Issue - meetings

Report and appendices attached

The report before Members detailed a high-level framework that had been written to provide in-house guidance for the development of policies and strategies and to provide a consistent approach to all stages of policy/ strategy formation, approval and review.

Attached as an appendix to the report was a library of current policies and strategies in Havering, which would be maintained corporately (by Policy, Performance and Communities), so that Members and officers have up to date information readily available for review.

The purpose of the framework was to provide a consistent approach to all stages of policy and strategy development, as well as ensuring the Council had consistent, relevant and up-to-date governance documentation. This supported the 2019 LGA Peer Review improvement recommendation.

The Senior Leadership Team (SLT) considered the framework in January 2020 and agreed the next step would be to disseminate this to the Opportunities Theme Board in February 2020 and then to present it to the Overview and Scrutiny Board for its information.

The key policy list showed that the council had over 300 policies and strategies. During the Opportunities Theme Board, it was agreed that a review of the key policy list would be undertaken within six months.

The review was to detect any duplicated policies and to identify any policies and strategies that did not meet the definition as set out within the framework. Officers would then start to consider which of the policies on the list were to be kept, decommissioned or amalgamated together in the hope to reduce the number of policies held within the council to approximately 50/60 or to a maximum of 100.

The reduced list could then be looked at for quality and reviewed on a regular basis.

The next step would be to make sure all the policies delivered against the priority outcomes for the Council.

Members felt it was a very useful document that would assist overview & scrutiny going forward.

Members also felt it would be useful if the document was listed under service areas.

Members were advised that officers were working with  “London Council’s”  to benchmark policies.

Officers advised that it would take approximately six months to go through the list and cull the policies that were no longer relevant or needed.

It was suggested that the Board could consider the shortened list perhaps in March 2021

In response to a question as to how the policies list would work in tandem with the contracts list, officers replied that another piece of work was being carried out regarding the outcomes that the polices affect which would include the commissioning of contracts and the links between the two.

The Board considered the Policy and Strategy Development Framework and noted the status of current policies and strategies as set out in the appendix to the report.