Name

Reason

Interest

Councillor Jordan

Director of Routeways

Personal

Councillor Sam Leaves

Employed by NEW Devon CCG

Disclosable Pecuniary

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review and prioritisation of the capital programme;

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Devonport Market Hall refurbishment;

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Plymouth Employment and Skills Plan;

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phase two of the national Troubled Families Programme;

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residential and nursing care home fair price for care;

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integrated commissioning – contract award for integrated health and social care provision;

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integrated commissioning – approval of Section 75 Agreement.

  (a)

the estimated revenue overspend at the end of the financial year was £1.746m (as at December 2014); the overall net spend equated to £206.426m against a budget of £204.680m which was a variance of 0.85%. This needed to be taken in the context of setting £16m of management and net transformation savings in 2014/15 on the back of balancing the 2013/14 revenue budget where £17.8m of net revenue reductions had been successfully delivered;

(b)

the key pressure points were still in Adult Social Care where, although client numbers were broadly in line with the set budget, the average cost per care package per client was significantly higher (which reflected the more complex needs of clients that the Council were supporting);

(c)

within the Children Social Care, the number of children placed with independent fostering agencies had increased by 11 to 83 which was above the budgeted target of 60; residential placements had increased by 4 to 28 against a target of 19 budgeted placement with a significant number of these placements being high cost due to the complex nature of these children’s needs;

(d)

there were a number of processes and strategies in place to address the rising numbers of children in care and escalated action to deliver further savings from the Council’s transformation programme were being worked up, in order to address the in-year forecasted overspend;

(e)

there had been an improvement of £1.957m since the previous quarter;

(f)

the latest Capital budget which covered 2014-18 was £210.154m which had been approved at Full Council on 24 November 2014; the revised Capital budget was £237.406m;

(g)

within the overall funding ‘envelope’ the approved Capital Programme of projects totalled £128.999m.

(h)

during the Budget Scrutiny process the Board had been advised that £500k of the £1m contingency fund had been used to reduce the overall variance; it was likely that the remaining £500k of the contingency fund would be used;

(i)

although the position as at the end of January 2015 had improved (£1.3m variance), it would be a challenge to balance the budget without the need to use monies from the working balance;

(j)

the number of interim appointments had now reduced from six to five;

(k)

it was difficult to categorise whether the stress related absence (13%) was work related as often individual’s home life  ...  view the full minutes text for item 121.

(a)

the Transformation Programme had commenced with outline business cases which contained details of the scope and potential benefits of each programme; the programmes had since evolved with some changing in both scope and size (the programmes would continue to develop and evolve over the forthcoming years);

(b)

the programmes would also realise ‘soft’ (non-financial) benefits; this had recently been achieved through the successful implementation of the waste re-organisation initiative which had a benefit to the Council as a whole;

(c)

the first year of the Transformation Programme had seen the development of the capability of the organisation; in order to achieve this staff had been appointed from across the authority, as well as interim appointments; this had allowed the Council to embed expertise and knowledge as well as re-skilling staff which helped shape it to become more commercially minded;

(d)

it was forecast that the Programme would exceed the financial benefits, set as targets, for this financial year.

(d)

an assurance was provided that reports, in the future, would be in a simpler format;

(e)

a range of options were being considered as part of the integrated transport project, such as better use of work space, servicing of police vehicles and partnership working with other local authorities;

(f)

self-reported wellbeing – people with a low happiness score could be helped through a range of measures such as access to leisure facilities which would help to improve fitness levels and preventative measures such as the 4-4-54 initiative;

(g)

based on the legislation and guidance provided to date, the Council was in the same position as many other local authorities in making arrangements for the implementation of the Care Act;

(h)

adult social services staff were due to transfer to Plymouth Community Healthcare on 1 April 2015; members of staff had been fully engaged from the start of the process;  the project remained on target for implementation date;

(i)

the CCO programme would provide support on the work being undertaken on the 2015 election process and the wider implementation of the ModGov software package;

(j)

although local elections took place on a yearly basis, there was a real need to ensure that the Council was providing an efficient and effective service, whilst encouraging more people to become engaged with the process;

(k)

the role of the interim appointments had been vital in embedding the expertise and knowledge in the organisation that was required to ensure that it was more commercially minded;

(l)

an explanation would be provided relating to the wording in the report relating to ‘assessment of the current organisation to identify what the organisation was currently  ...  view the full minutes text for item 122.

 (a)

the quarter 3 report outlined progress and emerging trends of the Corporate Plan and progress of the new 50 Pledges;

(b)

the majority of the Corporate Plan ‘key actions’ were on target to achieve their milestones so that the outcomes were completed by the end of 2016/17;

(c)

of the 42 key actions -

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one (K29) (not on target) (RED);

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one (K15) was being reported as a risk but mitigation was in place (AMBER);

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40 had completed their quarterly milestones;

(d)

of the 25 performance measures tracking outcomes of the Corporate Plan, the majority were performing well  however P17 and P19 were below target (these measures related to the percentage of residents who believe they can influence decisions affecting their local area and children’s safeguarding timings of assessments; action was being taken to find better ways of improving the measure;

(e)

sixteen measures were performing well; the remaining five (P10, P18, P13) measures were performing well and this had remained very consistent compared to previous quarters; the remaining nine (P10, P11, P16, P19, P20, P21, P22, P23 and P25) were 15 percent or less below target and were not being escalated for action;  there was one performance measure which was still to be developed and no data currently existed.              

(f)

Pledge 19 was yet to be completed, although work was underway to review its implementation and Pledge 6 had not been completed (due end of February 2015);

(h)

work was still ongoing to put in place arrangements to hold a partnership session on introducing systems leadership to tackle hate crime (K29 key action);

(i)

the data used for Pledge 17 (percent of residents who believe they can influence decisions affecting their local area) was based on historical surveys such as the ‘place survey’.