All Members present are required to declare,
at this point in the meeting or as soon as possible thereafter:
I.
Any disclosable pecuniary interests and/or
II.
Other interests arising under the Code of Conduct in respect of any
item(s) of business being considered at this meeting
NOTES:
·
Members are reminded that they must not participate in any item
where they have a disclosable pecuniary interest
·
As well as an interest of the Member, this includes any interest,
of which the Member is aware, that relates to the Member’s
spouse or civil partner (or any person with whom the Member is
living as a spouse or civil partner)
·
Members with a significant personal interest may participate in the
discussion and vote on that matter unless that interest could be
reasonably regarded as prejudicial
Cllr Jonathan Essex submitted a
question in advance of the meeting, which can be found in the
meeting agenda, alongside officers’ response.
As a supplementary question,
Cllr Essex asked for details of what had been submitted to
government and Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs) as alluded to
in paragraph two of the prior response, and how the Council was
integrating the actions of the approved climate strategy with the
economic strategy, including building insulation and sustainable
transport, the two areas with the highest employment potential
according to the Local Government Association report
mentioned.
A written copy of the Executive
Director’s response and the schemes submitted to the LEPs are
annexed to these minutes.
Purpose of the
report: To present the 2019/20 outturn position, the latest
forecast on COVID-19 costs and funding and the lessons learned from
the 2020/21 budget process.
The
Director of Corporate Finance presented headlines of the report. At
outturn of the financial year 2019/20, a small surplus of
£200,000 had been delivered on revenue. All services had
contributed to this surplus. £2.6m had been added to the
contingency, as well as £2.8m that had been added to the
general fund reserve. In 2019/20, £82m of efficiencies had to
be delivered, and there was slippage of £9.5m, comparing
favourably to slippage of £22m in 2018/19.
The
Director continued to explain that there had been two tranches of
Covid-19 funding from government, totalling £47m. Of that,
£900,000 had been spent on Covid-related costs and income
loss in 2019/20, and the rest would be carried forward to 2020/21.
A ‘Delta 2’ return had been submitted to the Ministry
of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG) on 15 May.
Work conducted with finance business partners had identified that
£4.3m of efficiencies would be undeliverable because of
Covid. The reporting to MHCLG was consistent with what other
counties were reporting.
Ayesha Azad joined the meeting at 10:33am.
After the
2020/21 budget, the Finance team had conducted an extensive
‘wash-up’ exercise in partnership with Democratic
Services around Select Committee involvement in the budget process.
For the 2021/22 budget, Select Committees would be involved in the
process more and earlier, conducting two rounds of scrutiny in
September-October and December. The 2021/22 budget would be
discussed at the first round of budget scrutiny in
September/October 2020 and the second round in December
2020.
A Member
noted that there had been an improvement in the final month of the
year, with £5.6m additional savings. He asked why this had
come so late and whether services were holding back savings until
the end of the year. The Director of Corporate Finance said that
the latter was not the case and services worked hard to achieve
efficiencies all year. Sometimes efficiency needs did not become
clear until the end of the year, as well as certain events that
could only be undertaken at year-end from a Corporate Finance
perspective. She acknowledged that the Council still had some way
to go to refine forecasting. The Cabinet Member for Resources added
that paragraph six of the report showed explanations for the
delivery of efficiencies in month 11.
A Member
remarked that in the years she had been a Surrey county councillor,
she did not remember Special Educational Needs and Disabilities
(SEND) ever coming within budget, despite promises that the numbers
would be brought under control. Were there assurances that it would
now be under control without this being detrimental to young
people? The Director of Financial Insight responded that there was
now a transformation programme board chaired by Julie Iles as well
as other relevant scrutiny. In 2019/20, there had been a £29m
overspend had been projected; in reality, ...
view the full minutes text for item 12/20
Michael Coughlin, Executive
Director of Transformation, Partnerships and Prosperity
Key
points raised during the discussion:
The
Executive Director introduced the report. It focused on the
decision to cancel the move of County Hall to Midas House in
Woking, which was taken under the uncertainty of Covid. There were
four key strands to the decision: the impact on staffing, digital
capabilities, property implications, and communications and change
management. The Moving Closer to Residents (MCTR) programme would
continue to be progressed in autumn 2020.
