Agenda item

Cabinet:

1.      Noted the potential benefits of entering a pooling arrangement and to grant formal authority for officers to enter into discussions in forming a pool and prepare draft documentation for governance of the pooling arrangement.

2.      Delegated to the Group Director Resources, in consultation with the Leader, Cabinet Member for Value, and Chief Executive, authority to finalise details of any formal submission to DCLG.

3.    Noted that a further report would be brought before Cabinet, should approval be given to the creation of a pool.

Councillor Paul Rochford, Cabinet Member for Children & Learning, introduced the report.

At the beginning of the current Council, ten Strategic Administration Projects were established to help deliver services more effectively and in new ways. The Projects were each to be driven by a Member of the Cabinet, working with a select team of officers, representing a diverse variety of disciplines within the Council.

The projects were:

In the last year of the current Administration, each Project would report back to Cabinet, to note the achievements attained and the progress made.

The Open Government project had now been completed. 

The project:

·                Set out the Council’s ambition to be an ‘Open Council’

·                Defined which datasets could be freely published via the website.

·                Ensured that the Council was meeting statutory obligations to publish data, while looking for opportunities to go further

·                Publicised information and opened the Council to public scrutiny in order to improve engagement with local people through more transparent government.

Reasons for the decision:

The report was brought to cabinet to provide Members with an overview of the Council Effectiveness Member project.

Other options considered:

N/A

Cabinet noted the outcomes delivered by the Open Government project.