Agenda and minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Mrs J Brockway and C S Macey.

It was reported that, under Regulation 13 of the Local Government (Committee and Political Groups) Regulations 1990, Councillor T R Ashton had been appointed as a replacement for Councillor Mrs J Brockway, for this meeting only.

There were no declarations of interest at this point in the meeting.

The Democratic Services Officer clarified that the comments for the minute 74 did not accurately reflect the discussion that had taken place at the meeting. The Board was therefore being asked to approve the minutes of the meeting on the 25 November 2021, subject to the amendments which were highlighted within the agenda pack.

RESOLVED:

            That the minutes of the meeting held on 25 November 2021 be     approved as a correct record and signed by the Chairman, subject to    the proposed amendments.

RESOLVED:

          That minutes of the meeting held on the 16 December 2021 be        approved as a correct record and signed by the Chairman. 

The Chairman highlighted that he would be presenting the comments made on the Council’s budget at the meeting of the Executive at its meeting on the 8^th February 2022.

The Executive Support Councillor for Resources, Communication and Commissioning advised Members that they were still able to register their attendance at the public budget consultation event that was taking place on the 28^th January.

None had been received.

None had been received.

(To receive a report by Keith Noyland – Head of Finance (Communities), which invited the Board to consider a report on the the service revenue and capital budget proposals for 2022/23, prior to its consideration by the Executive on 8 February 2021. The view of the Board will be reported to the Executive as part of their consideration of this item)

Consideration was given to a report by the Head of Finance – Communities, which invited the Committee to consider a report on the Service Revenue and Capital Budget Proposals 2022/23 which were due to be considered by the Executive on the 8 February 2022.

The report presented the budget proposals for the next financial year for Commercial, Resources and Corporate services. Due to the uncertainty in the funding position for future years, the proposals had been set for a single year.

A number of new cost pressures had emerged in addition to the pressures identified for 2022/23 in the previous year's budget process. In some areas, savings which could be made through efficiencies with no or minimal impact on the level of service delivery had also been identified.

Some of the more significant cost pressures were information management technology; increased licensing and support costs; increased requirement for document storage; additional staffing resource required to support increased demand and maintain reliability and a need for telephony licensing.

The overall budget proposals had allowed for pay inflation of 2% in 2022/23. However, this was currently being held centrally pending agreement of any pay settlement, following which service budgets would be updated.

There were unavoidable service specific cost pressures for 2022/23 totalling £1.330m which would support the delivery of Council services. These cost pressures were offset by savings and efficiencies of £1.799m which did not negatively impact the level of service delivery. Further detail of the revenue budget for Commercial, Resources and Corporate services could be found at Table A and context was provided within the report.

Other than some re-phasing of existing project expenditure there had been no changes to the previously approved capital programme relating to Commercial, Resources and Corporate services, which could be found at Table B.

A consultation meeting with local business representatives, trade unions and partners was scheduled to take place on the 28^th January 2022 and the proposals were now live on Lets talk Lincolnshire, with the opportunity for the public to comment.

The Executive Support Councillor for Resources, Communication and Commissioning hoped that by 2023 the government would have made progress on the levelling up agenda and the fairer funding review and was pleased to see that savings had been made to offset cost pressures within the budget.

Consideration was given to the report and during the discussion the following points were noted:

·         The Board supported the Budget proposals, with the exception of Councillor R B Parker who advised that he would be abstaining from the vote on items related to the Council’s budget.

·         There were very few employees of the Council on the national living wage. Any increase to the national living wage was however likely to impact on the Council’s contractors, such as those in the care worker sector which had a bigger proportion of staff on the national living wage. Contract rates were fixed in October 2021 so if the national living wage was increased, there would be a need to look  ...  view the full minutes text for item 103.

(To receive a report by Michelle Grady (Assistant Director – Finance), which invites the Board to consider a report on the Council Budget 2022/23, which is due to be presented to the Executive on 8 February 2022. The views of the Board will be presented to the Executive as part of their consideration of this item)

Consideration was given to a report by the Assistant Director – Finance, which invited the Board to consider a report on the Council Budget 2022/23 which was due to be considered by the Executive on 8 February 2022.

The Final Local Government Finance Settlement was expected to confirm the Provisional Settlement in February 2022, and at the end of January 2022 the Council would receive confirmation of Council Taxbase and Collection Fund balances from our local District Councils. Upon the receipt of this information, the budget proposals for 2022/23 will be confirmed at the meeting of the Executive on 8 February 2022.

