Agenda item

Discussion paper of the Policy and Partnerships Manager

The Strategy and Engagement Manager introduced the draft Corporate Strategy action plan 2012-13 which was the second annual update of the Corporate Strategy. 

He offered some context to how the document had been prepared.  The Senior Leadership Team had introduced a change to last year’s strategy with the addition of value for money as a core objective running across all outcomes.  Given the intensity of work centred on commissioning reviews the strategy recognised that commissioning should help define outcomes and the strategy reflected the commissioner/provider split.  The final piece of context was partnership working.  The new partnership structure was now in place and partners had identified 6 areas for collaborative work towards improvement actions.  He acknowledged that these actions mostly related to the remit of the Social and Community overview and scrutiny committee.

This had led to proposed improvement actions and whilst there were a number of these improvement actions, this reflected where the Council was as an organisation.  Many were longer term commitments and he hoped that Members would be familiar with them.  He was acutely aware of the resource implications associated with the delivery of these actions and had identified services where this would pose a particular strain (HR, Built Environment and Commissioning) and this identification had put the relevant Directors at ease.

This was an ambitious agenda and he did not propose to go through it in detail, Social and Community had considered an initial draft in January, EBI would consider it next week and Cabinet the week after, with final sign off by Council in March.  Members were assured that there was still an opportunity for them to have influence.

The following responses were given by the Strategy and Engagement Manager to questions from members of the committee;

• The action plan reflected a prioritised list of activities and the resource checks had offered a degree of confidence that it was deliverable. 
• He welcomed and accepted the comments regarding older people and confirmed that the partnership acknowledged that this should be an area of focus, especially given the number of old people that live in the borough and the challenges of enabling older people to lead independent lives.  There was also some work to do in relation to inclusion and he would feed this back to the partnership.
• The issue of affordable housing provision was something that would need to be looked at in detail and it may be something that the new scrutiny committee would wish to take forward.
• The point about missing references to links with the Police Commissioner was welcomed as it was appreciated that this could offer a commissioning opportunity that Cheltenham should not miss.
• Support and advice for local business had proved very popular and he was keen that something be provided but having a contract in place by 2012 could be overly ambitious and the timescale could change before the draft plan was approved. 
• The new partnership structures are looking to align partnership resources to support the new partnership priorities.  . He said that it was not about new money as the resources were there but it is about making better linkages and that this was slowly starting to happen.
• The baseline for the ‘enhancing and protecting our environment’ indicators had only recently been established, though identification of the targets was for the Director of Built Environment to do.  This was why it had been left blank. 

The Chair thanked the Strategy and Engagement Manager for his presentation of what she considered to be an excellent document and voiced how pleased she was that value for money had been given such significance.