A Member
remarked that the decision to cancel the move to Midas House
appeared to have been made very quickly. The Select Committee
wished for more detail on this decision – firstly, the
revised timetable for the move of County Hall. Would the County
Hall still be based in Kingston after the May 2021 election? The
Executive Director responded that the Council would continue to
market the current County Hall building in Kingston in the
uncertain property market, working with the Royal Borough of
Kingston upon Thames. Surrey County Council was also reviewing its
wider property portfolio in line with quantitative and qualitative
research on how staff had been working during the pandemic. It was,
however, impossible to put a strict timeframe on the programme at
the moment.
A Member
referred to the £183,000 figure of costs associated with the
cancelled move to Midas House. This was detailed in the answer to a
Member’s question at the full Council meeting on 19 May 2020,
which was annexed to the report on the agenda for this Select
Committee meeting. Was this figure still up to date and
comprehensive, and what was the current budget allocation? The
Executive Director said that £183,000 was the final cost and
fees; no further costs had been incurred since the cancellation
decision.
A Member
asked what the primary reason for cancelling the decision was. Had
the Council been unsure anyway and used Covid as an excuse? The
Executive Director stated that Midas House had been a serious
contender, and the Council would not have progressed as it did if
it had not been serious. However, the pandemic hit as negotiations
progressed beyond heads of terms into deeper legal considerations,
and with the acceleration of the number of staff members working
from home, it became clear that the Council was not going to need a
building of the size or nature of Midas House. The decision was
made quickly in order not to incur any more costs. There were no
other, hidden reasons. The strategic intent remained to move staff
out of the Kingston County Hall.
A Member
expressed concern about how the cancellation would affect the
Council’s credibility among councillors and, principally, the
general public. He asserted that the communications regarding what
happened had been poor and Surrey’s credibility had been
damaged. There would be credibility issues with any future move of
County Hall. The Executive Director accepted the Member’s
comments on communications – when the decision was taken on
23 April 2020, ...
view the full minutes text for item 13/20
Purpose of the report:To provide an overview of progress
against a set of key performance indicators that fall within the
remit of the Resources and Performance Select Committee, including
HR&OD, customers, finance, transformation and risk
management.
Paul Booker, Corporate Health
and Safety Lead Manager
Anna D’Alessandro,
Director of Corporate Finance
Jackie Foglietta, Director of
Human Resources and Organisational Development (HR and
OD)
Susan Grizzelle, Head of
Customer Services
Marie Snelling, Director of
Transformation
Gary Strudwick, Head of
Business Intelligence
Rachel Wigley, Director of
Financial Insight
Key
points raised during the discussion:
Discussion began on
the HR section of the report. A Member noted that there were a
number of unmet targets and asked what steps were being taken to
address this. Were witnesses content with the range of targets and
progress? The Director of HR and OD stated that the targets were
set at the right level. Some were set by government – for
example, the target on apprenticeships (HROD 06) – and were
therefore out of the Council’s control, while others were set
through the transformation programme, and some took into account
national benchmarking. Apprenticeships as a percentage of the
workforce had stood at less than one percent 18 months ago, so
progress had been made. She acknowledged that the target for
indicator HROD 03 (percentage of staff under 30) was a stretch
target, and the Council had been underperforming on that indicator
for a number of years, but was continuing to work on attracting
young people. Also, the public sector as a whole should be aiming
for lower sickness levels (HROD 04). HROD 05 (off payroll workers
as % of workforce) had been set up by the corporate leadership team
in response to Members’ concerns on interim and agency
workers. The number of off payroll workers increased slightly as a
result of transformation work in SEND and the Agile
programme.
The Director of HR
and OD continued to explain that Councils had shown a one percent
increase in their workforce from 1 March 2020 to 1 May 2020 due to
the Covid pandemic. However, overall the Council had seen a steady
decrease of employees in the last year (2019-2020). The Covid
pandemic had also helped the Council to recruit to some areas where
historically it had struggled, such as apprenticeships and
healthcare assistant roles. On the other hand, colleges had been
closed for some time due to Covid, so those undertaking
apprenticeships had been unable to work on the qualification for
some time.
A Member asked the
director what could be done to continue to improve the uptake of
apprenticeships. The Director explained that apprenticeship levy
funding could only be used on training, so the Council still had to
fund apprenticeship salaries. The Local Government Association
(LGA) was lobbying government for more funding. She was of the
opinion that the government had asked a lot of LAs by setting a
2.5% target for apprenticeships as a percentage of the
workforce.
A Member stated that in 2018/19, there had been
407 employees earning over £50,000 per year; in 2019/20, this
had risen to 558 employees. The Member proposed that the Council
monitor the number of staff members on high salaries. The Director
of HR ...
view the full minutes text for item 14/20
Purpose
of the report:To share details of the Cabinet Members’
priority areas of work including strategy and policy developments
and provide an overview of the budget position and performance of
services within their portfolios.
Zully Grant-Duff, Cabinet
Member for Corporate Support
Key
points raised during the discussion:
Starting
with the Cabinet Member for Corporate Support’s portfolio, a
Member asked whether the funding for the 700 laptops and deployment
of Microsoft Teams (as mentioned in the report) was part of
transformation expenditure or the Covid budget. The Cabinet Member
explained that it was funded by transformation expenditure, as the
rollouts were effectively a continuation of aspects of the
transformation programme that had already been in the pipeline,
just at an accelerated pace due to Covid. Some schemes, however,
such as deploying technology to other organisations like Surrey
Police, had been funded through the Covid budget.
The Select
Committee raised the topic of remote care at home. The Cabinet
Member for Corporate Support detailed that remote care was embedded
into the Digital Strategy ambition and the lockdown had accelerated
it further, as many people were not able to leave their homes. The
remote care at home project looked at how artificial intelligence
could be used in preventative services, to reduce pressure on acute
health services. From a digital perspective, it represented an
example of partnership working; Surrey County Council had a new
Joint Strategic Chief Digital Officer, Katherine Church, who
simultaneously fulfilled the same role at Surrey Heartlands,
allowing the Council to look across both health and digital
services, while also integrating ASC. The next stage of work would
involve 1,000 of the most vulnerable households in
Surrey.
Members
expressed awareness of some failures in developing remote care at
home. A Member asked whether the Cabinet Member for Corporate
Support could assure the Select Committee that the Council would be
using available technology and could overcome challenges; for
instance, GDPR issues had to be considered. The Cabinet Member said
that the implementation of remote care at home was being controlled
by the Council and health partners and within that there would be
contractual obligations for third parties, particularly relating to
the databases. Funding came from Surrey County Council ASC and
Public Health funding.
A Member
stated that it would be useful when adopting the remote care system
to find out which other councils or providers already used such a
system and build on a system that already worked, rather than
reinventing the wheel. The Cabinet Member for Corporate Support
replied that Surrey County Council had put together the technology
they were using at the moment, such as devices to measure
temperature and heartrate. In future, there may be algorithms,
databases and specialised devices for other measures made by third
parties. She did not have benchmarking with other LAs, but could
refer the Select Committee to health partners who could give more
information on this. The Council had not reinvented the wheel in
the sense that the technology was already used by the NHS in
Surrey, and had just been expanded and adapted by the Council in
partnership with Surrey Heartlands. She acknowledged the
Member’s point, and added that, fundamentally,
...
view the full minutes text for item 15/20
Purpose of the
report:To provide the committee with an
update on current progress regarding transformation of the council,
including the impacts of COVID-19.
It was agreed that the
questioning for this item would be conducted in written form after
the meeting. The questions and answers are annexed to these
minutes.
To update on and review the minutes of the
Customer Experience Task Group meeting of 3 April 2020 (attached to
this item), and the Budget Sub-Group meeting of 28 May (attached to
the item 5 2019/20 Outturn report).
The Select Committee to review the attached
Recommendations Tracker and Forward Work Programme, making
suggestions for additions or amendments as appropriate.
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