(a)

scrutiny was recognised to be an important aspect on holding decision makers to account although, there was a need to avoid duplication of scrutiny as the Corporate Support directorate was cross-cutting and was subjected to being scrutinised from this panel, Customers and Communities Overview and Scrutiny panel and the Audit Committee;

(b)

the 2011-2012 Corporate Support budget was £26.849M which was a demanding target to meet as it was a reduction of approximately £5M on the previous years budget;

(c)

the Corporate Support Directorate consisted of five separate departments; these departments have had their own successes in 2010-2011 and face their own individual challenges for 2011-2012. The departments, their successes and challenges included–

·         

Customer Services and Business Transformation

(d)

received Govmetric Council of the year in 2010-2011, led a staff wellness programme where sickness was reduced by 47 per cent year on year and introduced a new telephony system;

(e)

received over 1 million contacts per year, which was only 32 per cent of total contact with the council; the national benchmark was 81 per cent, improving this percentage was one of the challenges facing the department;

(f)

other major challenges in the department for 2011-2012 included inputting council ‘info points’ into libraries and developing a single system transactional web site;

·         

Finance, Assets and Efficiencies

(g)

realised efficiencies and savings in 2010-2011 from Phase I of the Accommodation Strategy, a departmental restructure and improved carbon management as well as increasing income through an out of hours debt collection programme;

(h)

had become a more effective service by implementing ‘buyer’ roles in the procurement department, publishing council spending on anything over £500 and improving the budgeting setting process;

(i)

in 2010-2011 a major restructure had begun in the Revenues and Benefits, Customer Services and Incomes and Creditors section and the Cashiers section had been closed; this restructure would be further taken forward in 2011-2012;

(j)

other delivery plans in 2011-2012 included the restructuring of corporate properties, further savings in procurement of £1.2M, Phase II of the Accommodation Strategy and an attempt to maximise government funding on Housing Benefit;

·         

Information, Communication and Technology (ICT)

(k)

delivered in 2010-2011 a new telephony system, the tell us once programme, protocols on information sharing with partners and achieved savings of £500K, and through the sale of licenses for software packages realised an income generation of £100K;

(l)

delivered new technologies such as the Microsoft Lync system on Floor 4, Civic Centre, a Care First system upgrade and enabled hot-desking to be rolled out.  To achieve this ICT awarded contracts to two providers, all of these improvements ensured that ICT were a more reliable service in 2010-2011 with a 99.74 per cent reliability rate on all secure systems;

(m)

aspired to reduce the number of systems and applications used corporately, which would enable the delivery of a single version of the truth and improve the sharing of information with partners whilst keeping data secure;

(n)

in 2010-2011 there would be a number of challenges which included meeting the needs of the organisation with reduced resources, professionalise data management with staff training and less systems and endeavour to agree a long-term vision and investment for future ICT service provision;

·         

Human Resources and Organisational Development (HR & OD)

(o)

so far in 2011-2012 have assisted in the establishment of Academies, held discussions with unions on terms and conditions, delivered the Enterprise Leadership Programme and automated on-line recruitment and redeployment;

(p)

faced significant challenges across the forthcoming year which included managing down the cost of the workforce whilst minimising the number of redundancies;

(q)

further demands faced this year included a re-ballot into terms and conditions, developing a single point of contact with the roll-out of new enterprise software systems and developing trading with school academies;

·         

Democracy and Governance

(r)

in 2010-2011 a number of efficiencies and savings were achieved which included major in-year savings n the region of £500K on legal advice provided on major-projects, implementation of ‘tell us once’ in Registration Service and the completion of insurance tender and review of risk financing strategy;

(s)

had a successful year with elected members receiving individual training assessments for the first time, risk management performance scoring very highly against nationally benchmarked standards and the Electoral Service exceeding Electoral Commission Performance Standards;

(t)

in 2011-2012 challenges for the department would include seeking to adopt a new constitution, relocation of the Register Office, the implementation of the Localism Bill and potential changes to the Coroners Service and the Justice Act.

(u)

the council had undertaken to analyse pay point transactions and it was hoped that libraries would be able to provide a similar service in the future;

(v)

Customers and Communities Overview and Scrutiny Panel would be reviewing communication with customers using social networking means.