Agenda item

David Neudegg (Managing Director – Publica)

David Neudegg, the Managing Director of Publica explained that he has been asked to attend the meeting to address two key points; any implications arising from the fact that CBC commissioned less services from Publica and future scrutiny arrangemens.  David talked through a PowerPoint presentation (Appendix 5) which covered the following key points:

·         Publica would launch on the 1 November 2017.

·         The company had 4 ambitions; to be a great provider: to be a great place to work; to be a growing and improving company and; to support our member councils deliver their ambitions.

·         Service monitoring included: an Annual Service Plan which would be agreed with each Council in February/march and would set out service standards and any specific pieces of work; quarterly meetings with the Council’s service commissioner and relevant portfolio holder; quarterly Client Officer Group meetings of Lead Commissioners and Publica to overall performance and strategic issues and; reports of the Client Officer Group would also be considered by the Member Liaison Group which would have representatives from each council. 

·         The formation of a Member Liaison Group had arisen from a suggestion by members at CBC as a means for back benchers to have an opportunity for informal involvement.  The suggestion was that there would be 2-3 representatives from each council and the Terms of Reference for this group was being developed at the moment.

·         Member Councils had a number of ‘Reserved Powers’ and these Reserved Powers required 75% approval by Member Councils.  A procedure had been established with the aim of ensuring that any major decisions were reached unanimously. 

·         The Reserved Powers were exercised on behalf of each council by the Leader. 

·         It would be for each council to establish procedures to ensure transparency and scrutiny. 

·         The original structure of three companies had changed to just one, which would be simpler, cheaper and provided improved trading opportunities.  All services had been moved to this company. 

·         CBC had equal voting rights on all reserved matters regardless of the value of business it had in the company. 

·         CBC would have the right, in the future and if it wished to, add services without requiring agreement from the other partners.

David Neudegg provided the following responses to member questions:

·         Clients such as CBH, Ubico and the Trust would be treated the same as partner councils, simply without voting rights.  Publica would be happy to attend Board meetings of any client, as required.

·         The Annual Service Plan would match the Corporate Strategy and as such it was suggested that there would be merit in it being taken to O&S ahead of it being agreed, as was the case with the Corporate Strategy.  However, this would be for each council to decide.

·         Perhaps rather than having representatives from the Member Liaison Group attend O&S meetings to provide feedback it would be more sensible to circulate the minutes of those meetings.

·         The Governance arrangements that had been put in place for Publica were based on those for Ubico, though the inclusion of the Member Liaison Group was an enhancement to those arrangements. 

Some members voiced concerns that it was only at this late stage that the council was giving consideration to the kind of scrutiny arrangements that were required, feeling that this was something that should have been considered far earlier in the process.  A member disagreed, stating that in simple terms, Publica was an evolution of GO Shared Services. 

The committee were comfortable that opportunities for scrutiny, generally, would consists of an annual review of the draft Service Plan and sight of the minutes of the quarterly Member Liaison Group meetings.  The lead members for the committee (Councillors Harman, Payne and Walklett) would give more thought to which decisions would be scrutinised and how. 

On behalf of the committee, the Chairman thanked David Neudegg for this attendance.