(a)

the Plan for Jobs initiative remained on course to be launched in January 2013 and would be scrutinised by the Growth and Prosperity Overview and Scrutiny Panel;

(b)

Plymouth had been invited to compete for the second wave of the City Deals programme (which would devolve Government powers in exchange for responsibility for delivering growth locally); the Council would have until January 2013 to put forward its initial proposals.

(c)

the Council needed to be ‘fit for the future’ and that she was looking forward to leading it to the next stage of its development and to also build the organisation into a brilliant cooperative council;

(d)

there were significant challenges facing the Council, in particular, the delivery of its services with less money; this would result in the Council having to provide its services in a different way;

(e)

the City Deal would play a key part in the growth agenda for both the City and the region;

(f)

the overview and scrutiny process would be vital in supporting policy development and to ensure that the ‘checks and balances’ were in place to assist the Council to perform well;

(g)

there were already strong links with the Council’s partners across the City, although further integration work was required.

(h)

the Chief Executive saw her role on shared services, as a liaison role with partners and to look at sharing services across local authorities however, each partner would need to ensure that it made good business sense to do this;

(i)

the Chief Executive viewed her role in child poverty as being able to progress the work that had already been started, as this linked to the welfare reform agenda, and to also ensure that the child poverty strategy made a difference to the community;

(j)

officers would be made aware of the role and the importance of the overview and scrutiny process in the development of policies however, scrutiny would need to be able to demonstrate how policies had been improved through its recommendations;

(k)

the webcasting of the Council’s meetings would form a key part in delivering the Council’s commitment for Open Plymouth; scrutiny panels were encouraged to look at opportunities of holding meetings within the community;

(l)

the Leader gave an assurance to provide an update via the budget scrutiny process relating to Board’s recommendation ‘that the Cabinet seek and publish the partners’ agreed approaches to the cooperative council ethos, including those of service delivery partners, such as Amey’ (which arose from the Board’s recommendations for the revised Corporate Plan 2012-2015);

(m)

a meeting had been arranged for the Leader to meet with the Transport Minister at the airport in January 2013; this would be a good opportunity for the Minister to be briefed on the connectivity issues facing the City (both road and rail); officers had met with representatives from Viable and continued to seek further information relating to their proposals; the decision to re-open the airport would need to be made by the private sector however, the Council would still be interested in any organisation that could meet the ‘five tests’;

(n)

the Chief Executive hoped that in 12 months’ time she would be able to demonstrate that she had led the Council to the next stage of its development, by transforming itself and its services (the organisation needed to be built around its customers rather than in silos).