Councillors and committees

Agenda item

CABINET MEMBER PRIORITIES UPDATE

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.

 

Minutes:

Witnesses:

Mel Few, Cabinet Member for Resources

Zully Grant-Duff, Cabinet Member for Corporate Support

 

Key points raised during the discussion:

  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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, the Council had provided a service to vulnerable residents in a short space of time.
  5. Moving onto the portfolio of the Cabinet Member for Resources, a Member asked if there were cost benefits and a timetable for the ERP (enterprise resource planning) replacement. What was driving the replacement? The Cabinet Member replied that the current SAP system was out of date and would cease to be supported by other software in the future. A report would be coming to the July Cabinet meeting about proceeding with a cloud service project as a better system.
  6. A Member noted that at the end of month 1 of 2020/21, a risk of £15m had been identified, as well as a Covid-related risk of £16m. How confident was the Cabinet Member for Resources that these risks could be managed? The Cabinet Member stated that it was too early to say at the moment, but that the Council was looking at resetting the budget. On Covid, the Cabinet Member did not believe it would be possible to close those gaps without further government assistance. The area with the biggest Covid funding issue was ASC, due to the spread of Covid in care homes during the pandemic. Regarding business as usual, each service had a budget cap, and the Council was working towards achieving that.
  7. A Member asked whether the possibility of a second peak of Covid was being taken into account when developing the 2021/22 budget. The Cabinet Member for Resources responded that he had given broad indications on what services should focus on during the pandemic, and this was open to change going forward.

 

Actions/further information to be provided:

  1. The Cabinet Member for Corporate Support to provide details of health partners who can give more information on remote care at home in other LAs.

Supporting documents: