Agenda and minutes

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting held on 13 February 2014 and authorise the Chairman to sign them.

The minutes of the meeting of the Committee held on 13 February 2014 were agreed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

Members are asked to receive a presentation (attached)

Members received a presentation on the oneSource initiative. oneSource was already providing over twenty different services to the London Boroughs of Havering and Newham, making it the largest local authority shared partnership in London and saving the two councils an estimated £40m by 2018-19.

Members were advised that the business model was based on a shared service industry standard formula which would allow a 30% reduction of fixed costs in the senior management structure, a productivity gain of 9% by the services coming together and eliminating duplication and an 11% efficiency gain by re-engineering services and common processes.

Members were advised that oneSouce was governed by a Joint-Committee made up of three councillors from Havering and three councillors from Newham that met at least twice a year. The Chairman of the Joint-Committee rotated each year and Havering currently had the Chairmanship until May 2014. The main remits of the Joint-Committee was to approve service plans, budgets, business/strategic plans and monitor service levels and performance. The Joint-Committee was also tasked with approving new business opportunities.

Following a question from a member officers clarified that the oneSource working arrangement could be terminated be mutually terminated by both sides or one side only.

Members noted that staff were still employed by their original employer (either Havering or Newham) and their terms and conditions, policies and procedures remained the same. Most employees would be in the same roles as before, working in the same teams/place of work and providing the same services to customers using similar processes.

Differences included teams made up of both Havering and Newham staff and possible joint working locations. Most letters and emails would be sent out using the oneSource logo and new email addresses had been issued to staff members along with the introduction of a new intranet site.

In the forthcoming months all services affected by the merger were to be reviewed and redesigned. New structure and roles would be introduced within services with a long term aim to converge HR policies and procedures and allow consistent pay grades across the two councils.

Included with the presentation was a timetable detailing when service reviews were due to take place the contents of which members noted.

Members noted that future business development was planned by attracting new customers that would reduce costs for Havering and Newham. It was felt that oneSource could offer other organisations full back office support or individual services such HR, Payroll or Legal.

Report enclosed.

The report before members detailed a graphical illustration of trends over 2012/13 and 2013/14 for the Council’s corporate performance indicators that related to the Value Goal in the Corporate Plan.

The latest benchmarking data for Quarter 3 2013/14 had been used, except for the Council Tax and NNDR collection rates where Q4 2012/13 provided a more meaningful end-of-year comparison; and speed of processing new Housing Benefit only claimants and speed of processing changes in circumstances of Housing Benefit only claimants where Q2 2013/14 was the latest comparative data (as it was always a quarter behind). It was important to note that since the abolition of the National Indicator Set in 2010, most performance indicators were collected on a local basis and therefore methodologies may have differed slightly.

In reply to a member’s question as to why the London Borough of Newham was shown in some indicator sets and not others, officers undertook to investigate what information was supplied by Newham and whether it could be incorporated into future reports.

Similarly members noted that the London Borough of Barking and Dagenham did not report their figures on all of the indicator sets.

Members also asked if sickness absence numbers could be broken down into exact numbers of staff that were sick and the service areas they were employed in. Officers undertook to look at the information but advised that some service areas were small enough that anonymity would be hard to protect.

Members also felt it would be helpful if the numbers of users servicing online could be reported.

The Committee noted the report.