Of the £1.6 billion that was granted to funding for local government that was announced for 2022-23, a large proportion - £822m - had been distributed through the new services grant for 2022-23 which would support inflation and uplifting the national living wage. £637 million had also been added into the existing social care grant to support children and adult social care.

The Board was informed that the local government in England would receive an additional £4.8bn in grant funding over the next three years which was described as “for social care and other services”. There would also be additional funding of £3.6bn over three years for adult social care reform, to implement the cap on personal care costs and changes to the means test, which would be weighted towards later years as the costs of the changes grew over time.

Saving strategies were set out in the report with a view to delivering over £25 million worth of savings over the period, in the context of delivering £350 million worth of savings since the period of austerity over the last decade. Savings included capitalising on the Council’s transformation programme and looking at process efficiency and smarter working with the aim of protecting frontline services.

Full details of revenue budget costs were detailed within the report and included total cost pressures including pay inflation of just over £41million with some key cost pressures being for adult care; price inflation; national living wage; and demands on services such as children in care and home to school transport.

The Council could increase its Council tax by up to 6% for 2022/23 and the proposed increase for the adult care precept of 3% would generate around £10 million from the current tax base for funding for the Council.

The Council’s capital programme had been updated to ensure that the ten year programme was sustainable and affordable in terms of the revenue cost. No new schemes had been added to the programme but there had been updates to some of the terms of the major road schemes and school requirement schemes to reflect current costs. 

Consideration was given to the report and during the discussion the following points were noted:

·         It was unknown what the Fairer Funding review would involve and whether it would be a fundamental review including reviewing the localised business rates system, or just a reset of the data  ...  view the full minutes text for item 104.

(To receive a report by Sophie Reeve (Assistant Director – Commercial), and Arnd Hobohm (Serco Contract Manager), which provides an update of Serco's performance against contractual Key Performance Indicators specified in the Corporate Support Services Contract between August and December 2021)

Consideration was given to a report by the Assistant Director – Commercial which provided an update on the performance of the corporate support services contract for months 77 to 81 of the contract since its commencement in April 2015. 

The Board was asked to note that following general suspension of service credits in the early stages of Covid-19 in 2020, there were now no remaining instances of Covid-related mitigation.

The Board was referred to the overall Key Performance Indicator (KPI) summary performance, which was set out at Table 1.

There had been no instances where KPIs failed to meet the Minimum Service Level (red status) during the review period. However, there were three KPIs which failed to meet target service level, of which details were provided within the report:

·         CSC_KPI_04 % of total Calls that are Abandoned Calls

·         CSC_KPI_11 - Portion of Light Touch Reviews, Annual Reviews, and Carer's Assessments started within agreed timescales

·         PM_KPI_06 - Number of People Mgt. Records assessed in Spot Checks to contain errors, omissions or inaccuracies.

The Board was advised of the details of those KPI’s which had been granted mitigation over the period.

KPI’s were subject to a continuous process of review. During the review period, there had been one change which was the discontinuation of IMT_KPI_14 (windows end user devices patched within 21 days of release of critical operating system updates) as the responsibility now sat with Microsoft.

The Director of Services - Serco informed the Board that the previous period had been a challenging period for recruitment within the contact centre, with a higher turnover of staff than other areas. However, the service had managed well and was working hard on transformation activity across the whole contract and was committed to leaving the contract in a positive state.

The Children’s and Adult services contact centre had recently changed their operating model to a triage system which had impacted positively on the service and had allowed for an increase in demand whilst not impacting on staff resources.

Within the IMT service, the move to the Cloud system had been a successful programme of collaborative work and had brought savings to the Council of £50,000 per month.

Serco continued to work with Barnardo’s to mentor young care leavers and would be working with the University of Lincoln and the Council to research different technologies which may help the social care sector.

Consideration was given to the report and during the discussion the following points were noted:

• Serco had made significant progress on the carers set up within adult care. The reason for the reduction in the percentage of annual reviews and carers assessment starting within agreed time scale was due to absence within a highly skilled team and high volumes of work meaning levels were unable to be met. Serco was continuing to assess different operating models for the service and was working to review the KPI’s moving forward to cover more of the service offering.
• 0.46% of the total number of calls abandoned  ...  view the full minutes text for item 105.

(To receive a report which sets out the work programmes of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee and the Public Protection and Communities Scrutiny Committee in accordance with the Board's agreed programme)

During this item, the Chairman of the Board, Councillor R B Parker, declared a non-pecuniary interest as the County Council’s representative on the Usher Gallery Trust.

