Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor Janet Hunter and Mrs M Ord - Parent Governor Representative

To receive a report on the appointment of Substitute Members.

There were no substitutes

You are invited to declare any registerable and/or non registerable interests in matters appearing on the agenda, and the nature of that interest.

You are also invited to disclose any dispensation in relation to any registerable and/or non-registerable interests that have been granted to you in respect of any matters appearing on the agenda.

Please complete the Declarations of Interests card available at the meeting and return it to the Democratic Services Officer before leaving the meeting.

There were no Declarations of Interest

To confirm the minutes of the meeting held on 17 June 2019.

Resolved that minute of the meeting held on 17 June 2019 be confirmed;

A report to agree a programme of scrutiny for the municipal year, present the Annual Service Plan for 2019/20, and provide an update on the benchmarking.

Phil Scott - Head of Environment, Housing & Leisure, Mark Longstaff - Head of Commissioning and Asset Management, Colin Macdonald - Senior Manager Technical & Regulatory Services and Margie Burdis – Capita Partnership Director attended the meeting to update the Committee to a programme of continual engagement on the operation of the Capita partnership.

In January 2019 Cabinet provided its response to the recommendations of the Scrutiny study groups work into the Capita Partnership.

The study group recognised the governance arrangements in place within the partnership and recommended that scrutiny should receive regular updates on its monitoring. It also recognised that it should party to information when the benchmarking review was undertaken at year 8 of the partnering arrangements.

The Committee was presented with information on both aspects and was asked to agree a 2019/20 Scrutiny of the Technical Services Partnership (Capita) programme.

Technical Services Partnership Annual service Plan 2019/20 briefing

The Committee was reminded that the strategic objectives of the partnering

arrangement were:

• Invest in the services;

• Job protection for the existing workforce;

• Growth opportunities for the services leading to job creation;

• Financial efficiencies;

• Co-location in the Borough; and

• Improved performance of the services

The Committee was informed that Technical Services Strategic Partnership Board (SPB) approved the Annual Service Plan (ASP) 2019/20 in March.

The ASP was aligned to the highlighted main aims of the work that would be covered by the Technical Services Partnership over the coming year with the continued commitment to work like a Council Service.

In addition to these Strategic Objectives the Technical Services Partnership would deliver a number of action plans with associated Key Performance Indicators (KPI’s) that related to:

• Property Workstream

• Engineering Workstream

• Regulatory Services Workstream

• That were cross cutting

• KPI/PI relating to Major Capital Projects.

Schedule 10 – Annual Strategic Targets of the ASP would ensure;

• no compulsory redundancies for transferring TUPE staff without prior approval of the Authority

• Remain co-located with the Authority in Council offices.

• The investment of £2.050m in the partnership to create the platform for growth, service improvements and efficiencies / income generation

• Continue service improvements measured through our Performance Regime

• generate 5 new jobs, of which 1 will be an apprentice and 1 will be a graduate, to ensure delivery of the 50 new jobs between contract years 6-10.

• To provide gross income/savings of £6.140m through Business Case Delivery

• Further commitments on H&S, Member Support, Armed Forces support

A member asked to what support to Armed Forces was provided and if there was consideration for a guaranteed interview scheme. In response the Capita Partnership Director stated that Forces Assist Charity which she was the Chair would be supported in the current year, further support was to encourage ex armed forces personnel into engineering opportunities with Capita, she also stated that Capita would support a guarantee Interview Scheme.

A member asked for a greater understanding of the item in relation to  ...  view the full minutes text for item OV13/19