(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  -

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

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

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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 economy as it enabled jobs and expertise to be retained within the city; other options considered would not have guaranteed this benefit;

(o)

the establishment of the strategic layer would not be a new function; it would be based on the skills and expertise already available within the council;

(p)

there were inherently high risks associated with the five transformation programmes (each programme had a risk register), such as the increased demands on HR, Payroll, Legal and other resources from the Integrated Health and Wellbeing Programme at the same time as CCO was leading the transformation of these departments;

(q)

the assurance function within the service integration and management project would include the arrangements for scrutiny which would continue to hold the executive to account;

(r)

the continued engagement of staff was ensured through regular transformation communications via Staffroom and payslips;

(s)

consultation with members, officers and residents would be built in to the decision making process by seeking their views.

(l)

measures for public consultation and engagement are to be built into the CCO programme;

(2)

the role and function of the decision making network are to be made clearer;

(3)

the CCO programme is reviewed by the Board in three months’ time to report on the above and to include the quick wins with timescales and to also present the CCO blue print.