Consideration was given to a report by the Chairman of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee, which invited the Board to consider the future work programme of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee. The Board was advised of the following changes to the work programme since the publication of the agenda:

• For the meeting of the Committee on the22^nd  of April, there were three additional pre-decision reports scheduled:

-       the Holiday Activities and Food (HAF) Programme

-       Welton Developer Contributions

-       Review of Closed Ordered List commissioning and procurement arrangements for Supported accommodation for Unaccompanied Asylum Seeking Children (UASC) and former-UASC care leavers from October 2022

• the SEND Learning Platform would now be considered on 17 June 2022
• an additional report on water fluoridation in Lincolnshire would be considered at the meeting on  17^th June 2022 following concerns raised by the Committee regarding the lack of fluoridated water in some areas of the County

A detailed response to the concerns raised about SEND at the December meeting of the Board had been provided and would be circulated to the members of the Board.

Consideration was given to the update, in which the following points were noted:

• The vacancy on the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee was yet to be filled.
• Home to school transport was no longer under the remit of the Children and Young People Scrutiny Committee in terms of budgetary consideration. However, the Chairman of the Committee would consider a future report on the impact of the Local Transport Plan V, if the Committee felt it would be useful.

Consideration was then given to a report by the Chairman of the Public Protection and Communities Scrutiny Committee, which invited the Board to consider an update on the work programme of the Public Protection and Communities Scrutiny Committee as well as the work of the Committee since its last update to the Board.

Recent work of the Committee included:

·                    Receiving the Lincolnshire Registration and Celebratory Service Annual Report

·                    Receiving assurances that the Community Hub model was operating successfully

·         Recording its unanimous support to the Adoption and Publication of the Domestic Abuse Strategy 2021-2024

·                    Recording support to the 2022-23 Revenue and Capital Budget Proposals as well as  approval of the updated Registration Service Fee Setting for the years up to 2025

·          Closely examining through live demonstration, various counterfeit items and unsafe products that have in the past been successfully removed from circulation, owed to the efforts of the Council’s dedicated Trading Standards Team

·                    Receiving a number of success stories of the team supporting local businesses to adapt to the changes in conducting business throughout the pandemic and agreed to promoting and enforcing a positive message to the public about the support offer of the team

The Board was advised of the following additions to the work programme of  ...  view the full minutes text for item 106.

(To receive a report which enables the Board to note the content of its work programme for the coming year)

The Board was reminded that the work programme was for information only, however the Head of Democratic Services and Statutory Scrutiny Officer highlighted one amendment to the work programme which was that the Insurance Strategy would now be considered at the meeting of the Board in March.

A member of the Board suggested that a report be scheduled, when appropriate, to identify possible learning from the Covid-19 pandemic.

(To receive a report which enables the Board to note the contents of the Local Transport Plan report, prior to its consideration by the Executive on the 8 February 2022)

Members of the Board were invited to receive the Local Transport Plan, for information only.

The Board received an update from the Vice-Chairman of the Highways and Transport Scrutiny Committee following the Committee’s consideration of the item, in which the following points were noted:

·         The Committee was satisfied that the consultation exercise that took place as part of the Plan was highly representative with overall figures in excess of 3000 website visitors and with around 750  actual  responses to the online survey. This rate of response was above and beyond expectations and it was positive to hear that a wider audience of the younger population – the under 25’s - of the County had engaged with the process.

·         The Committee was pleased to hear about ideas and approaches that could be adopted across Lincolnshire, particularly around areas like active travel supporting improvements at the rail network, electric vehicle charging points and consideration to bus usage that was still a critical means of transportation particularly in urban areas across the county.

·         Members made some very important and detailed observations and suggested areas of improvements to Officers to be incorporated at the final version.

• It was understood that the Local Transport Plan was a living document and was still being developed and the Committee expressed its wish to see more developments on roads and public transport across the County.

The Board welcomed the inclusion of the defence industry as a strategic opportunity however highlighted the importance of the significant investment in digital infrastructure to make it a viable option.

It was confirmed that an electric vehicle and alternative fuel strategy had been created which had identified a number of locations across the County where the national grid was at its capacity point, meaning if there was an extreme growth in electric vehicles or a major shift towards ground and air source heat pumps as part of new developments, it could cause significant problems. It was agreed that further details be provided and circulated to the Board.