Meeting documents

Apologies were received from Bill Chapple OBE and Trevor Egleton.

To disclose any Personal or Disclosable Pecuniary Interests

There were no declarations of interest.

To agree the Minutes of the Meeting held on 31 October to be agreed as a correct record.

The minutes of the meeting held on 31 October 2013 were agreed as a correct record.

Public Questions is an opportunity for people who live, work or study in the county to put a question to a Scrutiny Committee about any issue that has an impact on their local community or the county as a whole.

Members of public, who have given prior notice, will be invited to put their question in person.

The Cabinet Member and responsible officers will then be invited to respond. 

Further information and details on how to register can be found through the following link:-

http://www.buckscc.gov.uk/about-your-council/scrutiny/get-involved/

There were no public questions.

For the Chairman of the Committee to provide an update to the Committee on recent scrutiny related activity.

The Chairman reported that an informal transformation workshop would follow the meeting and focus on the role of elected members in the future.  The s106 report presented to the October meeting was considered by the Environment Select Committee on 6 November and there will be a further update in the New Year.  A s106 coordinator role will be created which will result in a more effective communication strategy.  The budget papers had been released and would be available shortly for review.  

Gill Hibberd, Rose Younger and Paul Raimbach will update Members of the Council’s use of consultants and interim staff.

The Chairman welcomed Richard Ambrose, Paul Raimbach and the Cabinet Member for Finance and Resources (the Cabinet Member) to the meeting.  The Cabinet Member explained that he previously ran a consultancy company and that in his opinion the Council must be judicious when using consultants and must only do so when they add value.  He explained that the services of consultants were purchased by Heads of Service.

Consultants were being used during the review of the Future Shape of the Council and also in property, transport and recruitment because the specialist skills required were not available in-house.  Care was taken to ensure that interim managers were not overused and the Cabinet Member had been reassured by a recent example of when a service stopped using someone because they were no longer adding value. 

Richard Ambrose reported that the reasons for using a consultant included the provision of specialist advice and they have specialist skills which was not always available in-house.  Consultants help with innovation, provide best practice which can be used to help with capacity issues.  Interim staff were generally used to cover posts when there was a struggle to recruit.  It was noted that there can also be longer term interims to cover capacity issues and peaks and troughs in workloads for example because the skills are not required throughout the year.  A review took place two years ago and identified the need for greater transparency and understanding and control of spend.

Members were advised that an e-form had been created which captured information including why consultants were used and the length of time and this gave more visibility.    Work had been taking place on spend analysis and all interims were supposed to be hired through Pertemps.  Spend on Pertemps had increased whilst that on other agencies had been reduced.  In Phase One of Transformation there was a target to save £250k on consultants and interims and the aim was to receive a £150k rebate from Pertemps. The spend in the first six months of 2013/14 was down on 2012/13.  Currently BCC was in Transformation Stage 2 and Pricewaterhouse Coopers were being used.  Therefore during the second half of 2013/14 there had been considerable spend on consultants.  It may be necessary to devolve more to business units on how to control spend. 

Paul Raimbach explained that consultants were very difficult to interpret and difficult to define. ProClass was referred to in the report which classifies spend by supplier.  The main contractors used by BCC include Serco which procures safety camera maintenance but their main area of business is in consultancy.  Ringway Jacobs provides construction and business engineering.  Approximately 1% of the total external expenditure is on consultants.  There had been a reduction in the number of external suppliers as Pertemps had become the main supplier.

Members were invited to ask questions and the following points were raised:

·     A Member asked if consultants were being used for the right reasons if they were used as agents for change  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

Richard Ambrose will update the committee on the Council’s approach to allocating funding to meet local needs.

The Chairman welcomed Halinka Rands who joined the Cabinet Member and Richard Ambrose to present the report on Local Emergency Support.  The Cabinet Member reported that there were three references to Local Emergency Support at the last Council meeting and he welcomed the opportunity to present the report.

Richard Ambrose explained that the purpose of the presentation was to explain what was being done since Local Emergency Support transferred from the Department of Work and Pensions in April 2013 and to seek the views of the Committee on potential changes.  The current policy was approved in March 2013 by the former Cabinet Member approved the decision when there were real concerns that there was insufficient funding to meet the demands.  The focus was to support those in crisis with the longer term aim of preventing people from getting into crisis in the first place.

It was established as time progressed that the demand was not as high as had been expected.  Strategies were put in place to limit cash payments and sign posts people to food banks.  Work was also taking place with partner organisations including the District Council and Housing Association who deal with homelessness and rent payments in order to link these partners and provide a whole scheme approach.  Currently about 10% of the funding received  has been spent and there may be an opportunity to re-look at the policy and think about making changes to the policy to help people from getting into these positions in the first place.  The funding was only guaranteed for 2 years was not ring-fenced and approaches had been made to organisations to see how they can be helped initially as a one-off.  The aim was to raise the profile to ensure that people were aware of the service.

Halinka Rands explained that the Welfare Reform Act abolished the Crisis Loans and Community Care Grant that the Department of Work and Pensions was responsible for previously and the current Local Emergency Plan was formed based on a blank sheet of paper.   Meetings took place with other Local Authorities and there was concern that there was insufficient money available to meet the need because the data provided had not been regionalised.  The aim was to treat people as individuals and understand why they were making approaches for help.  Consultations took place with Children’s and Adult Services when devising the policy and the aim was to complement the schemes they were already using and also provide help out of hours.

The scheme went live on 1 April and meetings took place with local organisations to ascertain what they were doing and meetings took place with local food banks, and organisations that recycle furniture and provide budgeting.  The policy appeared to be working and the aim was to further promote the scheme and work more closely with the partners.  The plan was to work with asylum seekers (although there have been few requests received) and it was noted that there was a statutory responsibility to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

To consider and agree the Finance, Performance and Resources Select Committee Work Programme 2013/14.

The Committee Work Programme was noted.

To note the written response following the Capital Item on 5 September in relation to questions about the school asset transfers and the Business Investment Group.   

The Papers for Information were noted.  In response to a question it was noted that the Terms of Reference of The Business Investment Group had been substantially redrawn in the last 3 months.  

25 February 2014 at 10am.

25 February 2014 at 10am.