Agenda item
REVENUES AND BENEFITS UPDATE
The Director for Corporate Support will submit a report to the panel giving an update on the Revenues and Benefits Service.
Minutes:
Councillor Ian Bowyer, Cabinet Member for Finance, People, Property and Governance, John Paul Sanders, Assistant Director for Customer Services and Business Transformation and Martine Collins, Customer Services Manager presented a report and gave a presentation providing an update on the Revenues and Benefits Service. Councillors were informed that –
Following questions from members it was reported that –
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trade union negotiations would determine the outcome of the restructure, although it was anticipated that approximately twenty of the thirty job losses would be through redundancies with the majority of redundancies being from above Grade E;
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(i) |
the restructure which would undergo an Equalities Impact Assessment, was hoped to be completed by the end of July 2011;
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(j) |
benchmarking in the departments was undertaken against a number of other authorities where Plymouth was either on a par or better than the comparable authorities. |
Members commented that –
(k)
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the level of staff engagement was both welcomed and impressive;
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(l) |
the imbalance of staff grades and the inconsistencies in role profiles did not reflect well on the job evaluation process;
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(m) |
the council had a duty of care to its staff and this was a major concern given this major restructure was proposed so soon after the job evaluation process;
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(n) |
in order to improve service delivery and achieve the required financial savings the services needed to have quality IT systems in place and that the Accommodation, People’s and ICT Strategies were key to ensuring this restructure was completed successfully. |
Recommended that a scrutiny work programme request be submitted to the next Overview and Scrutiny Management Board requesting that a Task and Finish Group is formed to undertake a review of Revenues and Benefits, Cashiers, Incomes and Creditors and Customer Services.
Agreed that –
(1)
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an update on the service restructure be provided at a future meeting of the panel;
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(2) |
the Democratic Support Officer would disseminate copies of all the presentations from this meeting to all members of the Panel. |
Supporting documents: