The Committee will receive a short verbal report from Cllr Wilding followed by the opportunity to ask questions.
Minutes:
The Chair invited Cllr Wilding to present his verbal report to members.
Where he explained that this Portfolio includes the following divisions:
· Business Support (ICT (Information and Communications Technology), HR, Corporate Improvement and Facilities, Elections and Land Charges)– Joe Mildred
· Legal and Democratic Services (including Procurement) – Nick Bennett
· Finance, Internal Audit and Treasury – Helen Belenger
· Revenues, Benefits and Customer Services – Kerry Standing
These fall under the management of John Ward, Director of Corporate Services and Louise Rudziak, Director of Housing and Communities.
This report, as well as addressing the normal activities of the Portfolio, includes additional activities undertaken due to the COVID activities.
Business Support
Business Support played a key role in the Council adapting to COVID.
· At the start of the Pandemic, most of the Council’s office-based staff started working from home. This created a range of challenges in terms of ICT, HR and staff wellbeing. Over the last 18 months many staff were re-deployed away from their normal roles into areas where extra support was needed in our response to COVID. A significant number of our staff have not been able to undertake their roles from home and we have had to ensure that they were able to work in a safe way, whether that was in the Depot, in the offices or out in the community. Despite the challenges, the council has continued to deliver all of its services throughout the pandemic.
· There is currently coordination of a gradual return to work in the office with the expectation that there is likely to be a blend of home and office working.
· It is clear that the council’s finances have and will continue to be affected by COVID, but it is still not clear to what extent. In response to this, we have developed the Future Services Framework which has created a three-year programme of efficiency savings that will aim to reduce the council’s spending budget by in excess of £1.5m per annum (details of which are being covered later on the today’s agenda). Alongside this, a service prioritisation exercise is taking place so that we have a plan in place for whatever the future financial position might be.
· The organisational response to COVID has been overseen by the Organisational Recovery Group which with attendance from the Portfolio Holder and two members of OSC.
· Moving on to other areas, in May this year, the Elections Team successfully delivered a major election that included elections for the delayed 2020 Police & Crime Commissioner, West Sussex County Council and several Neighbourhood Plan and Parish by-elections. Running these was more challenging than normal due to the Covid related restrictions and social distancing requirements at the polling stations and the count.
· The ICT Department have completed the Disaster Recovery server room which is based at the Depot at Westhampnett. This is already allowing us to create real time back-ups of our systems and is now in the final stages of testing to enable us to get all of our ICT systems up and running in the event of our server room in East Pallant House failing. The team have also had to deal with a large increase in the number of cyber security threats and attacks whilst the additional remote working has created an even greater reliance on the network and systems having sufficient capacity to support a large number of staff working remotely.
Legal & Democratic Services
Key Achievements:
· The council’s Democratic Services team established and put into place the required technology and policies to enable remote meetings to be held throughout the pandemic.
· Several significant policies have been drafted and adopted to ensure we continue to act efficiently and legally – for example the new Code of Conduct which has been brought into line with the National Code of Conduct and new CCTV policies.
· The council’s legal team gave support to Arun District Council and for many months and provided Monitoring Officer and Data Protection Officer support to that authority.
Finance & Internal Audit & Treasury
Key Achievements:
· The team achieved the key deadlines for the completion of the 2019-20 Statutory Accounts and their subsequent protracted external audit, along with delivering the 2021-22 budget.
· The Finance team completed additional budget monitoring and regular financial forecasting on expenditure and income as a consequence of the impact of COVID. They also compiled information to support the council’s claims under the Government’s Sales, fees and charges compensation scheme.
· The Finance team ensured the continuity of key financial systems with the renewal of contracts (i.e. CIVICA and Income Management System).
· Treasury – Total investments varied from £75m to £120m in 2020-21; this created a challenge for finding suitable high-quality counterparties. Whilst the return on internally managed funds was very low at 0.1%, the external managed funds achieved a stable return of 4.4%, generating £1.3m of income to support front line services.
· We maintained prompt payments to council suppliers during the early stages of COVID to help support businesses.
· Both Finance and the Internal Audit and Corporate Investigations teams facilitated the payment of COVID business relief and other grants.
· The annual Empty Home Review by the Investigations Team brought in £288,395 for the Council, whilst also undertaking the larger bi-annual Premium Data Match in 2020-21 for the National Fraud Initiative reviewing Single Person Discount, Council Tax Reduction and other matches. The full detailed results are reported annually to the Corporate Governance and Audit Committee.
· The Internal Audit Team were able to complete 5 audits along with 3 follow up as part of their 4-year audit plan, plus the annual testing and review of the Council’s 9 key financial systems to ensure compliance to procedures and internal controls.
Key areas of work for 2021-22 include:
· The procurement of a new insurance contract, working with our appointed broker for a new contract to be in place by 1 November 2021.
