Scrutiny Panel

The Scrutiny Panel

The Scrutiny Panel is theConservative (Opposition) led body responsible for holding the Executive to account. The role of the Panel is to provide an appropriate level of challenge to the Executive in order to create better decisions and policies for residents in Kingston.

The Scrutiny Panel can carry out pre-decision scrutiny of matters that the Executive is due to consider and can also call-in for review decisions that have been made by the Executive but not yet implemented.

The Scrutiny Panel membership includes 4 Executive Members, 7 Shadow Executive Members (Conservative Councillors who scrutinise the work of the individual Lib Dem Executive Members) and the member for the Labour Group.

Shadow Executive Members and their portfolio areas:

Recent Scrutiny Panel:

Review of the One Council Programme

17th November 2009

Review of Grant to Tamil School

20th October 2009

8th September 2009

In introducing the report, Head of Legal Services Nick Bishop gave an overview of the role of the Department within the Council, which is to provide a service to all departments and encompassing the many and varied statutory responsibilities and services the Council provides. There is no requirement for the Council to have an in-house legal department but, traditionally, it has been the most cost effective way of providing the service. Previous tendering and Best Value exercises have indicated that the in-house team is cheaper than using external firms, including local firms.

Some authorities have adopted different approaches either through contracting out elements of the service – e.g. litigation and conveyancing – and retaining only a small corporate legal resource, or through sharing the service with one or more neighbouring authorities.

Comparisons with other Legal Services departments are difficult because of the different sizes and approaches to providing the service. There are no national performance indicators but ACSeS (Association of County Secretaries and Solicitors) are in the process of considering the development of a range of indicators.

It is also difficult to measure success in some instances, e.g. in terms of success in court cases recovery of rent arrears may be judged a success, but success in proceedings such as to take a child into care is not the same ‘success’ – a measure then may be the number of cases settled outside court.

Questions from Panel Members ranged across some of the different roles carried out within Legal Services - e.g. the Monitoring Officer and the operation of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, Freedom of Information matters, as well as planning agreements, costs, hours worked, capacity and areas of growth and the effect of the One Council Programme on the department.

Nick Bishop responded on these.

The Head of Legal Services is designated as Monitoring Officer, the role is to ensure that the Council acts in a legal way; in practice this is something that the whole legal team contribute to. All complaints on decisions made on Freedom of Information requests are dealt with by Legal Services but responses to requests are handled across the Council although there is substantial involvement in advising on any exemptions which apply. Authorities for surveillance under the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act are dealt with by legal services, but this is not direct surveillance – e.g phones cannot be tapped but the identity of someone with an account for a particular phone number can be established.

On section 106 planning agreements it was confirmed that whilst there is no fixed timescale the aim is to complete these within six months of an application being agreed. In some cases agreements are complex, involve several parties and this time may be exceeded.

Each member of the team has an allocated hourly rate charge, ranging from £48 to £89, which includes costs and support costs and takes account of the complexity of the work undertaken. Everyone has a chargeable-hours target of 1300 - Law Society Practice Management Standard – this is met by all and in most cases considerably exceeded. Meeting the Law Society standard for hours is an indication of working at capacity and unlike most private practices there is very little administrative support to solicitors, so these tasks also have to be carried out.

In terms of covering additional projects, such as Building Schools for the Future the department works with external legal providers, as there is not the capacity or depth of expertise available in-house. On BSF Croydon is also working with the external legal team.

A growth area of work is Child Safeguarding where in addition to an increased number of cases, new procedures are imposing considerable pressures on the Legal and Child Protection teams. There is also an increase in Adult Safeguarding work but not to the same extent.

The One Council Programme will have an effect on the Department as its role and working arrangements are likely to be included in the Business Infrastructure review.

To date involvement has been around providing advice on specific aspects of some projects. The team regularly reviews working practices and considers whether there are any alternative ways of doing things and customer satisfaction surveys are carried out.

A question was raised as to whether the legal team had any spare capacity which could provide on a fee basis, some help to residents associations, or voluntary groups on what may be minor matters, but which need some legal guidance which may be difficult or too costly to obtain from the ‘High Street’. Nick Bishop responded that this could be looked at but was likely to conflict with Law Society rules as the department is retained to work solely for the Council.

