(if any) - receive.

Apologies were received from Councillor Philippa Crowder, Councillor Christine Smith substituting.

Apologies were also received from Councillor Philip Ruck, who was present via videoconference.

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.

To approve as a correct record the minutes of the meeting of the Board held on 30 July 2024 (attached) and to authorise the Chairman to sign them.

The minutes of the meeting of the Board held on 30 July 2024 were agreed as a correct record and signed by the Chairman.

Report attached.

The Assistant Director of Resources and Organisational Development confirmed that the Council had a target to reduce the cost of agency workers by 50%. The HR talent team was working with directorates to move staff from agency to permanent status where possible.

A further target was to decrease levels of sickness absence by the publication of the October workforce data. HR metrics were produced monthly and sent to each directorate. Benchmarking with other Councils was also undertaken.

The Occupational Health service and Employee Assistance Programme were in the process of being reviewed. A Member pointed out that a broadly similar borough such as Bexley was performing better on sickness absence. The Assistant Director had not specifically looked at the position in Bexley but was part of the London HR Network. Officers agreed to look at any spend on agency workers outside of the official agency framework.

In social care and housing, a high level of agency staff churn had led to issues with consistency of practice. Lowering caseload levels could assist with reducing agency worker spend and sickness levels as stress levels would be lower. Council apprentices were moving into permanent jobs which was a positive development. It was accepted that agency workers were sometimes not suitable and needed to be replaced but officers were not aware of any risk of non-delivery of services in this instance.

The Assistant Director felt that all services should have a workforce plan and there was a high level of detail in the data available. A staff performance programme was used but agency and permanent staff were not compared. Support measures for sickness issues were also available.

Agency staff were used for certain roles such as IT which were very difficult to recruit to. Officers were keen however to move staff onto permanent contracts. The Choose Havering brand and the challenge of Havering’s position were used to aid recruitment. Some staff did however prefer the flexibility of working as agency staff.

The Assistant Director felt it was important to focus the support measures available to support staff with long-term sickness. The target to reduce agency workers had been deliberately set at an ambitious level. Sickness figures did not include agency staff as they were not paid employees of the Council. Agency workers who were off sick from front line roles would be replaced as soon as possible. The Health and Safety policy around workplace injuries etc applied to both agency and permanent staff.

The issue of staff isolation had not been raised directly but would be picked up by line managers in staff 121s etc. Officers accepted that the Occupational Health service had not previously been promoted in the right way. Performance related pay and similar incentives had previously considered but this had proved hard to implement. Incentives to reduce sickness could be considered. It was clarified that agency staff were also able to access wellbeing support etc.

The definition of the period that constituted long term sickness was set by London Councils but  ...  view the full minutes text for item 10.

Report attached.

The Strategic Director of Resources reported that £10m of the £15m of planned savings had now been achieved. £2.7m of savings were rated as amber with the remainder rated red i.e. not likely to be achieved with the timescale. Officers wished to report to the Board on progress with savings on a quarterly basis.

It was possible that other departments could make further savings to assist areas which had unavoidably overspent due to demand etc and this would be addressed with individual directors. All areas were however under financial pressure.

Savings implemented were ultimately suggested by individual service areas. It was clarified that the extra highways funding recently received from Central Government was for additional maintenance only. Officers accepted that the division between amber and red rated savings was quite subjective and the rating may be based on the view of officers. More detail of actual savings against those forecast could be given in future reports. A parking review being undertaken by Cabinet would look at the impact of current parking charges.

Green waste permits were renewed in March and it was not possible to offer e.g. a six month permit as the Council had to pay the relevant contractor for the full year. Councillor Stanton would forward to the Strategic Director correspondence relating to the collection of sharps bins.

There were numerous instances of implementing learning from other Councils. For example a model of ward-led enablement used by Essex was being implemented by the Havering Integrated Care Board. This aimed to provide a reablement service on hospital wards to get people out of bed and moving around as soon as possible. An AI project used by Kingston to support social workers doing assessments was also being introduced to allow Havering staff to be more productive.

The proposed savings in Early Help Provision could not be implemented due to the outcome of the recent OFSTED report. There was however unlikely to be a large spend in this area. The OFSTED improvement plan and funding had been agreed by Council.

Officers did not feel that the savings would negatively impact on service delivery. The impact of not making the planned savings would need to be discussed with the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).

The savings from libraries had been reprofiled to around £150k in the current year. Delivery and implementation times for savings could be shown in future reports. Savings from the Better Living programme and reduction in the use of agency social workers had been rated amber as they had been part-delivered.

The business rate pool with Thurrock and Barking & Dagenham was not a fixed arrangement but officers were advising Cabinet to continue with this arrangement next year. The Strategic Director did not feel that joining the London Business Rates Pool would be cost effective.

The recent CIPFA review of the Council’s financial position had been received but had been strictly embargoed by Central Government. The report was therefore unable to be shared with Members at this  ...  view the full minutes text for item 11.

Report attached.

The Assistant Director of Insight, Policy and Strategy advised that the Corporate Plan informed the Delivery plans for each directorate. Some Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) did not have specific targets but others did have targets listed.

There were currently a total of 113 KPIs. These had been set by Cabinet in conjunction with the leadership team. Pre-decision scrutiny of next year’s set of indicators could be undertaken before these were presented to Cabinet. The list of indicators would be revisited to reflect the Council’s cost pressures. It was noted that the Power BI window that displayed the performance information could not be resized and was not optimised for use on a mobile device.

Officers would look in more detail at the detail of the ethnicity pay gap indicator. Other indicators such as GCSE attainment were looked at via OFSTED etc but more detail could be provided. It was clarified that the value of underfunding was an annual indicator and would be reported on at quarter 4. An update on progress with implementation of the recommendations of the READI review could be circulated.

The Board AGREED the following recommendations:

-       The position with red rated KPIs to be presented separately to the Board. (service)

-       Next year’s KPI list to come to the Board for pre-decision scrutiny. (service)

-       To ensure that Power BI is optimised for use on mobile devices(service)

-        To reduce the current number of KPIs to a more manageable number for the 2025-27 reporting round (service).