· The Finance Team will support the delivery of the Council’s Future Services Framework and its financial recovery plans which will aid the budget setting for 2022-23.
· Treasury – The 2021-22 strategy has the relaxed the overall investment ceiling for Money Market Funds addressing one of the challenges in the previous year. Officers are also assessing if any further core cash can be placed in external managed investments to improve future yields.
Revenues, Benefits and Customer Services
This division administers the setting and collection of Council Tax and the payment of Housing Benefit. It also runs Customer Services.
Key Achievements in 2020/21 with a focus on COVID related activities
Businesses benefitted from: -
· 10,014 Business Rate grants totalling £64.4m paid out to support 3,900 individual businesses across the district.
· The council’s Additional Restrictions Grant (£3.49 m) was fully spent by 30 April 2021 which qualified us for a further Additional Restrictions Grant top up of £1.1 m. With the exception of £139k all funds have been spent. The remaining underspend will be administered by the council’s Economic Support team to further support businesses. Work is currently underway to develop proposals for this area of work.
Residents benefitted from: -
· The council made £350k of Hardship Fund payments out of the total £699,209 during 2020/21 to support residents with their Council Tax who have been financially affected by Covid-19. The remainder of the fund (£349,209) is being used in 2021/22 to provide a further scheme. This included an initial payment of up to £150 in line with the 2020/21 scheme for eligible residents. A discretionary scheme is also being administered up to 31 March 2022 or as soon as the fund has been fully spent.
· Since going live on 12 October 2020, £144,500 has been paid out to eligible people forced to Self-Isolate under Test and Trace Support Scheme; the scheme is continuing to 30 September 2021.
· £250,000 has been paid out in Discretionary Housing Payments during 2020/21 and the scheme has been bolstered with Contained Outbreak Management Fund (COMF) funding for 21/22. This includes paying for a Money Advice Support Officer through Citizens Advice and providing a further Hardship Fund in 2021/22 and being as flexible as possible when negotiating payment plans with people who owe the Council money.
· The Customer Services reception has been reconfigured and re-opened from 21 June 2021. Whilst its early days, the numbers of visitors are low (30 per day on average) and this coincides with online service usage increasing which is encouraging.
Key challenges for 2021/22
· Maintaining high levels of Council Tax and Business Rates collection. Currently Council Tax collection is forecasted to be 97.43% at 1 April 2022 and Business Rates collection is forecasted to be 96.31%.
· Ensuring that residents continue to use the Council’s online services where they can as their first choice freeing up resources to help more vulnerable residents both over the telephone and in person.
· Addressing the implications of the end of the furlough scheme at the end of September; this could result in an increase in unemployment, and a further demand for the Council’s services.
The Chair then invited members to ask questions, where the format of the report provided was discussed. It was felt by one member that having a detailed update provided verbally at the meeting, limited the opportunity for members to scrutinise the information provided. It was confirmed that the report format had been requested by the Committee some time ago and that it had been running in this way since. It was also confirmed by Mrs Shepherd that would be no issue with circulating Cabinet member updates with the agenda should that be what the Committee wants going forwards.
A question regarding the Corporate Efficiency Programme was raised, in that it queried that at the Cabinet meeting held on Tuesday 7 September, additional resource for Planning was agreed and this seemed to be a conflict with the programme. It was confirmed that some vacancies within the Planning team had been removed previously, however the pandemic had seen a significant increase in workload for this area that required recruitment. The Committee were also reminded that when the original review had been completed, it was a ‘stretch review’ and when the report was presented to Council it was stated that officers could only account for 75% of the plan. Mrs Shepherd explained to members that they will see from the report at agenda item 11, the council had over performed and are on target for many areas. Mr Buckley added that there were planned savings in relation to staffing at a later date within the programme and that this had been clearly detailed in the report to be discussed later.
Cllr Purnell thanked Mr Wilding for his verbal update and stated that she was in favour of Cabinet member updates being included as a report within the agenda. She then proposed that Cabinet member updates should be in written format and included in the agenda which was seconded by Cllr Sharp and the Committee;
RESOLVED
That Cabinet member updates should be in written format and included in the agenda.
Returning to the remaining speakers the following questions were raised;
Further discussion on staff working at home and what the future of staff working from the office looked like for the council, would it be a 50/50 council moving forward. Mr Mildred explained that the council would not have a one size fits all approach, it would be entirely dependent on the needs and requirements of each individual team. It would be a hybrid approach to working with each team assessing their requirements and reaching agreement via a Team Charter. Once the Charters have been finalised, they will be shared with members and other stakeholders. Mrs Shepherd stated that it was important that staff are in the office and most are. Performance over the last 18 months has been good and working from home does allow for a blended approach to work and aides recruitment. Ultimately the customer has to be served and services must not fall.
The Chair thanked Cllr Wilding for his verbal update and confirmed with him that written version of his update would be circulated to the Committee after the meeting.