Members were not in any doubt of the amount of hard work done, and how the costs of the service are substantially lower than in private practice whilst working practices are comparable to those in the private sector.

None the less, whilst the report and the responses to questions presented a great deal of information on the breadth of the Legal Service function and the volumes of work being dealt with, there is a lack of comparative information with other Council’s to give a picture of performance.

One of the aims of the review was to respond to the questions:

Is too much being asked of this department which serves the whole Council?

Is it adequately staffed and with staff at the right levels?

What are Member’s views on priorities for the use of this resource and on:

• Workload & Staffing

• Finalisation & signing of contracts and partnership agreements

• Timeliness of providing legal advice.

There is more work to be done before the review is complete and any points or recommendations can be made to the Executive and/or the One Council Project Board as appropriate.

It was agreed that a small Member Group should continue looking at these questions, and issues raised in the discussion at the meeting on the measures which could be developed to illustrate performance and whether there are different ways of doing things. The Working Group will be Councillors Paul Johnston,

Howard Jones and a nominee from the Liberal Democrat Members of the Panel and will aim to complete its task before the end of December.

Customer First Strategy

18th June 2009

A strategy that incorporates better telephone services, an integrated reception and a better website is required.

Questions posed covered – how realistic are the timescales and the apparent considerable risk of achieving these and the associated savings; how the information from ‘Who is Kingston’ will be used to shape the project; whether there is too much emphasis on achieving the end objectives rather than the best way of achieving these – risking overlooking the ‘customer’; with the improvements envisaged in Customer First will there still be a need for Community Hubs; have the savings been calculated on the percentage of contact that can be switched to electronic means; will there be ‘carrot and stick’ to persuade residents to change to internet contact; why are there 8 customer access points and numbers rather than a One Council number; how will previous problems of poor training and management of contact staff be avoided; what are staff views on the proposals; where is the scope for involvement of Councillors and the ways in which residents can influence decision making; is the IT project keeping pace with the Customer First project; ;how will the success of the project be evaluated and customer satisfaction measured; will there be continuous monitoring of the standards and systems put in place, rather than the current ‘tick box’ culture;

Councillor Ian Reid, Rob Dickson and Dylan Champion responded to these.

The One Council programme overall is central to the future of the Council and will change the way the organisation works. The Customer First project will give more efficient and better quality services but there will be difficulties – there are some difficult financial decisions to be made and also some decisions on how things are done. There is a considerable amount of expertise and practice in the public sector to draw on for elements of the project and the Council’s own experience of introducing a similar, but smaller scale approach in Environmental Services. The Environmental Services contact centre along with other aspects of reorganisation, is producing an annual saving of £2m and has also shown that in many cases residents no longer need to contact the Council as they can find the information they want at a time that they want on the internet., There are risks and pressures in achieving the savings. Strong project management arrangements are in place and the Project Manager will also be using the expertise of other members of staff in the project team. There are clear milestones in the project plan – the next 2 major milestones are the launch of the Customer Service Standards in September and the new single Guildhall complex reception area in January 2010. The Implementation Plan is ambitious but is achievable and will give significant efficiency savings while making services better for residents and better for staff.

The information from ‘Who is Kingston’ will be used to provide services in the way residents want to use them, how and who is using the services is a large part of this.

A high percentage of residents use electronic services, but for other residents contact by phone, face to face and by letter are important. A lot of work is being done with different groups on what services they want and how they want them.

The Community Hub project contributes to this and is not just about direct Council services but also health and other community services.

The savings calculated are considerably less than if 40% of contacts that it is estimated will switch to electronic methods do so, contacts may also be shorter as residents get the right response first time. Contact by phone, face to face and by letter will continue to be offered but will be improved and there will be no ‘stick’ to encourage residents to switch to electronic contact.

The proposal for 8 customer access points and numbers rather than a One Council number; is designed to be able to provide a better service, residents will not have to ring separate numbers if they have a range of enquiries as they will be transferred to the appropriate team(s).

The organisation doesn’t yet have the capacity in terms of systems and trained staff to deal with all the queries in a contact centre. The management of staff training and introduction of new systems will make a big difference, albeit it will not be perfect immediately. Staff share many of the frustrations of residents with present systems and their views on the proposals are very positive.

In terms of residents being able to influence the decisions, the information already gathered on what residents want is influencing what is being provided. The links between the Customer First and Commissioning projects and the use of ‘customer insight’ information for both of these are very important. The forthcoming Member workshop on both projects will provide the first of opportunities for as wide a range of Councillors as possible to contribute views.

The IT project (One Council Project 6) does raise some challenging issues to be dealt with and these are a risk factor in the Customer First project, however new technology is now available which will help with the creation of single customer records and the redesign of the website.

There will be continuous monitoring of services and more customer surveys eg at the end of calls and transactions. The cultural changes are evolving and will be continuous; the mechanisms for ensuring this continuation is being debated by the Strategic Leadership Team, the projects are not an end in themselves.

The following concerns were registered: the report is missing detail on continuity planning arrangements; the savings will not be achieved within the timescales; it is unclear how the data from ‘Who is Kingston’ is going to used; the mechanism for involving all Councillors in the new culture is unclear; and finally the Strategy deals only with residents and not visitors and tourists.

The Chair thanked Cllr Ian Reid, Rob Dickson and Dylan Champion for their help to the Panel. Members now have a clearer idea of the aims and direction; there are some difficult issues to be reconciled – eg around IT systems and support.

March 17, 2009

The Panel reviewed the outcome of the Commission for Social Care Inspection’s (CSCI) Annual Review Meeting 2007-08 Performance Assessment of Kingston’s Adult Social Services and the progress and priorities for improvement in Adult Social Services

Climate Change and Energy Strategy

January 20th, 2009

The current colder winter is making more people think about energy use and supply and changing the way people think about energy starts at home. The risks of doing nothing will mean being unable to meet national targets and this may mean being penalised which results insignificantly higher costs for residents.

The Chair (Conservative Leader Councillor Howard Jones) stressed the potential business opportunities which, with emerging technologies, would enable the Council to reduce emissions and generate energy. Combined Heat and Power plants and produce some income as well. The aim was to be innovative and a ‘beacon’ borough in this field.

The Panel agreed to advise the Executive that it welcomes the Energy Strategy as a starting document and welcomes the production of an Action Plan and looks forward to seeing the detail of this Plan.

Councillor Jones thanked Julia Clark and Bindi Patel for their attendance and help to the Panel and the officers for their help.

Rose Theatre - Financial Issues

December 16th, 2008

The Scrutiny Panel, chaired by Conservative Leader Howard Jones, endeavoured to examine the 'New deal' document offered by the Kingston Theatre Trust, in which £1.8m has been requested as part of their £5.7m request for funding over the next three calendar years starting from January 2009. Decisions were reviewed that have already been approved by the Liberal Democrat Executive on 9th of December. The Panel expressed concern about the lack of due diligence undertaken and the lack of alternative options being considered.

Following review, the Scrutiny Panel were unable to endorse the Executive decisions concerning the funding stream of £600,000 per annum (or £1.8m over three years), and referred these decisions to the full Council. As it is understood that the Theatre Trust need to know by the end of December whether or not they will have the certainty of ongoing funding so they can continue trading, the Mayor has called an Extraordinary Council meeting under the provisions of Schedule 12 to the Local Government Act, 1972, for 23 December.

This meeting of the Executive has been arranged to consider any recommendations that may arise from the Council meeting being held immediately prior to this meeting.

Independence Well-Being Strategy and Action Plan

November 11th, 2008

There was a very wide ranging discussion on the strategy document, the proposals in the Action Plans and how these would be implemented. Much of the Strategy is focused on maintaining independence for people. The voluntary sector representatives who were in attendance largely approved the strategy, while also stressing the challenges ahead and the additional strains placed on services in meeting non-forecast increases in demand, and the consensus was that the voluntary sector will need to adopt a more collaborative view and share more resources. In particular it was agreed that the training and retaining of volunteers is a challenging area that warrants specific focus.

The conclusion was that the Strategy document should be considered a good starting point; there is a lot of hard work ahead on the Action Plans and this will receive full support from Conservative Councillors who welcomed the Plan. Accepting that there is a lot of development work to do it was agreed to review the Plan in 18 months time. Conservative Shadow Councillor for Health and Social Inclusion Paul Johnston said:

"Our scrutiny gave the authors of the Plan and Executive members an opportunity to explain the reasoning in much greater detail than was possible at the Executive meeting. We also gave key partners of the Council a chance to air their thoughts about the Plan as it is now and to share their thoughts with us about the likely needs of the future. The process provided a framework for further consideration about the Council's role as provider and facilitator of services.

