Agenda item

The Leader of the Council presented the 3C Shared Services Annual Report, which summarised the performance of the shared services during the 2016/17 financial year. The Leader made the following points as an introduction to the report:

·         There was a shortage of people with appropriate skills in certain sectors, such as Planning and Building Control. The main driver in developing shared services was to build staffing resilience and the opportunity for staff to develop their skills and careers.

·         The aspirations for savings were ambitious. Whilst they had not been met in the first year, confidence remained that they would be made over a longer period of time. Lessons learnt were being applied to the establishment of other shared services.

The committee’s perception was that members had been unhappy with the shared ICT and Legal services. The committee raised the following concerns:

·         The Council had lost and was continuing to lose legal officers.

·         Concern that rural and urban councils were combining in shared services.

·         Shared services were not showing resilience.

·         Issues with the ICT service were affecting the members’ ability to function. Councillors did not have access to Insite and there were issues with the Good App, with some members able to use this and others unable. In response to this, the committee was informed that members would have access to Insite by October 2017 and that the Good App would end. The replacement of this would be the new system to access Insite.

Regarding the report, the following comments were made:

·         The report contained too much management jargon and it needed to be kept in mind that members of the public needed to be able to understand this report.

·         The use of the Council’s reserves should be included in the report.

In response to queries, the committee was informed of the following:

·         The Combined Authority was being billed for legal services.

·         Interim staff had been used in the ICT service as it had been hard to recruit and retain staff due to competition in the area. Permanent staff were in post with only two interim staff members remaining. The Director of Health and Environmental Services informed the committee that there was confidence that the agency overspend would be eliminated this year.

·         The three IT systems were operating with too many legacy systems and this was an opportunity to bring coherence. The Leader was confident that savings would be realised and that the service would be in a far better place by Autumn 2017.

·         One of the important lessons learned was that leadership needed to be in place from the start and this was being applied to the Planning Shared Service.

·         In response to concerns raised, the Leader pointed out that improvements had been made with the shared legal service having brought a level of transparency regarding standards of complaints, that had not previously been seen.

Councillor Hawkins recommended that a member survey on the shared legal service be undertaken in order to help inform any improvement that could be made. In response to this, the Director of Health and Environmental Services informed the committee that the legal service would be undertaking a customer satisfaction survey, which would include members. This would be part of this year’s performance monitoring.

Members were invited to report directly to the Director of Health and Environmental Services, any specific instances of bad experience with the legal shared service.

The Leader of the Council expressed disappointment at the committee’s negative reception of the work that had been put into the development of shared services.

The Scrutiny and Overview Committee NOTED the report.