Issue - meetings

The Chair of the Scrutiny Task Group, Councillor Andrew Chard, will present the report.

The Cabinet Member’s response will then be presented by the Cabinet Member Sustainability which is attached.

RESOLVED THAT

The recommendations of the scrutiny task group report (as set out at item 8 of Appendix 1 of this report) be approved subject to the Cabinet member’s response as laid down in the accompanying documentation.

The Chair of the UBICO scrutiny task group, Councillor Chard, introduced the report. The group had looked into 2 issues-the relationship between the Council and Ubico and the interruptions caused by the snow. Two issues were of particular concern to the group, namely the decision not to nominate any borough councillors to the Board and communication with the general public, an issue which came to the fore during the snow interruption.

The Cabinet Member Sustainability thanked the scrutiny task group for its in-depth work. He outlined his response to the recommendations which were laid down in his response in the reports pack. He explained that the decision regarding the nomination of councillors to the Board of Ubico was not within the Cabinet remit. However, he recognised this issue and would discuss this with shareholders of Ubico. With regard to the communication issue and the interface between the call centre team and Ubico team he explained that a systems thinking review was being undertaken and this should be completed before any consideration of the arrangements. He also explained that the review of bring site facilities should be completed by September. The Cabinet member working group was also examining the issue of extending the group of products which could be accepted.

Whilst broadly accepting the remaining recommendations he proposed that the working group recommendations be approved subject to his explanations laid down in his response.

In terms of the service disruption the Cabinet Member explained that the issues had been well documented and it had been acknowledged by the director of commissioning and the managing director of Ubico and himself that lessons should be learnt. He outlined the issues raised in his briefing note attached to the agenda reports pack. What was most important for the future was that the council had robust continuity plans in place and communications to the public are clear. It was hoped that more resilience would be built into the system with the Joint Waste Committee which was formed on 1 April.

The Leader of the Council reaffirmed that the issue of board membership would be raised with shareholders and it was hoped that Tewkesbury Borough Council would join Ubico in the not too distant future. He explained that Cotswold DC was of the view that being a full member of the Board would restrict what the member could do but the issue should be explored further.

RESOLVED THAT

the recommendations of the scrutiny task group report (as set out at item 8 of Appendix 1 of this report) be approved subject to the Cabinet member’s response as laid down in the accompanying documentation.

The report of the scrutiny task group – UBICO will be introduced by the chair of the task group, Councillor Andrew Chard. The O&S committee are asked to satisfy themselves that the terms of reference have been met and endorse the recommendations before forwarding them to Cabinet on 16 April 2013.

Councillor Chard introduced the report of the scrutiny task group. He gave thanks to the members of the task group and the officers who had contributed to the review and the support they had received from Councillor Colin Hay as the observer on the UBICO Board and Councillor Roger Whyborn as the Cabinet Member responsible for this service. He did not intend to go through the report in detail but wished to highlight two particular recommendations.

Firstly he referred to the relationship between the council and UBICO. The task group were dismayed that there was no elected member representation on the UBICO board except for Councillor Hay who attended only as an observer. They acknowledged that members were not experts in the service but the same would apply to Cheltenham Borough Homes where there were a number of elected members on the board. The council should be the lead body but during the snow disruption, it seemed that decisions were being taken about the service without any consultation with the council. From the task group review it appeared that the management of UBICO felt they communicated effectively with staff but the staff did not always feel the same way. The task group also raised concerns about the communications between the council and UBICO and its residents which they felt was sometimes minimal and impersonal.  This needed to be looked at along with the communications with commercial customers. They were particularly concerned to be told that UBICO were not allowed to approach businesses in the town to promote their services to commercial customers.

He invited questions from members.

Members welcomed the review and thought it was an excellent report. They were concerned that Cotswold District Council had not responded to the invitation to be part of the task group. They requested that a copy of the report be sent by the task group to Cotswold inviting their comment.

A member highlighted the successful operation of the CBH Board and thought UBICO should follow that good practice and have elected members on its Board.

The Chief Executive highlighted a potential reason why UBICO might not be able to be proactively seeking new business. As a local  authority company it was restricted in the way it could operate under European procurement law. Under these arrangements the councils did not have to go down a full procurement route when setting up the company but it required the company to limit their business allowing only 10% to be picked up from other sources outside the councils. However he would still expect UBICO to be making the most of this 10%. 

The Chief Executive went on to say that the council was represented on the board by an officer, namely, Grahame Lewis who was a board member. The original thinking had been that in essence the board was the operational arm of the service and therefore it was more appropriate to have officer representation on the board. He referred back to when the service had been  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8