Agenda and draft minutes

Members are invited to disclose any pecuniary interests in any of the items on the agenda at this point of the meeting. Members may still disclose a pecuniary interest in an item at any time prior to the consideration of the matter.

There were no disclosures of interest.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Joint Committee held on 12 July 2019 and to authorise the Chairman to sign them.

The minutes of the meeting of the committee heldon 12 July 2019 were agreed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

The committee received a verbal update from Simon Pollock, MD oneSource, on his three-month review since joining the organisation. Mr Pollock remarked that whilst the organisation had many competent and committed staff, it had suffered from continuing savings and cuts.

To move forward, the organisation needed to recognise its role in supporting its partner authorities and reorganise based on ‘corporate centre’ model. He added that a number of services within oneSource had not been integrated and that there were discrepancies in the level of support delivered to the partner authorities. It was his aim to reorganise departments so that they structured in the best way to support partners; reduce the number of interim staff and to increase the emphasis on staff wellbeing, performance, training and recruitment.

Mr Pollock stated that his management team had been working hard to develop an improvement plan. Feedback from staff groups pointed to concerns regarding a lack of direction and leadership which was likely to be as a consequence of the change of direction for oneSource and the move away from commercialisation. He added that a new target operating model would be disclosed to partners in due course.

Joint committee members commented that moves to address discrepancies between the level of support afforded to the three partners and to identify the equal distribution of resource would require the involvement of the three Section 151 Officers. Members recognised that accurately recording officer time spent supporting each of the partners was a challenge.

Turning to recruitment and filling vacancies, members recognised the negative impact that the failure to recruit can have on service delivery. Members from Newham and Bexley remarked that the sign off of accounts had been delayed in part due to a failure to recruit accountants. Mr Pollock agreed that he would report back on his findings at the next meeting.

Members thanked Mr Pollock for his informative update.

The report before Members identified that the overall oneSource shared outturn position shows an overspend of £0.432m. This is projected to be split between the three authorities as part of the year-end cost share calculation as follows; £0.223m Newham, Havering £0.138m and £0.071m Bexley.

The oneSource non-shared budgets are forecasting overspends of £0.172m for Newham, £0.177m for Havering and an underspend of (£0.144m) for Bexley.

Management action is underway to attempt to reduce the forecasted overspends by year-end.

Members were keen to understand in more detail the management action which would reduce the forecast overspend. It was agreed that Members would receive a breakdown of the actions and the savings achieved as they were progressed.

The Joint Committee noted the oneSource forecast outturn position as at August 2019 and reserve position and outlined planned spend.

It was report that the oneSource Improvement Action Plan had been presented and agreed at the last Joint Committee in July. The Improvement Action Plan specified that progress would be reported to the Joint Committee and partner Councils on a quarterly basis.

The report before Members detailed progress with the Improvement Plan (as an appendix to the report) for the second quarter: July – September 2019. Members reviewed the Improvement Plan, noting with interest the items which received a Red rating were as a consequence of recruitment/staffing resource issues. Members noted that the majority of actions received a Green status.

The Joint Committee noted the report.

The report set out the list of oneSource Performance Indicators which was provided as part of the ‘Providing Quality Assurance and Performance Management of service delivery’ report that was agreed at Joint Committee in July 2019. The Committee asked that the indicators be reported to the Joint Committee and partner Councils on a quarterly basis.

The report presented to the Committee the Performance Indicators for the first quarter: April - June 2019.

Members discussed a number of indicators where performance had fallen below the required target. Members remarked that more narrative was required to understand why performance targets had not been met. The example Members referred to in this instance was in respect of the average time taken to complete planning agreements in Havering. The reasons given in the report didn’t sufficiently explain the reasons behind it.

Members also struggled to understand the direction of travel symbols and the colour coding. Officers agreed to revisit this in readiness for the next quarter reporting.

Members noted the oneSource Performance Indicators Q1 report.

Members received a verbal update on the implementation of the Oracle Fusion project. Testing of the system had been positive thus far with a project go-live date of Summer 2020. The project team was currently in the process of establishing test user groups. The focus of attention was on data migration and the 130 systems which were to be integrated across Havering and Newham.

Responding to Member enquiries, officers had identified the greatest risks with the project to be data migration and change management controls, the latter being a particular challenge for Newham. The project group were keen to limit customisation requests as they would conflict with future Oracle software updates.

The Joint Committee noted the verbal update.