(if any) - receive.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Tim Ryan (Councillor Nisha Patel substituting) Phil Ruck (who was present via videoconference) and Bryan Vincent.

Members are invited to disclose any interest in any of the items on the agenda at this point of the meeting.

Members may still disclose any interest in an item at any time prior to the consideration of the matter.

There were no disclosures of interest.

Presentation attached for noting and discussion.

The Council’s Governance Officer explained that a key decision was one that involved expenditure in excess of £500k or had a significant impact on two or more wards. Key decisions were normally open for one week during which a requisition could be submitted.

The urgency provision did allow under the Constitution for the waiving of a call-in for a decision where this was necessary. It was essential for the reason why a call-in needed to be waived to be clearly demonstrated to the Overview and Scrutiny Board.

It was emphasised that urgency should not be used as an excuse for lateness. Officers were aware of the increased rate of use of the urgency provisions and officers had been reminded to try and avoid this.

It was felt by Members that Group Leaders should be involved in deciding if a matter was urgent. The Governance Officer responded that the Constitution stated that this should be an officer decision but that this could be passed to the Monitoring Officer or Constitution Working Party. The Board recommended that Group Leaders should be given an opportunity to give a view on whether a decision was urgent.

There had been 11 exemptions from call-in granted so far this municipal year. Many of these were related to the need to claim grant funding which was often released at late notice. There had not been any refusals to grant exemption from call-in since to do so would often mean risking a loss of funding or not having continuity of service. Members agreed that it was important that assessments were made so that the instances of call-in exemptions were reduced. This tied in with the amendment recently agreed at full Council.

Members also felt that more details should be of the business case for each exemption request. The Chairman confirmed that he was currently in discussions with the Council Leader and Chief Executive about these issues. A Member also asked if the Board could meet more quickly to deal with call-ins sooner. It was noted however that the Council was legally required to give five clear working days notice of any formal meeting. It was also suggested that some Members of the Board could feed into the Constitution Working Party. The Statutory Scrutiny Officer would seek to locate any benchmarking or guidance on numbers of call-in exemptions that may be held by the Centre for Governance and Scrutiny.

Officers often pushed back on Government deadlines for applications for funding etc but it was also important that the Council did not miss out on any available funding. It was also suggested that the report on exemptions from call-in could be sent to the Board prior to its being considered at Council.

The Board made the following recommendations:

1.    Group Leaders to be given the opportunity to give a view on whether a decision is urgent/call-in should be waived (whilst noting that, under the Constitution, the final decision sits solely with the Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Board).

2.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 23.

Report attached.

A report of the Strategic Director of Resources outlined a number of spending controls that had been introduced in October 2023. A number of in-year savings proposals had been proposed but, due to demand pressures, service overspends continued to increase. There remained a £12m budget gap for 2024/25 and officers were looking at options for addressing this.

Members thanked the Strategic Director and her team for their work. The Board discussed whether more parking revenue could have been collected rather than awaiting the arrival of new ticket machines. The Cabinet Member for Finance added that people were encouraged to use the Ring Go parking app. It was also clarified that it was not viable to install number-plate recognition cameras in Council car parks. The Board recommended that the Strategic Director should have monthly meetings with the directors of overspending departments. The Strategic Director responded that a programme of this sort was being introduced from January and the Cabinet Member for finance confirmed that he supported this.

Members also felt that the buying power of the Council could be used to reduce the cost of social care provision. The Strategic Director responded that Havering already had one of the lowest unit costs for social care in London. Providers were however pushing back on the rate offered due to a change in Government policy as all Councils were now required to publish the rates they paid for social care. It was accepted that there was a disparity between market rates and the rates offered by Havering. Officers were continuing discussions with providers on best value and the level of required care. It was accepted that this was a difficult situation as Government funding for market sustainability was not sufficient. Havering was in competition with other boroughs and costs were also driven up by people from other boroughs being placed in Havering care homes. The Council did not have any jurisdiction over the level of profit made by care providers.

The Strategic Director of People did have a good relationship with care providers and work was also in progress to increase joint commissioning with health. The increase of capacity for in-house social care provision was being considered but the setting up of e.g. a children’s home did have an element of risk. Any in-house provision would be a long and complex project.

It was accepted that the use of non-profit social care providers should be prioritised but there was a shortage of available placements in the market. The Council, with others, was lobbying for the introduction of the Scottish model which included a not for profit children’s care home system. Members agreed that there were no short term fixes and suggested the commissioning of non-profit care suppliers on a multi-year basis could be explored with other London boroughs. The Strategic Director agreed that this would be reported back to the existing London working group on this area.

Only £2m of the target of £7.2m of staff savings had thus far been achieved although  ...  view the full minutes text for item 24.

Report attached (appendices not available to press or public).

A report was due to be brought to Cabinet in March giving the full cost profile of repatriating the IT service back to Havering. Staffing arrangements would be clarified in a separate Cabinet report due in May. There were not be any expected additional costs of the outsourcing of the service at Newham although this would allow the sharing and apportioning of additional costs.

It was accepted that the previous Cabinet paper did not give the reasons for the splitting of the service but these were mainly around the future sovereignty of the service. It was also accepted that the current low level of IT costs may increase slightly but the new arrangements would result in a safer, more robust and legal IT service.

Officers felt that the option presented was the most cost effective approach to splitting the service. It was accepted that there was a need to make the IT service more affordable but significant expenditure would still be required on replacing out of date servers etc. The IT service was improving but officers felt it was still not where it needed to be in order to support the organisation. The current period was challenging and it was felt that some digital projects may need to be paused whilst the split of the service was ongoing.

Costs projections for the work had been calculated but there were not included in the Cabinet report. Services would move from the data centre to the cloud which was more cost effective. Members felt that IT plans should be future proofed and also asked what business continuity arrangements were in place. Officers responded that the Cloud solutions was across two different geo-locations and copies of key systems would still be kept in a local data centre. This would allow key systems to keep running locally, even in the event of a Cloud outage. A copy of the ICT transition risk register would be available when work started fully in March 2024.

The Board recommended:

1.    That information on the cost of projects and allocated budgets be included in Cabinet reports.

2.    That full reasoning for decisions be given in Cabinet or other decision making reports.