Agenda item

To agree the Committee’s work plan for the municipal year 2014/15

The Committee considered a report which outlined a draft work programme for the municipal year 2014/15.

Several possible areas for scrutiny had been identified at a pre-meet between the Chairman and a member of staff from Committee Administration.

The Committee made the following points on each of the possible areas of scrutiny.

oneSource/One Oracle

Members commented that it would be useful to see a list of the services covered by the oneSource agreement and the report that had previously gone before Council. It was also agreed that a timetable of the review process and a copy of the management structure would benefit members. Members also discussed the benefits of possibly talking to staff from the London Borough of Newham to gain an insight into their perception of the arrangement. A copy of the One Oracle presentation would also be of benefit to members.

Budget Review

Members agreed that the previous information, regarding budgets, supplied to Councillors had been rather lightweight and meaningless. It was felt that more information regarding what savings were being achieved and where underspends were occurring would be beneficial to member scrutiny.

It was suggested that a Topic Group scrutinising the Council’s reserves would be of benefit as reserves were a “value” consideration.

Corporate Performance Indicators

Members agreed that there had been some improvement lately in the way that the performance indicators were presented to the Committee but it was agreed that a review of the information provided was needed. It was agreed that the new members of the Committee should see sight of previous performance indicator reports so that they could get a feel of what had previously been presented to the Committee.

IT Review

Following discussions it was suggested that the following areas within IT be scrutinised in the future.

oneSource IT provision

Members portal

StreetCare reporting system

Asset Review

Members agreed that it would be beneficial to scrutinise the Council’s assets in particular the number of Right To Buy applications that were being received and completed and which of the Council’s properties were money making and which ones were not.

NNDR Review

It was agreed that members wished to see how businesses qualified for Business Rate relief and what the performance levels were of Business Rate debt recovery.

Customer Services Review

During discussions members commented that the Customer Servies review was also linked with the IT review. As had been mentioned previously there were problems with the StreetCare reporting portal that allowed the closing of cases when orders had been raised and not when the job had been signed off to a satisfactory standard. It was agreed that transparency was important in several issue in particular when spends of over £500 continued to happen then officers needed to look at why those works were not incorporated into a single contract.

Following the discussions it was agreed that some reports, particularly those dealing with budgets, perhaps would be better viewed in hard copy as perusing the reports electronically could prove difficult.

It was agreed that electronic reports/links would be forwarded to members and if any members wished to receive the reports in hard copy then arrangements would be made for them to be available.