?

review and prioritisation of the capital programme;

?

implementing the Care Act 2014

?

Plymouth Employment and Skills Plan; 

?

residential and nursing care home fair price for care;

?

delivering the co-operative visions within a four year sustainable balanced budget and council tax 2015/16.

(a)

the estimated revenue overspend at the end of the year was £3.112m as at October 2014; there had been a reduction of £0.5m since last reported to the Board;

(b)

management plans were in place to further reduce the overspend; there was the potential to use the contingency fund which had been built into the budget;

(c)

there has been a significant increase in placements for children and young people during the summer; the number of young people placed in independent foster care has reduced by 7 to 67 against an original estimate of 60; residential placements had reduced by 3 to 24 against an original estimate of 18 (a significant number of these placements were high cost due to the complex nature of the children’s needs);

(d)

there had also been significant pressure within adult social care which had been created by cost and volume changes and a reduction in income relating in particular to the delay in implementing the Fairer Charing Policy;

(e)

an overspend within the Executive Office of £83,000 had been due to a shortfall on the planned efficiency savings; management were continually reviewing the budgets to identify potential savings to address issues and hold positions vacant where possible; work undertaken by the Co-operative Centre of Operations transformation work stream would result in ongoing sustainable solutions.

(f)

it was unlikely that there would be additional revenue costs as a result of the recent Ofsted inspection;

(g)

an undertaking was given to provide further information relating to the pressures within the Executive Office which had resulted in an overspend of £83,000;

(h)

within Co-operative Commissioning and Adult Social Care £1.1m of management actions had been identified; this would include reviewing the way resources were allocated through the Resource Allocation System which would ensure a consistent approach; further information relating to this matter would be sought;

(i)

an assurance was given that information on agency staff would be available for Budget Scrutiny in January 2015;

(j)

temporary members of staff employed through Pertemps (the council’s agency staff provider), after 12 weeks, receive the same pay as permanent members of staff;

(k)

the containment plans for  Children’s Social Care referred to in the report were informal departmental documents;

(l)

it was possible to record zero sick days, if this related to a small team of staff who had not taken sick leave during this period of time;

(m)

information would be provided on the number of sick days being taken by staff due to stress related illnesses;

(n)

the overall sickness figure for the authority had reduced with an average of 7.37 sick days per full time equivalent; this was considered to be a favourable figure as the organisation employed a large number of front  ...  view the full minutes text for item 103.

(a)

as a brilliant co-operative council it needed to assure the delivery of high quality services, regardless of who delivered them and to make strategic decisions which considered the needs of all its residents, customers and partners;

(b)

in order to deliver this, three Co-operative Centre of Operations (CCO) project areas would create a series of capabilities backed by tools, guidelines and support teams; the project areas were -

?

evolve, assure, advise and enable;

?

service integration and management;

?

transform;

(c)

in establishing the strategic layer, it would enable the council to make brilliant co-operative decisions with sound advice and smart information; it would help to evolve the council with proactive design, planning and business change functions and assure that the council would comply with standards, learn lessons and continuously improve quality;

(d)

in developing service integration and management capability, it would assist the council to manage services to a consistently high quality, whether in-house, traded, partnered or outsourced and integrate it by providing a bridge between strategy and delivery making decisions live and breathe;

(e)

transforming corporate services would assist in generating income, improving efficiency and reduce the overall cost of delivering services, as well as improving and optimising the quality of HR, Finance, Legal and other support services;                                                                                                                                                          

(f)

the CCOs capabilities would  -

?

ensure consistency of decision making, service delivery and commissioning across the council;

?

co-ordinate and support Subject Matter Experts (SMEs), Change Champions and Knowledge Networks;

?

provide common tools, frameworks, data and processes for use by staff within the directorates and guidance and mentoring ;

(g)

within each of the projects there would be three stages of capability progression which included early, interim and mature states;

(h)

work over the next three months would result in five projects being focused into three complementary, closely-related project areas;

(i)

all the tactical quick win projects would be prioritised and progressed;

(j)

the maturity within the council to manage change from its existing resources would grow as the systems, tools and knowledge were put into place; this would ensure that the CCO would more ably support the other transformation programmes in implementing critical changes that would benefit the city;

(k)

dependencies with other transformation programmes were being actively managed to ensure alignment and support.

(l)

there were processes and tools in place to help deliver change in a managed way;

(m)

the council together with its health partners had been successful in securing funding from the Transformation Challenge fund in the sum of £1.4m; discussions would need to be held to agree the spend and  split between the partners;

(n)

ICT service were now provided through the joint ICT venture between the council and CCG (Delt Shared Services Ltd); this arrangement benefited the local  ...  view the full minutes text for item 104.