Agenda item
The One Council programme
The committee will be updated on the One Council programme savings.
Minutes:
Peter Stachniewski (Head of One Council Programme) introduced the report before the committee and explained that it principally dealt with the financial aspects of the programme because the One Council Overview and Scrutiny Committee had already considered the organisational aspects of the programme. The savings delivered from the programme in 2010/11 had amounted to £11.8M and it was poised to deliver £27.8M in the current year which together amounted to 60% of the savings the Council was required to find. In the current year there were fourteen projects underway. Most were expected to deliver their targeted savings or where they were not, alternative savings had been identified. The one major area of concern was the £1M centrally held saving for the procurement project where measures were in the process of being identified for bridging the gap.
Peter Stachniewski stated that the focus was now on bringing forward the next tranche of fifteen projects into the programme. He pointed out that once savings from the projects had been achieved the savings were cumulative. The programme was currently in good order but the challenge now was to get the new projects moving forward for next year.
In answer to questions, Peter Stachniewski outlined the components of the review of employee benefits project. This comprised of three elements, the first being to standardise the payment of the London Weighting allowance, secondly to reduce the payment of overtime and other allowances, which was now running at £1.7M less than the cost in 2009/10, and the third was to move staff onto a Brent core contract. Regarding the projected savings from the Library Transformation project, he explained that the business case projected savings of £800,000 in a full year with £400,000 in the current year. However, because of the legal challenge the part year savings were having to be found from other areas of the Environment and Neighbourhood Department's budget.
A question was asked on how the diversity implications of each project were impacting on delivery of the programme. Peter Stachniewski replied that each project was required to produce a predictive equality impact assessment and, after delivery of the project, to undertake a retrospective equality impact assessment. In addition, arrangements were being put in place for the One Council programme board to receive quarterly monitoring reports on management of equality impacts across the programme. Peter Stachniewski undertook to supply to members some examples of impact assessments carried out.
Questions were asked around the volume of demand and how savings were achieved in the face of this. Phil Newby (Director of Strategy, Partnerships and Improvement) explained that the customer transformation project had to have the flexibility to allow the issues to become apparent as the project was worked through. The project had a savings target attached to it related to what it expected to achieve in future years as the transformation of the service took place. The point was added that it was difficult to predict future customer demand but the bringing together of channels of enquiry would help streamline the service. Current savings had primarily been achieved from the bringing together of the revenues and benefits service and the one stop shop service which was the first stage of the project.
Regarding the children's social care project, it was explained that this was a demand led service so the project was adopting an invest to save approach in order to prepare the service to be able to better manage demand. It was also reported that the National Youth Agency had been invited to produce an initial scope for the review of the youth service and this would be considered by the One Council programme board and developed into a business case to be one of the fifteen new projects being brought forward.
In addressing the concern expressed over how the Council planned to meet future demand, Peter Stachniewski explained that many of the projects were about changing the way the Council did things to make demand more manageable. Others had looked at the Council's management structure and although this had delivered the anticipated savings it was important to ensure it continued to do so.
Questions were asked about the impending transfer of the public health function to the Council. Phil Newby explained that efforts were being made to establish the baseline activities that comprised the field of public health and the level of spend but the problem was that the Government had yet to produce the framework and the budget was still to be announced sometime in December. In February of this year the Government declared the formula by which the public health functions would be channelled to the Council, with parts such as children's care, not being transferred for another two years. The intention was that once the Government produced the framework the Council would take on the transferred services and get an appropriate level of funding for that. Discussions had taken place at a West London level, contracts were being reviewed and the integration of projects such as the adult social care project were under consideration but the major risk remained that the Council would not be given the resources necessary to deliver the expected level of service.
It was acknowledged that there was a need to clarify the scope of some of the new projects which would be done as part of the early stages of the project management process. With regards to the traded services to schools project this was designed to bring consistency to the approach adopted for providing services to schools. Regarding the parking and highways projects, it was explained that each of these projects were in their early stages. Consideration would be given to how processes were carried out, reviewing the contracts and how the contracts were procured. The trade waste project presented some difficulties but was designed to look at how the level of trade waste entering the domestic waste chain could be reduced.
With regard to the commissioning of services from the voluntary sector, Phil Newby explained that some projects included discussing with the voluntary sector the delivery of the service. The Council was also engaged in discussions to support the voluntary sector following the demise of BrAVA.
It was explained to members that each project was discussed with the appropriate director to establish how it would be delivered, after which a business case was developed and anticipated savings identified. If any project failed to deliver the expected level of savings additional projects had to be identified.
In answer to a question concerning how much the Council spent on consultants, Peter Stachniewski explained that he did not have a figure to hand but that it amounted to a substantial sum. However, much of the spend consisted of spending on building design, IT projects and legal costs and there were also examples of wrong categorisation.
With regard to the civic centre project, it was explained that aims of the project would include exploring the commercial opportunities.
The Chair thanked Phil Newby and Peter Stachniewski for their attendance.
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