking it, including providing officer support.  This was a review which could not be undertaken by just looking through documents and members might wish to interview staff who had worked with consultants and who now worked in a completely different way as a result.  Interviews could also be held with external stakeholders as some of the projects taken forward by our consultants had involved interaction with those stakeholders.  This would give members a rounded picture of how consultants had worked with our partners in achieving some of the Council’s objectives and outcomes.  An example of a review which had been undertaken by Salisbury District Council was included within the papers and this might be useful as an example of how to undertake the review.

The use of consultants was very complex and a return on our investment would occur every year and this needed to be looked at against the significant overheads of employing new members of staff.  Peterborough was receiving considerable national acclaim for its work and our staff were now being paid to work with five other councils.

The report included three case studies of consultancy arrangements where the Council’s spend was greatest.  All three of these contracts had been authorised by Cabinet Member Decision Notices and had therefore been open to scrutiny.

Heather Darwin, Business Transformation Manager, gave a presentation on how projects and programmes were managed, including the process of how business cases were signed off and the governance arrangements for projects.

Observations and questions were raised around the following areas:

• £12m had been quoted in the Chairman’s interview with local radio, where had that figure come from?  £12m was not a figure  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5.

To scrutinise the annual complaints monitoring report and identify any areas of concern.

The Head of Customer Services presented the report which analysed the performance of the Council’s formal Corporate Complaints Procedure between 1 April 2008 and 31 March 2009.  The report did not include complaints that fell outside of the Corporate Complaints Policy, for example, complaints relating to schools, Statutory Children Social Care and Adult Social Care.

Following the successful transfer of the Central Complaints Office (CCO) from the Strategic Improvement Division to Customer Services in February 2008, the service has been fully resourced.  In previous years the service suffered from insufficient back up resources.  The resource for this service remained 1.5 FTE but this was split over more productive working hours with the fall back of other trained Customer Service staff who could cover should the need arise.

The Corporate Complaints Policy has three-stages:

·         Stage One (First Contact Complaint)

·         Stage Two (Service Review)

·         Stage Three (Independent Person Review)

During 2008/09 a total of 441 Stage 1 complaints had been received compared to 752 in 2007/08.  The decrease in Stage 1 complaints could be attributed to various factors:-

·      Enhanced data collection had distinguished between internal issues and corporate complaints. 

·         The relocation of the Corporate Complaints office into Customer Services.

·         Differentiating between service requests and complaints

·         The work of the Peterborough Direct Call Centre in dealing with issues quickly.

The number of Stage 2 complaints for 2008/09 was 60 compared to 71 the previous year.  The Operations Directorate continued to have the highest number of Stage 2 complaints, but had seen a decline from the previous year which equalled the decline in Stage 1 complaints for the Directorate.

To reduce the number of complaints escalated to Stage 3 there was a need to ensure that the standard of Stage 2 responses was improved across all directorates.  Quality checking of all Stage 2 complaints began and this had already resulted in some senior officers being recommended to attend the next available Local Government Ombudsman complaint training workshop.  The next step in improving the quality of Stage 2 investigations was for senior managers across the directorates to ensure that the officers who investigated and responded to complaints within their areas had the necessary skills to undertake this important area of work.

During 2008-09, the Council received 25 stage three complaints, compared to 15 during 2007-08.  Of those 3 were upheld, 2 were partially upheld, 17 were not upheld and 3 complaints were closed prior to the start of the investigation.

Each year the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) provided an annual review to the Council in respect of the Council and included comments on performance and complaint-handling.  For the year 2008/09 the LGO received 43 complaints and enquiries regarding the work of the Council of which the highest number for a single business unit was 13 cases in respect of planning and building control.  During the year one decision had been classed as ‘maladministration with report’ and related to a planning issue.   £5,000 had been paid in compensation, as well as a further £500 for distress,  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

To consider the Executive’s Forward Plan.

The latest version of the Forward Plan, showing details of the key decisions that the Leader of the Council believe the Cabinet or individual Cabinet Members would be making over the next four months, was received.

The Committee asked for clarification as to the current position of the following decisions:

• Connected Care Peterborough
• Surrender of Lease

ACTION AGREED

The Scrutiny Manager to clarify the position of the Connected Care Peterborough and Surrender of Lease decisions.