Issue - meetings

1.     That the progress made in developing the scope of the programme, represented by the public service transformation outline business cases, as set out in Annex A of the submitted report be noted, and officers be asked to continue developing full business cases for consideration at the February 2014 Cabinet meeting.

2.     That Surrey’s Joint Statement of Intent, as set out in Annex B of the submitted report be agreed on behalf of the council, and the Chief Executive be instructed, in discussion with the Leader, local partners and representatives of central Government, to continue to update this as the programme develops.

3.     That the offer of funding from the Transformation Challenge Award be accepted, and the Department for Communities and Local Government be thanked for its contribution to the costs of developing this important work on behalf of the relevant partners in Surrey and Sussex.

4.     That partner organisations have their own governance requirements and processes, which they will need to follow to agree and sign-off further business cases and implementation plans.

Reasons for Decisions:

Partners in Surrey have a shared ambition to transform services and outcomes for Surrey residents. The vision is that across the public sector, services will shift from an emphasis on high cost responses towards prevention and earlier intervention. The intention is for services to deliver much better value for money.

The council is working closely with partners to develop its plans for public service transformation in Surrey. The outline business cases provide the evidence, both to the council and to partners, that the case for change and potential benefits are sufficiently strong to justify more detailed work on each of the proposals.

[The decisions on this item can be called in by the Council Overview and Scrutiny Committee]

The Leader of the Council said that the County Council, together with partners in Surrey, had a shared ambition to transform services and outcomes for Surrey residents. The intention was for services to deliver much better value for money, with the changes providing significant benefits for Surrey residents and that it was critical to demonstrate to Central Government that this organisation was serious about transforming public services.

This report also provided an update on the Joint Statement of Intent being developed with the Public Service Transformation Network, which would set out key objectives, milestones and responsibilities for partners, including the support the Network would provide.

Other Cabinet Members were invited to comment on the report and the outline business cases set out in the Annex to the report, for the following strands:

·         Emergency Service Collaboration

·         Surrey Family Support Programme

·         Better Use of Public Sector Assets

·         Skills for the Future (14-25)

·         Health and Social Care Collaborative – Dementia Friendly Surrey

They made the following points:

·         The transformation of how Emergency Services worked together was an exciting project, which if delivered would benefit communities and collaborative working would create an improved and more cost effective service.

·         Preventative work, including the ‘Stay Alive’ project were mentioned.

·         Surrey was leading the way in its work with ‘blue light’ services

·         The success to date of Surrey’s Family Support programme, which since October had been rolled out acoss the whole county. The key objective was to turn the lives around for those families on the programme and whilst it had been a challenging piece of work, the Council had been recognised by Government as a leading authority in this area.

·         On better use of public assets – this work had also been recognised and Surrey was now one of the 12 regional pilots working with the Government Property Unit.

·         The Skills for the Future workstream would be designed to transform the various pathways for young people aged 14 – 25 years old towards sustainable and rewarding employment and to prevent as many young people as possible from becoming NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training).

·         To provide a skilled workforce for Surrey Businesses.

·         On the final stream – a dementia friendly Surrey, it was acknowledged that this was the fastest growing illness and the service needed to change to cope with increased demand - all public services in Surrey needed to work together to tackle the challenges collectively.

·         The initiative was welcomed and Annex B, the Surrey Joint Statement of Intent was commended.

·         The importance of using Public Health knowledge across the Council.

·         That this work had been recognised by Brandon Lewis, the Parliamentary under Secretary of State for Department of Communities and Local Government and that the Cabinet hoped that Surrey County Council would lead the way in transforming Public Services.

RESOLVED:

1.    That the progress made in developing the scope of the programme, represented by the public service transformation outline business cases, as set out in Annex A of the submitted report be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 175