Agenda item

An update from the Cabinet on key issues for Cabinet Members which may be of interest to Overview and Scrutiny and may inform the O&S work plan. 

Cabinet Member Corporate Services will attend and participate a Q&A session on 2020.

The Leader, as a continuation from Councillor McCloskey’s update, advised that there had been a lot of activity over the last week: the Gloucestershire Economic Growth Joint Committee and Leadership Gloucestershire.  In relation to devolution, he suggested the Gloucestershire Strategic economic plan would be a useful document for members to look at.  KPMG had concluded a three month piece of work looking at the devolution bid as it stands and how to could be moved forward and whilst he had not yet seen the final report, nobody was yet certain about the position on Government Policy on this.  There was a case for having dedicated resources looking at defining the Gloucestershire vision and broadening it as necessary and there was a chance that this could be funded through the business pool.  20/50 vision was being run in parallel by the Local Enterprise Partnership, who had bought in external experts to look at it. The LGA and XXX, as part of Leading Places, were looking at how to improve and build communities and the Leader suggested that these four threads would need to be pulled together at some point.  His enquired as to how the committee wanted to be kept informed on all of these developments and the committee agreed that a Member Seminar should be arranged, as well as a meeting of the Devolution STG, at a stage when there was something more to share with them on the Devolution bid.  The Leader acknowledged the increase in reported Hate Crime in Gloucestershire, following Brexit and confirmed that a strategy was being drafted.  At this stage, he had no news on the parliamentary boundary review.

The Chairman introduced the Cabinet Member Corporate Services.  He had been invited to answer questions from the committee in reference to 2020, following his announcement that Revenues and Benefits and Customer Services would not be included in the shared arrangement.  The Chairman confirmed that rather than asking the Cabinet Member to produce a written report, the committee would instead be given the opportunity to question the Cabinet Member directly.

The Cabinet Member Corporate Services gave the following responses to member questions;

·         The Transition Funding was not predicated by a certain level of involvement and as such, was not considered to be in jeopardy.

·         Admittedly members of the Cabinet Member working group were comfortable with the proposal to include Revenues and Benefits within 2020 but it was not always possible to provide these groups with all the information required to form a comprehensive understanding of every situation.  As a council, a level of control had to be seeded to any joint committee or company and his political judgement was that it was appropriate for these services (Revs & Bens and Customer Services), which he considered to be sensitive in nature, to remain with the council, so that they could be directly responsible. 

·         The £159k saving that would have been generated from the inclusion of these services in 2020, whilst not an insignificant sum, was not insurmountable when compared to the other services that would be included (ICT and GOSS).  These services were almost entirely back-office in nature and the costs associated with not sharing these services would be far larger.  Cabinet were scheduled to meet tomorrow (13 Sept) to discuss the MTFS which was being developed and would follow the normal approval process. 

·         Alternative options were yet to be fully considered and these would include delivering some services within the REST area or indeed with partners, possibly to include CBH and there were also discussions ongoing about a single reception area, rather than continuing with the separate Planning reception.  There was a lot of opportunity to take a far more holisitic approach without having to look elsewhere. 

·         It was not envisaged that there would be any missed opportunities in relation to technology as a consequence of not including Customer Services in 2020, because ICT included telephony. 

·         There were limits to the savings that could be generated from shared services as with such arrangements, bureaucracy often grew.  Income generation would be a key area for consideration.

Many members of the committee remained unsure about the strength of the arguments for not including these services in 2020 and unconvinced that any alternatives would provide the resilience and opportunities that the shared arrangements of 2020 would have offered.  One member commented the balance of what the council would lose by not putting these services into 2020, was far greater than the £150k we would save.  The suggestion was that the decision needed to be revisited. 

The Cabinet Member noted the concerns that had been raised and commented that he felt it was unlikely that the partners would permit any kind of trial arrangements.  Members were reminded that a Member Seminar had been arranged for the 6 October.

The chairman thanked the Leader and Cabinet Member Corporate Services for their attendance.