Review of Human Resources

24th July, 2008

The Scrutiny Panel received an initial report on the RBK HR Department in December 2007. There was a wide ranging discussion on

parts of the HR service and the decision was taken to convene a Member working group which would report back to the Scrutiny Panel. The issues for consideration by the Scrutiny Panel working group covered 24 items in total and included issues from a wide range of HR function inluding: staff numbers, age profile, policies and practices (including data and costs), the structure and performance of the HR function, recruitment and selection, agency staff and the Workforce Plan.

The Panel, including Conservative Leader, Councillor Howard Jones, thanked the Head of HR for her contribution to the review. It was an interesting review and the Panel felt much better informed on the operation of the HR department. The report gives an insight into HR which is integral to RBK noting the difficulty in retaining quality staff whilst trying to reduce quantity. In certain specialist areas the recruitment and retention of staff is difficult, but this is not peculiar to RBK it is a problem across local government. HR operates in an environment of change and faces extremely difficult challenges in the re-shaping of the work force and doubtless will face even more difficult challenges in the future.

RoseTheatre

8th July, 2008

Conservative Councillors challenged the Liberal Democrat Executive when yet more RoseTheatre overspending was put under the spotlight.

Another £350,000 was requested by the Leader of the Council, Councillor Derek Osbourne, to pay suppliers and bills. This is despite Cllr Osbourne promising that last year's contribution of £250,000 was the last council taxpayers would have to spend to bail out the £11m plus project.

Opposition Councillors were horrified to hear that a lease has yet to be signed between the LLP (in effect the Council as owners of the building) and its tenant, the Theatre Trust. When Cllr Kilby asked on what legal basis they were trading in our building no answer was forthcoming from the Executive members.

Cllr Nick Kilby said ''Our risk management has let us down yet again. Although I am excited about Building Schools for the Future Programme this project gives me a chill with so many lessons still to be learnt." Cllr Howard Jones Leader of the Conservative Opposition said ''The theatre fit out has been badly managed and public money overspent. There has been a total lack of accountability by the Liberal Democrat administration and leadership." The Scrutiny Panel also asked the Executive not to waste more money by renaming Drapers car park but to identify its convenient position on the back of theatre tickets, along with details of local bus routes.

Further revelations came when after taking into account the specification cuts together with increases in investment it was confirmed the project to fit out the theatre has now overrun by over £900,000.

RoseTheatre Funding Call-in

1^st August 2007

The Scrutiny Panel were saddened to discover last week that not only does the Rose Theatre need more funding, it is also going to have many features downgraded and non-essentito save cash. Conservative Cllrs warned the Lib Dems that cutting on quality will come back ten fold in repair and replacement bills.

Since the fit out of the Theatre began in 2006, it has encountered a series of delays, followed by escalating costs. Former Head of Finance for RBK Council and trustee of the theatre, Tony Knight, was called to the Scrutiny Panel to explain the theatre's current financial situation. He reassured the Panel that savings are being made as well as the request for more public funding, saying: "Instead of a John Lewis bar, we may now be settling for a B&Q bar."

Representatives of the Theatre Trust reassured tax payers, saying that the situation was not as bad as Wembley Stadium or the Scottish Parliament building, and justified their lack of control over financial management by comparing the complexity of building a theatre to that of a nuclear power station.

But the light at the end of the tunnel for the taxpayer of Kingston is that the Leader of the Council, Cllr Derek Osbourne, has promised that, unlike many theatres such as in Richmond and Chichester, the Rose Theatre will not require ticket subsidising from the Council once it is open and there will be no ongoing revenue apart from, possibly, the capital building itself.

Cllr Howard Jones, Leader of the Opposition, said: "At the last Executive meeting the Lib Dems altered the condition of the loan to the Theatre Trust by extending the loan repayment period from six months to twelve. We are concerned that, due to the clouded wording of this recent amendment, the public will not see their money at least a further six months, if at all.''