Agenda and minutes

Venue: Pittville Room - Municipal Offices. View directions

Contact: Rosalind Reeves, Democratic Services Manager 

Items
No. Item

1.

Apologies for Absence

Minutes:

Apologies were received from Councillors Stennett and Walklett.

2.

Declarations of interest

Minutes:

There were no declarations of interest.

3.

Approve minutes of last meeting pdf icon PDF 64 KB

Minutes of 3 July 2017

Minutes:

The minutes of the meeting held on 3 July 2017 were approved and signed as a correct record.

4.

Executive Board Restructure pdf icon PDF 293 KB

Report of the Chief Executive

Minutes:

The Chief Executive introduced the report and explained that upon her appointment as Chief Executive by Council in July 2017 she was given a mandate to review the senior leadership of CBC. The report presented a proposal for the review of the executive board.  It was important that the senior leadership foundation was strong and the report contained an assessment of what she considered to be strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats at the current time.

The Chief Executive went on to say that there were some extremely good things; a strong focus on place, a committed and ambitious team, service modernisation and transformation happening but only in part of the authority and strong partnerships and relations with partners continuing to be developed.  However, what was missing within the combined executive board leadership was a “whole authority” view. She felt like there were currently two organisations within one, and it was her job to bring it back together, to give it coherence for the future, so that the priorities Members had set could be delivered with an executive team which was clear on accountability, purpose and delivery. She therefore saw one of her key roles as “knitting the organisation together”.  She acknowledged that the staff were doing a fantastic job under extremely difficult circumstances, not least the continuing financial pressures, but believed if the issues were not addressed or opportunities seized now that the authority  would be in a much weaker position in the future and would not achieve its  full potential.

The report articulated not just the structure of executive board but how she expected the executive board to operate; not with single directorates in mind but taking a whole authority view.  Clarity on accountabilities was important as was a culture of collaboration; between ourselves, between partners and between staff all with the objective of achieving better outcomes for Cheltenham.

She felt that currently the less strong voice  from the executive team table was about people (staff and customers), the drive to modernise how we work in the future and the culture we wanted for this authority.  She highlighted that the key enablers for change were our people, our technology and our culture and these were the key areas of focus for the proposed new role.

The Chief Executive highlighted that the focus on staff was hugely important to her personally and she referred to the fact that the council was an accredited investors in people organisation.She wanted to be able to give staff the development opportunities they needed and deserved, grow our own talent as far as possible and create talent pathways, have jobs that are potentially broader but hopefully more interesting, reward in a way that was affordable and in a way that recognised the contributions made.  She wanted the authority to be an “employer of choice” and be better than those around us and to attract new talent as well as an authority staff felt proud to be part of.

She felt that increasing capacity in the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

5.

Date of next meeting (if necessary)

5 March 2018

Minutes:

Monday 29 January 2018