Meeting documents

The Committee is asked to elect the South Bucks Co-Chairman for the 2018/19 Municipal Year.

Note: the Chairmanship of the Committee shall alternate between Councils each meeting

It was proposed by Councillor J Waters, and second by Councillor V Martin, and RESOLVED that Councillor C Rouse be elected Co-Chairman for the Committee for 2018-19.

It was proposed by Councillor P Bastiman, and second by Councillor M Lewis, and RESOLVED that Councillor M Bradford be elected Co-Chairman for the Committee for 2018-19.

Councillor C Rouse in the Chair

None.

Members were asked to note the Committee’s terms of references and procedure rules.

RESOLVED:

That the Joint Overview and Scrutiny Committee Terms of

Reference and Procedure Rules at appendices 1 and 2 respectively be noted.

Members received a progress report on the Customer Experience Programme.

It was noted that the Chiltern and South Bucks Joint Committee had agreed the full business case at their meeting on 28 June 2018, and that implementation of the programme had now commenced. The Head of Customer Services informed Members that an implementation team had been recruited, and all posts had been appointed to internally. Further, that procurement for a technology partner was complete. The Councils technology partner, GOSS interactive, currently ran the content management system for the websites.

All services would be addressed in 3 phases to be completed in October 2019; the first phase would include the Environmental Health, Waste and Licensing services. In response to a question as to why these services had been included in phase 1, Members were advised that the Waste service experienced the highest volume of customer contact, and the Environmental Health and Licensing services areas were familiar with working with online forms.

A network of change champions were continuing to help support the project.

The Committee enquired as to how Members would be updated on the programme as it progresses, and it was noted that updates would be received by the Customer Experience Programme Member Working Group, each Councils’ Customer Service Policy Advisory Groups (PAGs), as well as the Joint Overview and Scrutiny and Joint Committees.

Members asked what the impact would be of a reduction in head count. The Head of Customer Services informed Members that the Councils would look to redeploy all customer contact staff into customer services. Once channel shift had taken place, the Councils would look to review the number of posts within customer services to generate savings going forward.

RESOLVED:

That the progress made to date on the Customer Experience Programme be noted.

The Committee received an update on the progress of the implementation project for a shared ICT strategy. The strategy had been approved by the Chiltern and South Bucks Joint Committee on 28 June 2018. At this meeting, approval was also given to move officers to using a shared email address @chilternandsouthbucks.gov.uk.

Members were advised that an implementation plan for the move to a cloud based technology was to be put in place by November 2018. The Councils were making good progress with data minimisation to help support the move to cloud. The Head of Business Support stressed the importance of the Councils finding the right partner to progress the project forward. Technical workshops had been scheduled for early October 2018 to agree a firm design for the way forward. Further clarity on the Councils proposed approach to moving to a cloud based technology would be provided to Members at a future meeting.

The Committee enquired as to whether financial savings could be made by moving to cloud technology, and the Head of Business Support advised Members it was expected that this would be the case, and that moving to the cloud would allow the Councils to decommission other systems.

Members noted that all the technical work had been completed for officers to move to using the shared email address and now a communications plan was being drawn up to prepare the Councils’ customers for the move.

The Committee enquired as to when the move would be complete, and were advised that a phased approach would be taken. Members raised concerns that a phased approach may cause some confusion to the Councils’ customers. The Director of Resources informed the Committee that all officers would be moved over to the new shared email address, however the date for this was to be determined. Officers would have the ability to send emails from their previous email address which would still exist, but the default email would be the new joint one. Specific authority email addresses would only be used for communications that, for instance, legally require correspondence to be addressed from a sovereign authority. The Committee were assured that officers’ primary email address would be the shared email address.

It was requested that a progress update be given to Members of the Committee on the approach to rolling out the new shared email address.

RESOLVED:

That the progress to date be noted.

The Committee considered the work programme. Members noted that the Customer Experience Programme and ICT Strategy implementation were two key areas of work for the committee’s consideration over the coming months.

Members requested that the Local Plan lead the Committee’s work programme, and that the Committee’s meetings align with key stages for the Local Plan.

RESOLVED:

That the work programme be noted.