Agenda item

Shared Services - Annual Reports

Appendices A and B will follow.

Minutes:

The Lead Cabinet Member for Business and Customer Services presented the report which presented the annual reports for the services delivered in partnership with Cambridge City Council and Huntingdonshire District Council. She informed the committee that with the exception of 3C ICT, the shared services were meeting the Council’s needs. She informed the committee that in relation to the management of the ICT shared service, there was a lack of clarity regarding the meetings that were called and there was still no mechanism for including members in the decision making process; this was still being looked at.

 

The Interim Assistant Director of Waste and Special Projects informed the committee that he had been asked to take on the director position representing the council on the Shared Service Board. Agreements, Memoranda of Understanding and recharges were works in progress; the former Interim Executive Director had done a lot of work on this but there was still work to be done. He informed the committee that each of the shared services produced quarterly performance reports that went to the Directors Board and then the Chief Executives Board; the Scrutiny and Overview Committee requested sight of these reports on an ongoing basis once they had been presented to the shared services boards.

 

The committee discussed the annual reports and shared services in general, raising the following points during its discussion:

·         Committee members found the euphemistic language used in the annual reports unhelpful and members commented on the lack of use of plain English.

·         Outstanding issues with the ICT shared service were raised, such as the lack of a service level agreement and legal entity.

·         The committee was concerned about the lack of opportunity for members to feed into some shared services governance processes.

·         The committee suggested there should be member involvement in the setting of service level agreements for the shared services.

·         Concern was raised regarding the legal shared service, which had failed in getting Lexcel accreditation; it was highlighted that gaining this accreditation was a major reason for having moved to a shared legal service.

·         The committee requested to see shared services quarterly performance monitoring reports on an ongoing basis.

 

The Lead Cabinet Member informed the committee that the following issues needed to be sorted out:

·         Recharging

·         Documentation, including an exit strategy

·         Member involvement in the governance of all the shared services.

 

In response to a surplus in spending in the Planning service having been highlighted, The Lead Cabinet Member for Planning informed the committee that there was an underspend on staffing, which was unintentional and had been a result of the council continuing to have difficulty recruiting Planning officers. There were also ongoing recharging issues with the City Council. 

 

The Interim Assistant Director of Waste and Special Projects summarised the discussion:

·         Members wanted clear agreements for each of the shared services, which was being looked at.

·         Overarching agreements and an exit strategy was needed for the shared services, as well as individual agreements and strategies for each service.

·         Recharges work was in progress.

·         Clear representation for each of the shared services and overview of the shared services as a whole was needed.

All of this needed to be in place by September 2019 and if it was not, there at least needed to be a clear plan for having this in place.

 

The 3C ICT Development Manager explained the status of negotiations on the Council’s contract with Virgin Media, about which committee members had raised concerns. She explained that the Council was only a small part of this contract which amongst other public sector organisations involved schools, the fire service and the Police. The County Council was leading on these negotiations.

 

The committee endorsed the recommendations to Cabinet, subject to the following amendment (highlighted in bold text) to recommendation (d), which was proposed by the Lead Cabinet Member for Customer Services and Business Improvement:

d)            Agree, as part of the discussion identified in (c)…that prompt attention be given to the outstanding milestones and actions identified in the original 3C Shared Services Partnership Agreement and to ensuring that the quality standards, performance levels and benefits from the integrated services are defined, understood and clearly documented, measured and monitored.

 

The committee agreed the following additional recommendations to Cabinet:

 

e)            That there was shared scrutiny of all the shared services.

 

f)             That shared services governance meetings were properly held.

 

Supporting documents: